THE BRUNSWICKER IN ENGLAND.
Prince Augustus of Wolfenbüttel, the accepted lover of
Sophia--Superstition of the Duke of Zell--Intrigues of Madame
von Platen--A rival lover--Prince George Louis: makes an offer
of marriage to Princess Anne--Policy of the Prince of Orange
--Prince George in England: festivities on account of his visit
--Execution of Lord Stafford--Illness of Prince Rupert--The
Bill of Exclusion, and the Duke of York at Holyrood--Probable
succession of the House of Brunswick--Prince George recalled
--Successful intrigues of Sophia, wife of Ernest--A group for
an artist--Ill-fated marriage of Sophia--Elizabeth, Queen of
Bohemia--‘Goody Palsgrave’--The Electress Sophia, and her
intellectual skirmishes.
While all was loose and lively at the court of the bishop, the daily
routine of simple pleasures and duties alone marked the course of
events at the modest court of the Duke of Zell. The monotony of the
latter locality was, however, agreeably interrupted by the arrival
there of his Serene Highness Prince Augustus William of Wolfenbüttel.
He had just been edified by what he had witnessed during his brief
sojourn in the episcopal circle of Osnaburgh, where he had seen two
ladies exercising a double influence, Madame von Platen ruling her
husband and his master, while her sister Caroline von Busche was
equally obeyed by _her_ consort and his Highness George Louis, the
bishop’s son.
Prince Augustus of Wolfenbüttel was the brother of that early suitor
of the little Sophia Dorothea who had met a soldier’s death at the
siege of Philipsburg. He was, like his brother, not so rich in gold
pieces as in good qualities, and was more wealthy in virtues than in
acres. He was a bachelor prince, with a strong inclination to lay down
his bachelorship at the feet of a lady who would, by addition of her
dowry, increase the greatness and material comforts of both. Not that
Augustus of Wolfenbüttel was mercenary; he was simply prudent. A little
princely state in Germany costs a great deal to maintain, and when the
errant prince went forth in search of a lady with a dower, his last
thought was to offer himself to one who had no heart or could have no
place in his own. If there was some system, a little method, and an
air of business about the passion and principle of the puissant Prince
Augustus, something thereof must be laid to the charge of the times,
and a little to the princely matter-of-fact good sense: he is a wise
and merciful man who, before he comes to conclusions with a lady on the
chapter of matrimony, first weighs prospects, and establishes, as far
as in him lies, a security of sunshine.
Augustus Wolfenbüttel had long suspected that the sun of his future
home was to be found at Zell, and in the person of his young cousin
Sophia Dorothea. Even yet, tradition exists among Brunswick maidens as
to the love-passages of this accomplished and handsome young couple.
Those passages have been enlarged for the purposes of romance writers,
but divested of all exaggeration there remains enough to prove, as
touching this pair, that they were well assorted both as to mind and
person; that their inclinations were towards each other; and that they
were worthy of a better fate than that which fell upon the honest and
warm affection which reigned in the hearts of both.
The love of these cousins was not the less ardent for the fact of its
being partially discouraged. The Duke of Zell looked upon the purpose
of Prince Augustus with an unfavourable eye. The simple-minded duke
had an unfeigned superstitious awe of the new lover; and the idea
of consenting to a match under the circumstances as they presented
themselves, seemed to him tantamount to a species of sacrilege,
outraging the _manes_ and memory of the defunct brother. The duke
loved his daughter, and the daughter assuredly loved Augustus of
Wolfenbüttel; and, added thereto, the good Duchess Eleanora was quite
disposed to see the cherished union accomplished, and to bestow her
benediction upon the well-favoured pair. The father was influenced,
however, by his extensive reading in old legendary ballad-lore,
metrical and melancholy German romances, the commonest incident in
which is the interruption of a marriage ceremony by a spiritual
personage professing priority of right.
The opposition to the marriage was not, however, all surmounted when
the antagonism of the duke had been successfully overcome. Madame von
Platen has the credit of having carried out her opposition to the match
to a very successful issue.
It is asserted of this clever lady, that she was the first who caused
the Bishop of Osnaburgh thoroughly to comprehend that Sophia Dorothea
would form a very desirable match for his son George Louis. The
young lady had lands settled on her which might as well be added to
the territory of that electoral Hanover of which the prince-bishop
was soon to be the head. Every acre added to the possessions of the
chief of the family would be by so much an increase of dignity, and
little sacrifices were worth making to effect great and profitable
results. The worthy pair, bishop and female prime-minister, immediately
proceeded to employ every conceivable engine whereby they might
destroy the fortress of the hopes of Sophia Dorothea and Augustus of
Wolfenbüttel. They cared for nothing, save that the hand of the former
should be conferred upon the bishop’s eldest son, George Louis, who had
as little desire to be matched with his cousin, or his cousin with
him, as kinsfolk can have who cordially detest each other.
