Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover, volume 1 (of 2)

With the return of Sophia Dorothea to Hanover, her enemies appear to have commenced more actively their operations against her. George Louis was languidly amusing himself with Ermengarda von der Schulenburg and their little daughter Petronilla Melusina. The Countess von Platen was in a state of irritability at the presence of Sophia Dorothea and the absence of Königsmark. The last-mentioned person had, in his wide-spread adoration, offered a portion of his homage to both the countess and her daughter. The elder lady, while accepting as much of the incense for herself as was safe to inhale, endeavoured to secure the count as a husband for her daughter. Her failure only increased her bitterness against the count, and by no means lent less asperity to the sentiment with which she viewed Sophia Dorothea. She was, no doubt, the chief cause, primarily and approximate, of the ruin which fell upon both.

It was not merely the absence of Königsmark, who was on a visit to the riotous court of Augustus of Saxony, which had scared her spirit; the reports which were made to her of his conversation there gave fierceness to her resentment, and called into existence that desire of vengeance which she accomplished, but without profiting by the wickedness.

There was no more welcome guest at Dresden than Königsmark. An individual, so gallant of bearing, handsome of feature, easy of principle, and lively of speech, was sure to be warmly welcomed at that dissolute court. He played deeply, and whatever sums he might lose, he never lost his temper. He drank as deeply as he played, and he then became as loquacious as Cassio, but more given to slander. He spoke ill of others out of mere thoughtlessness, or at times out of mere vanity. He possessed not what Swift calls the ‘lower prudence’ of discretion. His vanity, and the stories to which it prompted him, seemed to amuse and interest the idle and scandalous court where he was so welcome a guest.

He kept the illustriously wicked company there in an uninterrupted ecstacy by the tales he told, and the point he gave to them, of the chief personages of the Court of Hanover. He retailed anecdotes of the Elector and his son, George Louis, and warmly-tinted stories of the shameless mistresses of that exemplary parent, and no less exemplary child. He did not spare even the Electress Sophia; but she was, after all, too respectable for Königsmark to be able to make of her a subject of ridicule. This subject he found in ladies of smaller virtue and less merit generally. But every word he uttered, in sarcastic description of the life, character, and behaviour of the favourites of the Elector of Hanover and his son, found its way, with no loss of pungency on the road, to the ears of those persons whom the report was most likely to offend. His warm advocacy of Sophia Dorothea, expressed at the table of Augustus of Saxony, was only an additional offence; and George Louis was taught to think that Count Königsmark had no right to ask, with Pierre, ‘May not a man wish his friend’s wife well, and no harm done?’

The count returned to Hanover soon after Sophia Dorothea had arrived there, subsequent to her painful visit to the little court of her ducal parents at Zell. Königsmark, who had entered the Saxon service, returned to Hanover to complete the form of withdrawal from service in the Hanoverian army. It is alleged that Sophia Dorothea, otherwise friendless, entreated him to procure her an asylum, or to protect her in her flight to the court of her kinsman, Duke Anton Ulrich, at Wolfenbüttel. The duke is reported to have been willing to receive her. Other reports state that the princess was more than willing to fly with Königsmark to Paris! Out of all such rumours there is this certainty, that on Sunday, the 1st of July 1694 (George Louis being then in Berlin), Königsmark found a letter in pencil on a table in the sitting-room of his house in Hanover. It was to this effect: ‘To-night, after ten o’clock, the Princess Sophia Dorothea will expect Count Königsmark.’ He recognised the hand of the princess. All that afternoon he was busy writing. His secretary and servants thought his manner strange. He went out soon after ten, unattended. He was in a light, simple, summer-dress. He went on his way to the palace, crossed the threshold, and never was seen outside it again.

The note was a forged document, confessedly by the Countess von Platen, when confession came too late for the repair of evil which could not be undone. Nevertheless, the count, on presenting himself to Mademoiselle Knesebeck, the lady of honour to the princess, was admitted to the presence of the latter. This indiscreet step was productive of terrible consequences to all the three who were present. The count, on being asked to explain the reason of his seeking an interview with the princess at an advanced hour of the evening, produced the note of invitation, which Sophia Dorothea at once pronounced to be a forgery. Had they then separated little of ill consequence might have followed. The most discreet of the three, and the most perplexed at the ‘situation,’ was the lady of honour. The ‘Memoirs’ which bear her name, and which describe this scene, present to us a woman of some weakness, yet one not wanting in discernment.

