Chapter D: O. M (3)

The _Memoirs_ of Sophia break off early in 1681, when, after a visit to the Queen of Denmark in the latter part of the preceding year, she was again left alone by her erratic husband, who had departed on one of his pilgrimages across the Alps, although she was plunged into grief by the news of the death of her beloved brother, the Elector Palatine. Her eldest sister, the good Abbess of Herford, had, as we saw, died a few months before their brother, and, in her solitary sorrow, Sophia wrote that it would not be long before she followed them. When, therefore, these _Memoirs_ are made to serve as a principal source for her biography, the troubled circumstances of the time in which they were actually written should be taken into account. She little knew how soon a new epoch in her life was to begin, destined to impose upon her a responsibility as great as it was unexpected. With however prudent a self-restraint she might meet it, neither in her own eyes nor in those of the numerous observers who henceforth watched every one of her actions or movements, could it fail to add signally to her personal importance. And although, according to modern notions, the Hanover of the later seventeenth century might seem to differ but slightly, in its capacity to become a theatre of political transactions of moment, from the neighbouring city of Osnabrück, yet it should be remembered how strenuously the deceased Duke John Frederick had exerted himself to make his capital one of those secondary centres of political and general intellectual life which, in this age, paid the homage of imitation to Versailles. To him was owing the creation of a library which, if it could not rival that for which Sophia’s paternal ancestors had found a home at Heidelberg, was fostered by the care of Leibniz, whose services were the noblest legacy left by his first Hanoverian patron, John Frederick, to his successor, Ernest Augustus—a legacy of which the value was to be so fully recognised by Sophia. In other respects, too—notably in that of the attention now given at Hanover to the cultivation of the dramatic and musical arts—court and town had been transformed under John Frederick’s liberal _régime_; and an impulse had been given which his younger brother sought, after his own fashion, to sustain. Leibniz, of course, remained in his service, and was treated with a consideration which he owed to his usefulness both as publicist and historiographer, and which, thanks to the favour of Sophia, was never discontinued during her husband’s reign. Relations with Italy and Italian musical art were certain to be kept up under so constant a lover of Venice as Ernest Augustus; an Italian opera was again established at Hanover under the conduct of the distinguished Venetian composer, Agostino Steffani;[84] and the Abbate Hortensio Mauro, who took up his residence at Hanover about 1681, maintained at the Court of Ernest Augustus and Sophia a lasting interest in the Italian language and in Italian art, while himself becoming a trusted servant and friend of the Electoral family. The Court of Ernest Augustus and France were from the first mainly connected with his love of foreign luxury and elegance of all kinds. So early as 1668, Baron Platen had secured for him a Parisian _maître d’hôtel_; and, nearly every year, the Duke sent his _valet de chambre_ to Paris, there to consult a resident agent as to the requisites of Sophia and her ladies. The Palace at Hanover was greatly ‘beautified,’ though a great deal more money was spent on decoration of one kind or another than on architecture proper. It is reckoned that on the former Ernest Augustus expended nearly 25,000 dollars at Hanover. Tapestry and pictures were imported from Holland, and particular attention was given to stucco-work, under the direction of an Italian _maestro_ named Sartorio. In course of time, Sophia could summon French artists to conduct the weaving of a great _Gobelin_ tapestry, which was carried out in the _Reithaus_ at Hanover, and which represented scenes from the life of Duke George of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the ancestor of the Hanoverian dynasty, and from that of Sophia’s mother, the Queen of Bohemia. In 1695, the interior of the _Schlosskirche_ was completely gilded. With the exception of the great _Rittersaal_, however, a very pompous and heavy structure, nearly all the renovated palace buildings were destroyed by fire in 1741. Ernest Augustus also built, in direct connexion with the Palace, a new opera-house.[85] From the year 1684 we have an account—_merum mel_—of a visit paid to Hanover (following on one to Celle) by the celebrated French traveller Tavernier, whom Duke Ernest Augustus came over (from Herrenhausen?) to welcome, together with visitors so august as the Duchess Dowager of East Frisia and so distinguished as the celebrated Brandenburg diplomatist and statesman, Paul Fuchs. The old gentleman (Tavernier was then over eighty), who mentions that the Duke spent Sunday morning at the ‘temple’ and the afternoon at a performance of his company of French comedians, was delighted both by the agreeable turn which the conversation took at dinner—viz. the subject of his own travels in Persia and India—and by the general urbanity and courteous liberality of his reception.[86] There can be no doubt but that in these respects there were few contemporary courts which outshone those of the Lüneburg Dukes. We shall see how, as time went on, Sophia did what in her lay to maintain around her a culture both higher and wider than would have specially commended itself to the personal tastes of her husband, or of her eldest son.

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Footnote 84:

Steffani, after being employed in other diplomatic business by the
Hanoverian Court, was chosen to accompany the Princess Amalia,
daughter of the late Duke John Frederick, on her journey to Modena,
where she was married to the Roman King Joseph. Pope Innocent XI
hereupon created him Bishop of Spiga _in partibus_.