George Louis was not shaped for a lover. He was mean in person and
in character. George was brave indeed; to none of the princes of the
House of Brunswick can be denied the possession of bravery. In all the
bloody and useless wars of the period, he had distinguished himself by
his dauntless courage and his cool self-possession. He was not heroic,
but he really looked heroic at the head of his squadron, charging
across the battle-field, and carrying his sword and his fringed and
feathered hat into the very thickest of the fray. He did not fail, it
may be added, in one of the characteristics of bravery, humanity on the
field. For a wounded foe he had a thorough respect. Out of the field of
battle George Louis was an extremely ordinary personage, except in his
vices. He was coarsely minded and coarsely spoken, and his profligacy
was so extreme of character--it bore about it so little of what Lord
Chesterfield recommended when he said a man might be gentlemanlike
even in his vices--that the bishop, easy as he was both as parent and
prelate, and rich as he was himself in evil example to a son who needed
no such warrant to plunge headlong into sin--even the bishop felt
uncomfortable for awhile. He thought, however, that marriage would cure
profligacy.
George Louis was now in his twenty-second year. He was born in 1660,
and he had recently acquired increase of importance from the tact of
his sire having succeeded to the estates, grandeur, and expectations
of his predecessor, Duke John Frederick. The latter was on his way to
Rome, in 1679, a city which he much loved, holding in respect a good
portion of what is taught there. He was proceeding thither with a view
of a little more of pleasure and something therewith of instruction,
when a sudden attack of illness carried him off; and his death excited
as much grief in the bishop as it possibly could in one who had little
reverence for the duke, by whose death he profited largely.
When the bishop (now Duke Ernest Augustus, of Hanover), as a natural
consequence of this death, established a gayer court at Hanover than
had ever yet been seen there, and had raised George Louis to the rank
of a ‘Crown Prince’--a title given to many heirs who could inherit
nothing but coronets--the last-named individual began to consider
speculatively as to what royal lady he might, with greatest prospect of
advantage to himself, make offer of his hand.
At this time Charles II. was King in England. The King’s brother,
James, Duke of York, had a daughter, ‘Lady Anne,’ who is better
known to us all by her after-title of ‘good Queen Anne.’ In the year
1680, George of Hanover came over to England with matrimonial views
respecting that young princess. He had on his way visited William of
Orange, at the Hague; and when that calculating prince was made the
confidential depository of the views of George Louis respecting the
Princess Anne of England, he listened with much complacency, but is
suspected of having forthwith set on foot the series of intrigues
which, helped forward by Madame von Platen, ended in the recall of
George from England, and in his hapless marriage with the more hapless
Sophia Dorothea.
George of Hanover left the Hague with the conviction that he had
a friend in William; but William was no abettor of marriages with
the Princess Anne, and least of all could he wish success to the
hereditary prince of Hanover, whose union with one of the heiresses
of the British throne might, under certain contingencies, miserably
mar his own prospects. The Sidney Diary fixes the arrival of George
Louis at Greenwich on the 6th of December, 1680. On the 29th of the
month, Viscount Stafford was beheaded on Tower Hill, and at this
lively spectacle George of Hanover was probably present, for on the
30th of the month he sends a long letter to her Serene Highness, his
mother, stating that ‘they cut off the head of Lord Stafford yesterday,
and made no more ado about it than if they had chopped off the head
of a pullet.’ In this letter, the writer enters into details of the
incidents of his reception in England. The tenor of his epistle is,
that he remained one whole day at anchor at ‘_Grunnwitsch_’ (which is
his reading of Greenwich) while his secretary, Mr. Beck, went ashore to
look for a house for him, and find out his uncle Prince Rupert. Scant
ceremony was displayed, it would appear, to render hospitable welcome
to such a visitor. Hospitality, however, was not altogether lacking.