Sophia Dorothea, it would seem, could dwell upon no subject but that of her domestic troubles, the cruel neglect of her husband, and her desire to find somewhere the refuge from persecution which had been denied to her in her old home at Zell. More dangerous topics could not have been treated by two such persons. The count, it is affirmed, was the first to suggest that Paris would afford her such a refuge, and that he should be but too happy to be permitted to give her such protection as she could derive from his escort thither. This was probably rather hinted than suggested; but however that may be, only one course should have followed even a distant hint leading to so unwarrantable an end. The interview should have been brought to a close. It was still continued, nevertheless, to the annoyance, if not scandal, of the faithful Knesebeck, whose fears may have received some little solace on hearing her mistress reiterate her desire to find at least a temporary home at the court of her cousin, Duke Anton Ulrich of Wolfenbüttel.

While this discussion was proceeding, the Countess von Platen was by no means idle. She had watched the count to the bower into which she had sent him by the employment of a false lure, and she thereupon hastened to the Elector to communicate what she termed her discovery. Ernest Augustus, albeit waxing old, was by no means infirm of judgment. If Königsmark was then in the chamber of his daughter-in-law, he refused to see in the fact anything more serious than its own impropriety. That, however, was crime enough to warrant the arrest which the countess solicited. The old Elector yielded to all she asked, except credence of her assurance that Sophia Dorothea must be as guilty as Königsmark was presuming. He would consent to nothing further than the arrest of him who was guilty of the presumption; and the method of this arrest he left to the conduct of the countess, who urgently solicited it as a favour, and with solicitation of such earnestness that the old Elector affected to be jealous of the interest she took in such a case, and added playfully the expression of his opinion, that, angry as she seemed to be with the count, he was too handsome a man to be likely to meet with ill-treatment at her hands.

Armed with this permission, she proceeded to the body of soldiers or watch for the night, and exhibiting her written warrant for what she demanded, requested that a guard might be given to her, for a purpose which she would explain to them. Some four or five men of this household body were told off, and these were conducted by her to a large apartment, called the Hall of Knights, through which Königsmark must pass, as he had not yet quitted the princess’s chamber.

They were then informed that their office was to arrest a criminal, whose person was described to them, of whose safe custody the Elector was so desirous that he would rather that such criminal should be slain than that he should escape. They were accordingly instructed to use their weapons if he should resist; and as their courage had been heightened by the double bribe of much wine and a shower of gold pieces, they expressed their willingness to execute her bidding, and only too well showed by their subsequent act the sincerity of their expression.

At length Königsmark appeared, coming from the princess’s apartment. It was now midnight. He entered the Ritter Hall, unsuspecting the fate before him. In this hall was a huge, square, ponderous stove, looking like a mausoleum, silent and cold. It reached from floor to roof, and, hidden by one of its sides, the guard awaited the coming of the count. He approached the spot, passed it, was seized from behind, and he immediately drew his sword to defend himself from attack. His enemies gave him but scant opportunity to assail them in his own defence, and after a few wild passes with his weapon, he was struck down by the spear, or old-fashioned battle-axe, of one of the guards, and when he fell there were three wounds in him, out of any one of which life might find passage.

On feeling himself grow faint, he—and in this case, like a true and gallant man—thought of the lady and her reputation. The last words he uttered were, ‘Spare the innocent princess!’ soon after which he expired; but not before, as is reported by those who love to dwell minutely on subjects of horror, not before the Countess von Platen had set her foot triumphantly upon his bloody face.

Such is the German detail of this assassination. It is added, that it gave extreme annoyance to the Elector, to whom it was immediately communicated; that the body was forthwith consigned to a secure resting-place, and covered with lime; and that the whole bloody drama was enacted without any one being aware of what was going on, save the actors themselves.