Footnote 85:

It was broken up in 1852. See A. Haupt, _u.s._, where the palace on
the property of Count Alten, which was at the time mortgaged to the
Platens, is said to be the one important specimen remaining of the
Italian architecture in the Hanover of the period. It was said to have
been built by Ernest Augustus for Countess Platen.

Footnote 86:

_Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Baron de l’Aubonne, Chambellan du Grand
Électeur. D’après des documents nouveaux et inédits, par Charles
Joret, Paris, 1881, pp. 342 sqq._

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For the present, everything at Hanover seemed shaping itself for the benefit of the Hereditary Prince George Lewis, as the representative of that principle of primogeniture which, in his father’s eyes, was of paramount importance for the future of the Brunswick-Lüneburg line, but which brought many tears into the eyes of his mother. The principle in question was by no means a new one in the history of the House of Brunswick. It already obtained in the elder branch, and in the younger had been established for Lüneburg-Celle and for Calenberg-Göttingen individually. Unless it were secured, the Brunswick-Lüneburgers could never hope to hold a more than subordinate position among the Princes of the Empire; no dream of a Ninth Electorate was worth dreaming; and any calculation as to further possibilities would have been more baseless than a fabric of the air. But, while this was understood by Ernest Augustus, and doubtless also by his eldest son, it is not wonderful that the next brother, Frederick Augustus, should have bitterly resented the consequences which followed for himself, and that his mother Sophia should have been full of sympathy with his trouble. After obtaining legal advice, Prince Frederick Augustus communicated his grievance to the willing ears of his kinsman, Duke Antony Ulric, at Wolfenbüttel; and, in the same quarter, the Duchess Sophia was lamenting the quarrel which had already taken place between her husband and their second son. ‘Poor Gussy’ (_Arm Gustchen_), she wrote in December, 1685, ‘is altogether cast out; his father will no longer give him any maintenance. I cry about it all night long; for one child is as dear to me as another; I am the mother of them all, and I grieve most for those who are unhappy.’ Finally, a protest on the part of Antony Ulric was presented to Sophia at Herrenhausen, and forwarded by her to her husband, who was, according to his wont, enjoying himself at Venice. The pressure was applied in vain; and, though ultimately, through the good offices of George William, an understanding was patched up between his brother and the hot-tempered Antony Ulric, Prince Frederick Augustus was left to his own devices. He followed the example of his elder brother by taking service with the Emperor and fighting against the Turks; but he was still intending to institute a suit at Vienna for the recovery of his rights, when, in January, 1691, he fell in a skirmish at Chemetzvar, near St. Giorgy, in Transylvania. After a heroic struggle, the fourth of Sophia’s sons, Charles Philip, had likewise fallen in battle against the Turks at Pristina, in Albania, almost exactly a year before Frederick Augustus. Charles Philip seems to have been his mother’s favourite boy—possibly because of a natural disfigurement (of the head) which had from the first aroused her loving pity; and the tragic details of his dying, covered with wounds, on the battlefield, went to her heart. She fell seriously ill, and even a visit to Carlsbad in the spring of the year failed completely to restore her to health. We may so far anticipate the chronological sequence of events as to note that, after the death of Frederick Augustus, the third brother, Maximilian William, who had at first acknowledged the principle of primogeniture, entered the lists against it. He was joined in his resistance by the fifth, Christian, who was likewise in the Imperial service, and who afterwards (in July, 1703), as Major-General in the Imperial army, met with his death by being drowned in the Danube near Ehingen. When the news of his death came, those around his mother feared for her health—as she could not find the relief of tears. In Maximilian’s quarrel, his mother’s sympathies were again on his side, though, to judge from passages in the correspondence of Sophia Dorothea, he was of a more or less flighty disposition; and, when his father had not unnaturally declined to pay him his appanage, she attempted to obtain some pecuniary support for him at the Danish or at the English Court. Like his brother, he took the officious Antony Ulric into his confidence, and communications were opened with Danckelmann, the powerful Minister of the Elector of Brandenburg, who, with the distinct purpose of thwarting the designed consolidation of the Celle-Hanover dominions, kept up the tension existing between his and the Hanoverian court, and that notwithstanding the marriage, in 1684, of the daughter of Ernest Augustus, Sophia Charlotte to the Electoral Prince—from 1688, Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg. A plot was now hatched, of which the precise object remained in some measure obscure, but as to whose progress the quick-witted Sophia Charlotte contrived to send sufficient information to her father. On December 5th, 1691, Prince Maximilian William was arrested at Hanover, together with the chief agents of his design; and one of these, the Master of the Hunt (_Oberjägermeister_), von Moltke, with whom Danckelmann had been in communication, had shortly afterwards to pay the penalty of death for the high treason laid to his charge. Prince Maximilian himself was allowed to depart unharmed, after renouncing all claims to the Succession, except in the case of his elder brother’s dying without leaving a son. Although he did not keep his oath very scrupulously, he refrained from any open violation of it during the lifetime of his father, expending his energy in the military service of Venice and of the Emperor. He commanded the first line of cavalry at Blenheim, and survived till 1726, having missed the reversion of the see of Osnabrück by a late conversion to the Church of Rome.[87] Earlier rumours of a change of faith on his part had sorely vexed his mother, to the unconcealed amusement of her niece, the Duchess of Orleans; but his letters to Sophia, and the references to him in hers to Leibniz, give a pleasing impression of his frank and open nature, although, impulsive as he was, he seems to have been deficient in filial piety as in other qualities showing moral depth.[88]

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Footnote 87:

Already, as a child of six, Maximilian (who seems to have been the
survivor of a pair of twins) had displayed an unusual piety, and kept
a prayer-book in his bed for matutinal use.