The zealous Beck found out ‘Uncle Robert,’ as the prince ungermanises
Rupert, and the uncle, having little of his own to offer to his nephew,
straightway announced to Charles II. the circumstance that the princely
lover of his niece was lying in the mud off _Grunnwitsch_. ‘His
Majesty,’ says George Louis, ‘immediately ordered them apartments at
_Writhall_’--and he then proceeds to state that he had not been there
above two hours when Lord Hamilton arrived to conduct him to the King,
who received him most obligingly. He then adds, ‘Prince _Robert_ had
preceded me, and was at Court when I saluted King Charles. In making my
obeisance to the King, I did not omit to give him the letter of your
Serene Highness; after which he spoke of your Highness, and said that
he “remembered you very well.” When he had talked with me some time, he
went to the Queen, and as soon as I arrived, he made me kiss the hem
of her Majesty’s petticoat. The next day I saw the Princess of York
(the Lady Anne), and I saluted her by kissing her, with the consent of
the King. The day after I went to visit Prince _Robert_, who received
me in bed, for he has a malady in his leg, which makes him very often
keep his bed. It appears that it is so, without any pretext, and he
has to take care of himself. He had not failed of coming to see me one
day. All the lords come to see me, _sans prétendre la main chez moi_’
(probably, rather meaning without ceremony, without kissing hands,
than, as has been suggested, that ‘they came without venturing to shake
hands with him’).
Cold and deaf did the Princess Anne remain to the suit of the
Hanoverian wooer. The suit, indeed, was not pressed by any sanction
of the lady’s father, who, during the three months’ sojourn of George
Louis in England, remained in rather secluded state at Holyrood.
Neither was the suit opposed by James. James was troubled but little
touching the suitor of his daughter. He had personal troubles enough of
his own wherewith to be concerned, and therewith sundry annoyances.
Among the ‘celebrations’ of the visit of George Louis to this country,
was the pomp of the ceremony which welcomed him to Cambridge. Never
had the groves or stream of Cam been made vocal by the echoes of
such laudation as was given and taken on this solemnly hilarious
occasion. There was much feasting, which included very much drinking,
and much expenditure of heavy compliment in very light Latin. George
and his trio of followers were made doctors of law by the scholastic
authorities. The honour, however, was hardly more appropriate than
when a similar one was conferred, in after years, upon Blucher and the
celebrated artillery officer, Gneisenau. ‘Ah!’ exclaimed the veteran
leader, ‘they are going to make me a doctor; but it was Gneisenau that
furnished all the pills.’
That parliament was convened at Oxford whereby there was, as Evelyn
remarks, ‘great expectation of his Royal Highness’s cause, as to the
succession against which the house was set,’ and therewith there was,
according to the same diarist, ‘an extraordinary sharp, cold spring,
not yet a leaf upon the trees, frost and snow lying while the whole
nation was in the greatest ferment.’ Such was the parliament, and such
the spring, when George Louis was suddenly called home. He was highly
interested in the bill, which was read a first time at that parliament,
as also in the ‘expedients’ which were proposed in lieu of such bill,
and rejected. The expedients proposed instead of the Bill of Exclusion
in this parliament, were that the whole government, upon the death of
Charles II., should be vested in a regent, the Princess of Orange, and
if she died without issue, then the Princess Anne should be regent.
But if James, Duke of York, should have a son educated a Protestant,
then the regency should last no longer than his minority, and that the
regent should govern in the name of the father while he lived; but that
the father should be obliged to reside five hundred miles from the
British dominions; and if the duke should return to these kingdoms, the
crown should immediately devolve on the regent, and the duke and his
adherents be deemed guilty of high treason.
Here was matter in which the Hanoverian suitor was doubly interested
both as man and as lover. Nor was there anything unnatural or
unbecoming in such concern. The possible inheritance of such a throne
as that of England was not to be contemplated without emotion. An
exclusive Protestant succession made such a heritage possible to
the House of Brunswick, and if ever the heads of that house, before
the object of their hopes was realised, ceased to be active for its
realisation, it was when assurance was made doubly sure, and action was
unnecessary.
It is not easy to determine what part William of Orange had in the
recall of George Louis from England, but the suddenness of that recall
was an object of some admiring perplexity to a lover, who left a lady
who was by no means inconsolable, and who, two years afterwards, was
gaily married at St. James’s to the Prince of Denmark, on the first
leisure day between the executions of Russell and of Sidney.
George Louis, however, obeyed the summons of his sovereign and father,
but it was not until his arrival in Hanover that he found himself
called upon to transfer the prosecution of his matrimonial suit from
one object to another. The riding idea in the mind of Ernest Augustus
was, that however he might have provided to secure his succession to
the dominion of Zell, the marriage of his son with the duke’s only
child would add many broad acres to his possessions in Hanover.
