Queries.
Minor Queries.
_Count Konigsmark._--Horace Walpole, in his _Reminiscences_, says
distinctly that Count Konigsmark, the admirer of the ill-fated Princess
Sophia Dorothea of Zelle, was the same person as the instigator of Mr.
Thynne's assassination. Sir E. Brydges, in his edition of Collins's
_Peerage_, on the other hand, calls them brothers. Which of these
writers is correct? The fact may not be important otherwise than as
giving us an instance (if Walpole be correct) of the righteous judgment
of heaven in visiting a murderer with such fearful retribution. I cannot
find what became of Konigsmark, after the murder of Mr. Thynne, in
1681-2. It is said in the _Harleian Miscellany_, that he was taken by
one of Monmouth's attendants, who seized him as he was going on
ship-board. The three actual assassins were, we know, executed; but it
is added, "by some foul play, Konigsmark, who had employed them, and
came over to England expressly to see they executed their bloody
commission, was acquitted." What was this foul play, and how came the
greatest villain of the four to escape? I have not the _State Trials_ to
refer to: that work may give some explanation.
Walpole, who was familiar from childhood with the events of the courts
of the first three Georges, is likely to have been accurate as to the
identity of Konigsmark; but his occasional mistakes and
misrepresentations, as we are aware, have been frequently exposed by Mr.
Croker.