Footnote 88:

The Duchess of Orleans, who had been informed that a complaint had
been preferred to the Emperor by Maximilian, as to a sum of money
demanded by him from his mother, the Electress Sophia, not having been
sent to him by her, who had loved him so well, exclaims: ‘This is
abominable; this Prince can never meet with any good fortune either in
this world or in the next, after having done this abominable thing,
which I can never forgive him.’

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Sophia’s youngest son, Ernest Augustus, destined when the time came (1715) to succeed to the see of Osnabrück, formerly held by his father, and also to be created Duke of York and Albany, was still in his boyhood at the critical stage which we have now reached in the history of his House. His birth in 1674, which for a time endangered her life, had elicited from his mother the confession that she already had boys enough; and, inasmuch as there was some difficulty in finding a godfather for him as the latest-born of so large a family, his eldest brother George Lewis was called upon to undertake the responsibilities of the office. The special bond thus established between the two brothers held out firmly so long as their lives endured; indeed, the Duchess of Orleans regrets that, instead of waiting upon his mother, the Prince followed about his elder brother ‘like a spaniel’ (1707). While it is impossible not to respect the loyal devotion of the younger of the pair, the affectionate return made to it on the part of the elder, ‘serious’ as he always was in manner, should not be overlooked by those who desire to form a fair estimate of the character of George I. Ernest Augustus’ childhood was spent under his mother’s eye; and, in 1687, the good Duchess of Orleans undertook to introduce his elder brother Christian and himself at the French Court, where, for the better part of two years, the two Princes, and Ernest Augustus in particular, by his charming manners and quickness, did credit to their descent. In 1689, they started on the indispensable Italian tour; and, in 1693, Prince Ernest Augustus received the baptism of fire equally necessary to this masculine brood in the battle of Neerwinden (Landen), where three sons of the Duchess Sophia—George Lewis, Christian, and Ernest Augustus—were engaged. In August, 1714, the Duchess of Orleans makes a very curious remark concerning him, which suggests that there was a notion at the time of passing over the Electoral Prince (afterwards George II) in the English Succession.[89] The correspondence of Ernest Augustus, which covers the years 1703 to 1726, reveals a simple and soldier-like character, thoroughly loyal and singularly modest. His elder brother, King George I, actually died in his arms at Osnabrück, and Ernest Augustus, as Sir Henry Wotton might have written, ‘liked it not, and died,’ little more than a year later (August 14th, 1728).

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Footnote 89:

‘I do not know whether it is true, but it is said here’ [at
Versailles] ‘that the English are ready to have the Elector of
Brunswick for their King, but that they will make it a condition, that
the Electoral Prince shall never succeed him on the throne. Duke
Maximilian I do not know, but, between ourselves, I would rather it
were Duke Ernest Augustus than the Electoral Prince; for my cousin,
Duke Ernest Augustus, has a good ancestry on both sides and is of
wholly German descent, whereas the Electoral Prince has some very bad
ancestors, and is described to me as so mad that I have often heartily
pitied his wife; of Duke Ernest Augustus I have never heard anything
but praise, and I have therefore a hearty regard for him.’

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Of Sophia Charlotte, her parents’ only daughter, the ‘_Figuelotte_’ of a delightful babyhood, and during life the darling and in many respects the semblance of her mother, it will be more convenient to speak in our next chapter. Her youth had been happier than Sophia’s, from whom she had inherited, together with her black hair, to which her blue eyes offered a charming contrast, a rare healthiness of mind, as well as, seemingly, of body, inexhaustible high spirits, and a rapidity of apprehension which made her in her early girlhood a linguist such as her mother and her mother’s brothers and sisters had been in their generation. In 1679, she accompanied her mother on a visit to the French Court, where her natural charms, and above all the brightness of her intelligence, made so pleasing an impression that it was at the time thought likely that she might return thither as the bride of one of the Princes of the House of France. But at Hanover she soon seemed intent upon very different interests; and she had become the pupil of Leibniz before her destiny called her to give her hand to the widowed Electoral Prince Frederick of Brandenburg (September, 1684). ‘It is fortunate,’ wrote her mother, ‘that she does not care for externals.’ The parting went very near to the heart of the Duchess Sophia, who was now, more than ever, left alone to support the dynastic endeavours and suffer from the domestic troubles of the House of Hanover, while meeting the responsibilities of her own title to the English Succession.