Sophia Dorothea was still little more than a child; but that very
circumstance was made use of in order to procure the postponement of
her marriage with Augustus of Wolfenbüttel. The Duke of Zell did not
stand in need of much argument from his brother to understand that the
union of the young lovers might more properly be celebrated when the
bride was sixteen than a year earlier. The duke was ready to accept any
reasoning, the object of which was to enable him to retain his daughter
another year at his side.
The sixteenth birthday of Sophia Dorothea had arrived, and George Louis
had made no impression on her heart--the image of the absent Augustus
still lived there; and the whole plot would have failed, but for the
sudden, and active, and efficient energy of one who seemed as if she
had allowed matters to proceed to extremity, in order to exhibit the
better her own powers when she condescended to interfere personally
and remedy the ill-success of others by a triumph of her own. That
person was Sophia, the wife of Ernest, a lady who rivalled Griselda
in one point of her patience--that which she felt for her husband’s
infidelities. In other respects she was crafty, philosophical, and
free-thinking; but she was as ambitious as any of her family, and as
she had resolved on the marriage of her son, George Louis, with Sophia
Dorothea, she at once proceeded to accomplish that upon which she had
resolved.
It had suddenly come to her knowledge that Augustus of Wolfenbüttel
had made his reappearance at the Court of Zell. Coupling the knowledge
of this fact with the remembrance that Sophia Dorothea was now sixteen
years of age, and that at such a period her marriage had been fixed,
the mother of George Louis addressed herself at once to the task of
putting her son in the place of the favoured lover. She ordered out the
heavy coach and heavier Mecklenburg horses, by which German potentates
were wont to travel stately and leisurely by post some two centuries
ago. It was night when she left Hanover; and although she had not
further to travel than an ordinary train could now accomplish in an
hour, it was broad daylight before this match-making and match-breaking
lady reached the portals of the ducal palace of Zell.
There was something delightfully primitive in the method of her
proceeding. She did not despise state, except on occasions when
serious business was on hand. The present was such an occasion, and
she therefore waited for no usher to marshal her way and announce her
coming to the duke. She descended from her ponderous coach, pushed
aside the sleepy sentinel, who appeared disposed to question her before
he made way, and, entering the hall of the mansion, loudly demanded of
the few servants who came hurrying to meet her, to be conducted to the
duke. It was intimated to her that he was then dressing, but that his
Highness would soon be in a condition to descend and wait upon her.
Too impatient to tarry, and too eager to care for ceremony, she
mounted the stairs, bade a groom of the chamber point out to her
the door of the duke’s room; and, her order having been obeyed, she
forthwith pushed open the door, entered the apartment, and discovered
the dismayed duke in the most _negligé_ of _déshabilles_. She neither
made apology nor would receive any; but, intimating that she came upon
business, at once asked, ‘Where is your wife?’ The flurried Duke of
Zell pointed through an open door to a capacious bed in the adjacent
room, wherein lay the wondering duchess, lost in eider-down and deep
amazement.
The ‘old Sophia’ could have wished, it would seem, that she had
been further off. She was not quite rude enough to close the door,
and so cut off all communication and listening; but, remembering
that the Duchess of Zell was but very indifferently acquainted with
German, she ceased to speak in the language then common to the German
courts--French--and immediately addressed the duke in hard Teutonic
phrase, which was unintelligible to the vexed and suspecting duchess.
Half undressed, the duke occupied a chair close to his toilet-table,
while the astute wife of Ernest Augustus, seated near him, unfolded
a narrative to which he listened with every moment an increase of
complacency and conviction. The Duchess Eleanora, from her bed in the
adjacent room, could see the actors, but could not comprehend the
dialogue. But, if the narrative was unintelligible to her, she could
understand the drift of the argument, as the names of her daughter and
lover were being constantly pronounced with that of George Louis.
The case was forcibly put by the mother of George. She showed how union
makes strength, how little profit could arise from a match between
Sophia Dorothea and Augustus of Wolfenbüttel, and how advantageous must
be an union between the heir of Hanover and the heiress of the domains
which her provident father had added to Zell, and had bequeathed to his
daughter. She spoke of the certainty of Ernest Augustus being created
arch-standard-bearer of the empire of Germany, and therewith Elector
of Hanover. She hinted at the possibility even of Sophia Dorothea one
day sharing with her son the throne of Great Britain. The hint was
something premature, but the astute lady _may_ have strengthened her
case by reminding her hearer that the crown of England would most
probably be reserved only for a Protestant succession, and that her son
was, if a distant, yet not a very distant, and certainly a possible
heir.