In Cramer’s ‘Memoirs of the Countess of Königsmark,’ the fate of the count is told upon the alleged evidence of a so-called eye-witness. It differs in several respects from other accounts, but is clear and simple in its details. It is to the following effect:—

‘Bernhard Zayer, a native of Heidelberg, in the Palatinate, a wax-image maker and artist in lacquer-work, was engaged by the Electoral Princess to teach her his art. Being, on this account, continually in the princess’s apartment, he had frequently seen Count Königsmark there, who looked on while the princess worked. He once learned in confidence, from the Electoral Princess’s groom of the chambers, that the Electoral Prince was displeased about the count, and had sworn to break his neck, which Bernhard revealed to the princess, who answered:—“Let them attack Königsmark: he knows how to defend himself.” Some time afterwards there was an opera, but the princess was unwell and kept her bed. The opera began, and as the count was absent as well as the princess, first a page and then the hoff-fourier were sent out for intelligence. The hoff-fourier came back running, and whispered to the Electoral Prince, and then to his highness the Elector. But the Electoral Prince went away from the opera with the hoff-fourier. Now Bernhard saw all this and knew what it meant, and as he knew the count was with the princess, he left the opera secretly, to warn her; and as he went in at the door, the other door was opened, and two masked persons rushed in, one exclaiming, “So! then I find you!” The count, who was sitting on the bed, with his back to the door by which the two entered, started up, and whipped out his sword, saying, “Who can say anything unbecoming of me?” The princess, clasping her hands, said “I, a princess, am I not allowed to converse with a gentleman?” But the masks, without listening to reason, slashed and stabbed away at the count. But he pressed so upon both, that the Electoral Prince unmasked, and begged for his life, while the hoff-fourier came behind the count, and run him through between the ribs with his sword, so that he fell, saying, “You are murderers, before God and man, who do me wrong!” But they both of them gave him more wounds, so that he lay as dead. Bernhard, seeing all this, hid himself behind the door of the other room.’

Bernhard was subsequently sent by the princess to spy out what they would do with Königsmark.

‘When the count was in the vault, he came a little to himself, and spoke:—“You take a guiltless man’s life. On that I’ll die, but do not let me perish like a dog, in my blood and my sins. Grant me a priest, for my soul’s sake.” Then the Electoral Prince went out, and the fourier remained alone with him. Then was a strange parson fetched, and a strange executioner, and the fourier fetched a great chair. And when the count had confessed, he was so weak that three or four of them lifted him into the chair; and there in the prince’s presence was his head laid at his feet. And they had tools with them, and they dug a hole in the right corner of the vault, and there they laid him, and there he must be to be found. When all was over, this Bernhard slipped away from the castle; and indeed Counsellor Lucius, who was a friend of the princess’s, sent him some of his livery to save him; for they sought him in all corners, because they had seen him in the room during the affray.... And what Bernhard Zayer saw in the vault, he saw through a crack.’

Clear as this narrative is in its details, it is contradictory and rests on small basis of truth. The Electoral Prince was undoubtedly absent on the night Königsmark was murdered.

The Countess Aurora of Königsmark has left a statement of her brother’s intimacy with the princess, in which the innocence of the latter is maintained, but his imprudence acknowledged. The statement referred to explains the guilty nature of the intercourse kept up between Königsmark and the Countess von Platen. It is written in terms of extreme indelicacy. We may add that the faithful von Knesebeck, on whose character no one ever cast an imputation, in her examination before the judges, argued the innocence of her accused mistress upon grounds the nature of which cannot even be alluded to. The princess, it is clear, had urged Königsmark to renew his interrupted intrigue with von Platen, out of dread that the latter, taking the princess as the cause of the intercourse having been broken off, should work a revenge, which she did not hesitate to menace, upon the princess herself.

The details of all the stories are marked by great improbability, and they have not been substantiated by the alleged death-bed confessions of the Countess von Platen, and Baumain, one of the guards—the two criminals having, without so intending it, confessed to the same clergyman, a minister named Kramer! Though these confessions are spoken of, and are even cited by German authors, their authenticity cannot be warranted. At all events, there is an English version of the details of this murder given by Horace Walpole; and as that lively writer founded his lugubrious details upon authority which he deemed could not be gainsaid, they may fairly find a place, by way of supplement to the foreign version.