IV

THE ELECTORAL HOUSE OF HANOVER
(HANOVER AND HERRENHAUSEN, 1688-1701)

None of the varied experiences through which Sophia had passed during a life of nearly sixty years, had either made her forget her English descent, or led her to regard English interests as alien to her own. During the reign of Charles II her personal recollections of his years of vagrancy could not but render her discreetly indisposed to keep up by letter any direct intercourse with her royal cousin; but she was not the less desirous of remaining in touch with the progress of events in her mother’s first and final home. After her brother Rupert had at last settled down in England, she expressed a wish that he should be made a peer, and thus be enabled to attend in Parliament and keep her informed of the course of public business. She was naturally much interested in the marriage, in 1677, of William Prince of Orange to the Duke of York’s elder daughter, the Princess Mary; and, in 1680, she had the satisfaction of welcoming to Hanover the Prince who had thus become closely connected with the English royal family, and of receiving his assurances of his anxiety to render some substantial service to her husband’s House. It has already been incidentally noted how, in 1681, her eldest son, George Lewis, had paid a visit to England, where he might, it was hoped, secure the hand of Mary’s younger sister, the Princess Anne. This scheme was favoured by the Prince of Orange, whose own marriage had remained childless, and who could not ignore the fact that the design for excluding his Roman Catholic father-in-law from the English Succession had already assumed definite shape. In 1685, after King Charles II had passed away, ‘unconcerned as became a good Christian’—or, in other words, after having received the last consolations of the Catholic faith—William expressed his conviction that Sophia would share both his sorrow for the late King’s death, and his joy at hearing of the unhindered accession of ‘_celluy d’apresent_.’ And King James II himself could assure her that he would always ‘continue the same good correspondence which she had with the late King his brother.’[90] James II, to judge from an extant series of letters to Sophia from his hand, proved as good as his word, and she answered him in the same spirit. A constant communication seems, moreover, to have been kept up between her and the English royal family, through the personal agency of the faithful Lord Craven, of whom in 1683 she writes as ‘at present my sole correspondent in England.’ James II had appointed him Lieutenant-General of the Forces, and he would have been quite ready, had it rested with him, to act a decisive part with his Coldstreams on the King’s behalf in the closing hours of his reign. Thus, when, in July, 1688, on the occasion of what ought to have been the happiest event of that reign—the birth of an heir to the throne—Sophia gave expression to her pleasure, the King wrote in return that he could have expected nothing less from her; ‘for beside our being so near related, you have always upon all occasion expresst a concerne for me of which you shall always find me very sensible.’ And, with the straightforwardness of character which was not less distinctive of her than was her intellectual _finesse_, she never, either by word or by deed, belied her goodwill to the unfortunate King, or allowed herself to be impressed by the _consensus_ between blatant prejudice and more or less wilful blindness that ‘doubted’ the genuineness of the Prince of Wales. She transmitted to the Emperor Leopold a letter in which King James had reproduced, for her benefit, the substance of the refutation of these calumnious doubts laid by him before his Privy Council; and, so late as 1704, she is found reproaching Leibniz for the courtier-like insinuations which he seems to have hazarded as to the Prince’s birth. Accordingly, at the time when the expedition of William of Orange was preparing, King James wrote to Sophia in a perfectly trustful tone; he had heard that, with the exception of her husband, all her Protestant neighbours had contributed to the armament; but, if the wind continued, he hoped nevertheless to be able to give a good account of it. As a matter of fact, Ernest Augustus maintained a neutral attitude so long as he could; and, so late as 1691, James II is again found applauding Sophia’s husband for declining to support the ‘vemper’ (William of Orange). Early in the next year, he continues to harp on the same string to her, while avowing his confidence in the continuance of her good wishes and requesting her to use no ceremony in writing to him. In 1693, Lord Dartmouth, whom Sophia received at Hanover with much distinction because of the kindness shown by his grandfather to her brothers Rupert and Maurice, was informed by her that she maintained a constant correspondence both with King James and with his daughter Queen Mary. On the death of Ernest Augustus, both King James and Queen Mary Beatrice warmly condoled with the widow, the former avowing his gratitude for all the marks of esteem and kindness which she had so frequently shown to him. It is interesting, too, to observe how Sophia, in conjunction with her second self, the Duchess of Orleans, used her best endeavours to make peace between King James and his eldest daughter, whose conduct towards him he pardonably misjudged, but in whose sincerity of soul a sure instinct led Sophia to place full trust. The two kinswomen had never met, when, in June, 1689, Queen Mary wrote to Sophia to complain of the harsh terms in which the Electress Sophia Charlotte of Brandenburg was reported to have spoken of her, and took occasion, with her usual candour, to dwell upon the conflict of feelings through which it was her duty to guide her conduct. An active correspondence ensued between the two women, who were truly worthy of one another, and who had, moreover, some experiences of wedlock in common; and from this it is clear that Queen Mary had, to her deep satisfaction, found in Sophia a friend ready to credit her with real filial affection for her father. In return she writes to the Duchess with a frankness declared by her to be indigenous to Holland, where she had herself so long lived and where Sophia had been born—each of them, as she says, having to bear her cross as best she could.

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Footnote 90:

It is interesting to find Queen Mary Beatrice thanking the Dowager
Duchess Benedicta at Hanover for her congratulations on the same
occasion, and referring to her constant interest in the royal family,
and to the links between them.