The obsequious Duke of Zell was bewildered by the visions of greatness
presented to his mind by his clever sister-in-law. With ready lack of
honesty he consented to break off the match between Sophia Dorothea
and her lover, and to bestow her hand upon the careless prince for
whom it was now demanded by his mother. The latter returned to Hanover
perfectly satisfied with the work of that night and morning.
The same satisfaction was not experienced by the Duchess Eleanora. When
she came to learn the facts, she burst forth in expressions of grief
and indignation. The marriage which had now been definitely broken, had
been with her an affair of a mother’s heart. It had not been less an
affair of a young girl’s heart with Sophia Dorothea. Duke Anton Ulrich
of Wolfenbüttel came in person to Zell, to ask the fulfilment of the
promise of her hand to his son. On learning that the alleged promise
had been broken, he left Zell with the utmost indignation; and romance,
at least, says of Königsmark, that he too, had left it with a feeling
of sorrow that Sophia Dorothea was to be sacrificed to such an unworthy
person as George Louis. It was a pitiable case! There were three
persons who were to be rendered irretrievably wretched, in order, not
that any one might be rendered happy, but that a man without a heart
might be made a little more rich in the possession of dirt. The acres
of Zell were to bring misery on their heiress, and every acre was to
purchase its season of sorrow.
No entreaty could move the duke.[1] In his dignity he forgot the
father: and the prayers and tears of his child failed to touch the
parent, who really loved her well, but whose affection was dissolved
beneath the fiery heat of his ambition. He was singularly ambitious;
for the possible effect of a marriage with George Louis was merely to
add his own independent duchy of Luneburg to the dominions of Hanover.
His daughter, moreover, detested her cousin, and his wife detested her
sister-in-law; above all, the newly accepted bridegroom, if he did not
detest, had no shadow, nor affected to have any shadow of respect,
regard, or affection for the poor young victim who was to be flung
to him with indecent and unnatural disregard of all her feelings as
daughter and maiden. Sophia Dorothea’s especial distaste for George
Louis was grounded not only in her knowledge of his character, but
also of his want of respect for her mother, of whom he always spoke in
contemptuous terms. Sophia Dorothea’s inclinations, her father said, he
would never constrain; but when this seemed to give her some hope of
release, her father observed that a good daughter’s inclinations were
always identical with those of her parents. She had a heart to listen
to, she thought. She had a father whom she was bound to obey, he said
--and said it with terrible iteration. Her aversion is reported to have
been so determined that, when the portrait of her future lord was
presented to her, she flung it against the wall with such violence that
the glass was smashed, and the dismounted diamonds were scattered over
the room.
The matter, however, was urged onward by Sophia of Hanover; and in
formal testimony of the freedom of inclination with which Sophia
Dorothea acted, she was brought to address a formal letter to the
mother of her proposed husband, expressive of her obedience to the will
of her father, and promissory of the same obedience to the requirements
of her future mother-in-law. It is a mere formal document, proving
nothing but that it was penned for the assumed writer by a cold-hearted
inventor, and that the heart of the copier, subdued by sickness, was
far away from her words. This document is in the British Museum. During
the time that intervened before George Louis arrived at Zell to take
his bride to Hanover, Sophia Dorothea seemed to have passed years
instead of weeks. It was only when her mother looked sadly at her that
she contrived painfully to smile. She even professed a sort of joyful
obedience; but when the bridegroom dismounted at her father’s gate,
Sophia Dorothea fainted in her mother’s arms.
After a world of misery and mock wooing, crowded into a few months,
the hateful and ill-omened marriage took place at Zell on the 21st
of November, 1682. The bride was sixteen, the bridegroom twenty-two.
Of the splendour which attended the ceremony court historiographers
wrote in loyal ecstasy and large folios, describing every character
and dress, every incident and dish, every tableau and trait, with a
minuteness almost inconceivable, and a weariness saddening even to
think of. They thought of everything but the heart of the principal
personage in the ceremony--that of the bride. They could describe the
superb lace which veiled it, and prate of its value and workmanship;
but of the worth and woe of the heart which beat beneath it, these
courtly historians knew no more than they did of honesty. Their
flattery was of the grossest, but they had no comprehension of ‘the
situation.’ To them all mortals were but as ballet-dancers and
pantomimists; and if they were but bravely dressed and picturesquely
grouped, the describers thereof thought of nothing beyond. The bride
preserved her mournful dignity on that dark and fierce November day.
Tradition says that there was a storm without as well as sorrow within;
and that the moaning of the wind and strange noises in the old castle
seemed as if the elements and the very home of the bride’s youth
sympathised with her present and her future destiny.