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But, though Sophia was never willing to let political considerations warp her natural affections or suppress her natural sense of justice, she would hardly, like Mary, have gone so far as to say of herself that she was unfitted for politics. The interests of her family and of the Hanoverian dynasty were steadily kept in view by her, and it was these, rather than any personal motives or wishes of her own, which determined her conduct at the critical epoch of the Revolution. The events that cost James II his throne, as speedily became clear to her, opened a new political future for herself and her descendants. Before the sailing of William’s expedition, when engagements in his favour were being entered into by the new Elector (Frederick William) of Brandenburg, the Landgrave (Charles) of Hesse-Cassel and the Duke of Celle, Burnet, as he tells us, sent, from the Hague, a messenger to the Duchess Sophia at Hanover. This messenger, a French refugee named de Boncour, was instructed to inform her of the design of the Prince of Orange, and of the certainty that, should the expedition prove successful, it would result in the perpetual exclusion of Papists from the English throne. If she could persuade her husband Ernest Augustus to sever his interests definitively from those of France, there was little doubt but that, after the two daughters of King James and the Prince of Orange, from none of whom any issue was surviving, the Succession would be lodged in her person and posterity. Burnet, who asserts that, in making this communication, he acted entirely on his own responsibility, though his action afterwards gained him William’s approval, adds that the message was warmly entertained by the Duchess Sophia, but that her husband let it pass by him. Ernest Augustus, not unnaturally, looked on the whole question with a self-control facilitated by the fact that, in any case, he could only benefit from the English Succession through his wife. Whatever may be the measure of truth in this story (which, curiously enough, is not to be found in Burnet’s _Original Memoirs_), it is extremely improbable that the Duchess Sophia should have allowed Burnet’s agent to ascertain her personal views concerning his suggestions. When the expedition was actually on its way, she wrote a letter to Leibniz from which nothing can be concluded as to her feelings in the matter, except that, as was but natural, she was very anxious to know what would come of it all, especially, as she writes in her customary half-ironical vein, ‘inasmuch as the words “for religion and liberty” are to be read on all the banners of the Prince of Orange.’ After the expedition had been carried to a successful issue, we find her addressing the same correspondent in much the same tone; and, though her letter of congratulation to William III is perfectly cordial and contains a remarkably _à propos_ reference to the Blatant Beast, she shows true dignity as a descendant of the Stewarts in avowing her sympathy for William’s dethroned predecessor. But with the new King’s reply, written from Hampton Court less than a fortnight after the Coronation, the relations of Sophia to himself, and to the throne occupied by him and his Queen, entered into a new stage, which may be called the business stage.

In this letter, King William, without any circumlocution, expresses his hope of finding good allies in the whole House of Lüneburg—that is to say, in Sophia’s husband, as well as in her brother-in-law, on whom he could already securely count. On the other hand, he points out that Sophia has a very real interest in the welfare of his three kingdoms, inasmuch as, to all appearance, one of her sons would some day reign over them. Although Sophia still wrote to Leibniz (then at Modena) in her habitual half-jesting tone as to the chances now opening to her, there can be no doubt that she is correctly stated to have at once taken action on King William’s hint, and to have requested several English politicians known to her to support the project of naming her in the Succession. The attempt made in this year (1689) to carry the project in question through Parliament proves that the appeal had not been made in vain.

On May 8th, 1689, the Bill of Rights and Succession came up for its third reading in the House of Commons of the Convention Parliament. While otherwise conforming to the Declaration accepted by William and Mary earlier in the year, and containing a clause excluding Papists, it made no provision for the event of the death without issue of Queen Mary, the Princess Anne, and King William, upon whose issue the Succession was, in the above order of sequence, settled. Such an event was at the time far from improbable; should it actually occur, there was considerable obscurity as to where the Crown would devolve. Would, for instance, an infant child of Popish parents be excluded;[91] and—a far more momentous question—would the exclusion extend to a Popish prince who might have been converted to Protestantism in time to succeed? Godolphin, a statesman not unnaturally suspected, at this season, of facing both ways, but perhaps more benignantly towards the _régime_ under which he had risen so high than towards that in which his own place was still doubtful, proposed a rider guarding the rights of ‘any Protestant prince or princess’ as to his or her future hereditary succession to the Crown. The proviso, in which, to the mover’s virtuous indignation, more than one member suspected the influence of a foreign Power, was rejected; but it is notable that, in the course of the debate, Colonel Herbert stated that he had ‘seen a letter of a sister of Prince Rupert’s, wherein she was complaining of great hardship done to her children, that they were not regarded in the entail of the crown;’ he therefore moved that they should be mentioned in the Bill. The proposal, which may confidently be ascribed to the action of Sophia adverted to above, fell to the ground, the judicious opinion of Paul Foley prevailing, that it was inexpedient suddenly to introduce any further limitation of the Succession; but it had not been made wholly in vain. When the Bill of Rights and Succession reached the House of Lords, after, on the motion of the Bishop of Salisbury (Burnet), a clause had been added extending the exclusion of Papists from the Succession to princes or princesses married to Papists, the same useful henchman, in accordance with the directions of the King, proposed, as a further addition to the Bill, the naming, in the Succession, of the Duchess of Hanover and her posterity. This amendment having been adopted by the Lords without debate (which could hardly have been the case had the ground not been prepared there) was carried down to the Commons, who, in a debate held on June 19th, treated it in a very different spirit. One member (Sir John Lowther) dwelt on the inexpediency of attempting to settle the Succession a long time beforehand, instead of following the example of Queen Elizabeth, who ‘was a wise Princess’; ‘this Princess of Hanover,’ he pointed out, might turn Catholic before the time for her succession had arrived. In the end, the amendment was rejected without a division, and, a conference between the two Houses having proved fruitless, the Bill was lost for the Session. The birth, on July 27th, of Princess Anne’s son (afterwards Duke of Gloucester) took away from the proposed addition its immediate significance; but, whatever may have been the cause of the failure to give effect to the King’s wish, the fault certainly did not lie with the Duchess Sophia. There were ‘heats’ enough in the politics of the day, and in the relations between Lords and Commons in particular, to explain the incident; nor is it surprising that, when Parliament reassembled in the autumn, the Bill of Rights and Succession which was now passed contained no mention of the Duchess of Hanover or her descendants. Burnet, ubiquitously assisting at every stage of every transaction with which, as narrated by himself, he had any connexion at all, says that by King William’s wish he wrote to Sophia an account of the entire affair. We know, however, that Lord Craven was sent to Hanover to explain it or to soften any unpleasantness in the effect which it might produce; and, in a letter to Sophia, dated December 10th, 1689, William himself explained to her that, though she had not been designated in the Bill, she might rest satisfied with things as they stood. She was Heiress Presumptive, in the event of claims beyond those named in the Bill coming into consideration; and the suggestion of Burnet was quite superfluous, that ‘if any in the line before her should pretend to change, as it was not very likely to happen, so it would not be easily believed.’ Sophia’s answer to King William, in which she cordially thanks him for his exertions on her behalf, closes the entire episode. She trusts that the expectation of heirs implied in the Bill may prove correct; as for herself, her life will be at an end before the matter is decided. She was, at the time, close upon the sixtieth year of her life; and a son had just been born to Princess Anne, who very possibly might yet have other children that would survive her.

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Footnote 91:

Macaulay, who mentions this doubt, illustrates it by the supposed case
of an infant prince of Savoy. (See below.)

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After this negative, but in no sense final, result had been reached, the Succession question remained in abeyance for something like eleven years. It accords neither with the circumstances of the situation nor with the character of Sophia, to represent her as during this long interval sleeplessly intent upon an issue so remote, so precarious, and so unlikely to prove, in the strictest sense, personal to herself. But, on the one hand, her and her family’s interest in the Succession question had once for all been brought directly home to her; and, on the other, she had had reason to appreciate the _bona fides_ and the genuine goodwill towards her own contingent claim exhibited by King William III. Already in 1689, primarily with a view to the restoration of amity between Denmark and Holstein-Gottorp, Sir William Dutton Colt was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Brunswick-Lüneburg Courts, being also accredited to Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Hesse-Cassel; and in 1692 he was further formally instructed to treat for the entry of the Dukes of Celle and Hanover into the Grand Alliance.[92] He appears to have contrived to gain the good graces of the ducal families both at Hanover and at Celle, and in 1693 he reports that the Platens were jealous of his favour with the ‘Electrisse’;[93] for Sophia and Eleonora were godmothers to his daughter, and bestowed upon her their united names. The personal relations between Sophia and the King and Queen of England at the same time grew more and more cordial. William, though not as a rule inclined to sentiment, early in 1691 condoled with Sophia on the death, at the close of the previous year, of her son Frederick Augustus, for whom he had cherished ‘_une amitié toute particulière_’; and early in the following year Queen Mary delicately expressed her regret at Sophia’s fresh family troubles (the death of her son Charles Philip, and perhaps the catastrophe of his brother Maximilian). These kindly feelings combined with political motives to induce King William to contribute his good offices for bringing to a successful end, in the same year (1692), the endeavours to which, as we shall see immediately, the main political energy of the House of Hanover had long been devoted—for the attainment of the Electoral dignity. He had his reward when, as part of the bargain between Ernest Augustus and the Emperor Leopold, the House of Hanover definitively threw in its lot with the interests of the Empire and the cause of the Grand Alliance. On Sir William Colt’s death in the following year (1693), a new English Minister Plenipotentiary to the Courts of Celle and Hanover was appointed in the person of James Cressett,[94] who, though at first he represents the Courts to which he was accredited as having ‘gaped upon him like roaring lions’ (not feeling quite certain about the British Parliament’s earnestness in the War), soon contrived to place himself on a footing of intimacy there. Leibniz speedily fell into a correspondence with him about the lead produce of the Harz as compared with that of the English mines. But less academic matters also occupied the attention of the new envoy; for, in 1692, two treaties had been concluded between the Ducal Government and those of England and the United Provinces, according to which Hanover was to furnish a force of 7,000 men, and the two maritime Powers were to pay respectively 20,000 and 10,000 dollars a month for their support, besides defraying two-thirds of the cost of their rations and forage. In December, 1693, these subsidy treaties were discussed in the House of Commons, and though the ‘Duke of Hanover’ was praised as a loyal ally, objection was taken to the payment for bread and forage, on the ground that he might well pay a larger proportion, ‘now that he is Ninth Elector.’ In return, it was pointed out that, on the one hand, the Elector had to pay his quota to the Empire, and that, on the other, if these troops were not paid by England, they must be by France—a comment not altogether unwarranted by the changes of Hanoverian policy. Cressett remained the diplomatic representative of Great Britain at the Lüneburg Courts till 1703.[95]

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Footnote 92:

_Notes on the Diplomatic Relations between England and Germany_, ed.
C. H. Firth: _List of Diplomatic Representatives and Agents, England
and North Germany, 1689-1727_, contributed by J. F. Chance, Oxford,
1907.

Footnote 93:

As Colt died in 1693 (at Heilbronn), on a mission on which he was sent
to treat with the Elector of Saxony, to bring him into the Grand
Alliance, I cannot say what was the nature of the series of holograph
letters from the Electress Sophia to Lady Colt, extending from 1681
(?) to 1714, reported in the _Times_ of April 14th, 1905, as sold by
auction.

Footnote 94:

There seems good reason for believing that the foreign lady, named
Louise-Marie, married by Cressett in 1704, about the close of his
residence at the Court of Celle, was a kinswoman of the Duchess
Eleonora. Cf., as to a survival of this connexion with the dynasty, H.
Walpole’s _Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George II_
(1822), Vol. i. p. 79.

Footnote 95:

In 1700 he was also accredited to Berlin, where already in 1702 Queen
Sophia Charlotte thought him a trifle _passé_.

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A time of trouble was imminent for the domestic peace of the House of Hanover, and Sophia, as was noted above, had not long before suffered a severe shock in both mind and body by the death of her son Charles Philip, soon followed by that of his brother Frederick Augustus. In the spring of 1694 she was again seriously ill. Cressett, while noting that ‘her credit is not good in affairs,’ says that he ‘should be heartily sorry to lose her, for she loves England.’ She recovered her strength at Wiesbaden, and we find the good Queen Mary returning fervent thanks for her cousin’s restoration to her usual health. She needed all her strength to carry her through the painful experiences awaiting the Electoral family—the tragedy of Sophia Dorothea, and, after this, the long illness and death of the Elector Ernest Augustus. Amidst such anxieties we may rest assured that, even had intrigue and manœuvring suited her disposition, she would have had little leisure for engaging in them. Her attitude during this period towards the Succession question, which few events on the great political theatre were of a nature to affect (for even Queen Mary’s death in 1696 made no material change in the situation), was one of quietude—no doubt a vigilant quietude. In 1694, Lord Lexington, a diplomatist whom William III had good reason for trusting, and who, together with a Dutch plenipotentiary, had mediated in the quarrel between Denmark and the Brunswick-Lüneburg Dukes concerning the Lauenburg Succession, passed through Hanover on his way to his post at Vienna. And, in the following year, we find Leibniz discussing with George Stepney, the brilliant English diplomatist who, in 1693, was suddenly summoned into prominent activity in several of the German Courts, the applicability of the exclusion clause in the Bill of Rights to children, whether Protestants or Papists, born of papistical parents. William III has been said to have formed the plan of placing in the Succession the Prince expected to be born to Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, by his Duchess Anna Maria, and of educating him for the purpose in England as a Protestant. The Duchess Anna Maria was a daughter of the Duchess Henrietta of Orleans, and thus a grand-daughter of King Charles I; so that on the ground of descent pure and simple she would have a claim to the English Succession before the children of the Queen of Bohemia. But there is no proof of any such design, or of any response to any suggestion of the kind on the part of the Duke of Savoy; and, at the most, the idea was quite transitory. If any hopes had been raised as to William’s intentions, Victor Amadeus effectively extinguished them by abandoning the Grand Alliance in 1696.[96] Of course, it by no means follows from the fact that Leibniz was, throughout, Sophia’s chief counsellor with regard to the Succession, either that she uniformly took his advice, or that she was always desirous of being privy to the efforts in furtherance of the claims of herself and her descendants, which, at times with _trop de zèle_, came from his indefatigable publicistic pen. But it remains at all events a curious coincidence that, soon after the House of Savoy had, as it were, fallen out of the running, William III’s interest in the House of Hanover—and perhaps in its claims concerning the Succession—should appear to have revived. We shall return to this date a little later; for the moment we must make some reference to matters which seemed of far more importance to the House of Hanover than the remote chances of the English Succession.

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Footnote 96:

In 1701, however, the Duchess Anna Maria protested against the Act of
Settlement, which limited the Succession to Sophia and her issue,
being Protestants. For an account of the reasons of Victor Amadeus’
original estrangement from France, and a searching analysis of his
character, see a remarkable _Relation de la Cour de Savoie_, July
15th, 1692, in Appendix to G. de Léris, _La Princesse de Virrue_ [for
a time the Duke’s mistress _et la Cour de Victor Amad. de Savoie_,
Paris, 1881, pp. 238-9.]

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The House of Hanover, apart from the interest which it had shown in the military system of the Empire,[97] had a very direct share in causing the declaration of war against that Empire, by which, in September, 1688, at the very time when he was promising assistance to James II against the expedition of William of Orange, Louis XIV laid bare his own designs against the peace of Europe. According to the manifesto of the King of France, the successes of the Imperial arms in the east had obliged him to protect his western frontier by crossing it; and, a little before or after this declaration, his armies had entered the Netherlands, and had invaded the Palatinate to enforce the claims shamelessly put forward by him in the name of the innocent Duchess of Orleans. In the Imperial advance in Hungary, and in the simultaneous reconquest of the Morea on behalf of the Venetian Republic, Hanoverian troops had borne a most distinguished part. It was therefore not unfitting that the counter-manifesto, in which the glove hurled down by Louis XIV was taken up, should have been composed by Leibniz, whose publicistic pen was at the disposal of the House of Hanover. And among the German princes who, in the October of this eventful year, at the instigation of the new Elector of Brandenburg, Ernest Augustus of Hanover’s son-in-law, and through the exertions of his minister, Paul von Fuchs, met at Magdeburg to agree upon joint action against the assailant of the Empire, none was more prompt, either in promise or in action, than Ernest Augustus himself. While the Brandenburg troops covered the Lower Rhine, the Hanoverian, Saxon, and Hessian secured the line of the Main, by the occupation of Frankfort (November, 1688). In May, 1689, the Grand Alliance was concluded, and though the Palatinate could not be preserved from devastation, Frankfort was once more saved, being occupied by a Hanoverian force of 8,000 men under Duke Ernest Augustus and his eldest son, George Lewis. Under the command of their Hereditary Prince, of whom there remains at least one letter written, in the course of the campaign, with an afflatus of humour proving that his heart was in active warfare, the Hanoverians forced Marshal Boufleurs to relinquish the investment of Coblenz, and materially contributed to the recovery of Mainz (September 1st, 1689). They were then transferred to the Low Countries, where a series of campaigns was to ensue, contemporaneous with the continuance of the conflict with the Turks. We have seen how the sacrifices made by the House of Hanover within a twelvemonth (January, 1690, to January, 1691) included the heroic death of Prince Charles Philip in Albania, and that of his brother Frederick Augustus, hardly more than a boy in years, in Transylvania. It neither was, nor could be expected to be, the intention of Ernest Augustus, that his House, which had served the Empire so well in both west and east, should have so served it without reward. And the recompense desired by him—one which, while conferring upon himself, as the head of the House of Hanover, the highest dignity to which, as an Estate of the Empire, he could, within its boundaries, lay claim, would at the same time reflect lustre upon the Brunswick-Lüneburg line, whose future he had come to regard as absorbed in that of its Hanoverian branch—could be no other than the creation of a Ninth, that is to say Hanoverian, Electorate.

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Footnote 97:

See as to F. C. von Platen’s mission on the subject in December, 1686,
R. Fester, _Die Augsburger Allianz_, pp. 124 _sqq._, 167 _sqq._

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The desire or demand for this dignity was neither a sudden nor even a new one. It had been in the mind both of Duke John Frederick and of his librarian, Leibniz, though the latter, while giving utterance to it in his _Cæsarinus Fürstenerius_ (1677), had at the same time delivered himself of an elaborate protest against the preeminence in rights and dignity claimed by the Electors over the other Princes of the Empire. Such a protest was of course quite compatible with lending a willing ear to any suggestion of conferring the Electoral dignity upon a representative branch of the Brunswick-Lüneburg line itself. And suggestions of the kind were inevitable, if only from the obvious point of view that the Peace of Westphalia had left the number of Protestant Electors in a disproportion of three to five, as against their Catholic colleagues. The Great Elector of Brandenburg, in the varying combinations of whose policy a single-minded care for the Protestant interest was perhaps the most constant factor, had already during the peace negotiations at Nimeguen expressed his willingness to assist in bringing about the admission into the Electoral College of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg—probably at that time in the person of George William of Celle, as Ernest Augustus was still merely Bishop of Osnabrück. But the argument from the Protestant point of view became a much stronger one, when, in 1685, the death of the last Elector Palatine of the Simmern line (Sophia’s nephew Charles) transferred the Eighth Electorate to the Catholic (Neuburg) line. Nor should it be forgotten that, although the political jealousy between the Houses of Brandenburg and Brunswick-Lüneburg had never ceased to exist and to operate, and although the advantage of balancing the growing power and influence of the former, by adding to the _prestige_ of the latter, was very distinctly perceived at Vienna, the two Houses were since 1684 closely linked together by intermarriage. Sophia Charlotte, the new Electoral Princess (from 1688 Electress) of Brandenburg, was never mistress of the situation at Berlin, and, unlike her mother, gave to matters political only just so much attention as seemed absolutely necessary. On the other hand, Hanoverian interests could not but benefit from the presence at the Brandenburg Court of a princess whose personality was not one to be ignored, and who had in her mother a monitress to whom the constant affection between them always made her ready to listen. And the friend whom both mother and daughter trusted above all others as an adviser, had in 1685 begun to devote his powers of argument to the cause which, to the head of the House of Hanover, had become of paramount importance.