‘Königsmark’s vanity,’ says Walpole, ‘the beauty of the Electoral Princess, and the neglect under which he found her, encouraged his presumptions to make his addresses to her, not covertly, and she, though believed not to have transgressed her duty, did receive them too indiscreetly. The old Elector flamed at the insolence of so stigmatised a pretender, and ordered him to quit his dominions the next day. This princess, surrounded by women too closely connected with her husband and consequently enemies of the lady they injured, was persuaded by them to suffer the count to kiss her hand, before his abrupt departure; and he was actually introduced by them into her bedchamber the next morning before she rose. From that moment he disappeared, nor was it known what became of him, till on the death of George I., on his son, the new King’s first journey to Hanover, some alterations in the palace being ordered by him, the body of Königsmark was discovered under the floor of the Electoral Princess’s dressing-room—the count having probably been strangled there, the instant he left her, and his body secreted. The discovery was hushed up. George II. (the son of Sophia Dorothea) entrusted the secret to his wife, Queen Caroline, who told it to my father; but the King was too tender of the honour of his mother to utter it to his mistress; nor did Lady Suffolk ever hear of it, till I informed her of it several years afterwards. The disappearance of the count made his murder suspected, and various reports of the discovery of his body have of late years been spread, but not with the authentic circumstances.’

To turn to the German sources of information: we are told by these, that after the departure of Königsmark from the chamber of the princess, she was engaged in arranging her papers, and in securing her jewels, preparatory, as she hoped, to her anticipated removal to the Court of Wolfenbüttel. Königsmark must have been murdered and the body made away with silently and swiftly, for not a dweller in the palace was disturbed by the doing of this bloody deed. All signs of its having been done had been so effaced that no trace of it was left to attract notice in the early morning. On that next morning the count’s servants were not troubled at his absence; such an occurrence was not unusual. When it was prolonged and enquiry became necessary, nothing could be learnt of him. Every soul in the palace was silent, designedly or through ignorance. Rumour, of course, was busy and full of confidence in what it put forth. George Louis himself said that the gay count would reappear, perhaps, when least expected. The tremendous secret was faithfully kept by the few who knew the truth; and when speculation was busiest as to the count’s whereabout, there was probably no atom of his body left, if it be true that it had been cast into a drain and had been consumed in slack-lime.

The princess was, for a time, kept in ignorance of the count’s assassination; but she was perplexed by his disappearance, and alarmed when she heard that all his papers had been seized and conveyed to the Elector for his examination. Some notes had passed between them: and, innocent as they were, she felt annoyed at the thought that their existence should be known, still more that they should be perused. To their most innocent expressions the Countess von Platen, who examined them with the Elector, gave a most guilty interpretation; and she so wrought upon Ernest Augustus, that he commissioned no less a person than the Count von Platen to interrogate the princess on the subject. She did not lack spirit; and when the coarse-minded count began to put coarse questions to her, as to the degree of intercourse which had existed between herself and the count, she spiritedly remarked that he appeared to imagine that he was examining into the conduct of his own wife; a thrust which he repaid by bluntly informing her that whatever intercourse may have existed, it would never be renewed, seeing that sure intelligence had been received of Königsmark’s death.

Sophia Dorothea, shocked at this information, and at the manner in which it was conveyed, had no friend in whom she could repose confidence but her faithful lady-in-waiting, Fräulein von Knesebeck. The princess could have had no more ardent defender than this worthy attendant. But the assertions made by the latter, in favour of the mistress whom she loved, were not at all to the taste of the enemies of that mistress, and the speedy result was, that Fräulein von Knesebeck was arrested and carried away to the castle of Schartzfeld in the Hartz. She was there kept in confinement many years; but she ultimately escaped so cleverly through the roof, by the help of a tiler, or a friend in the likeness of a tiler, that the credit of the success of the attempt was given by the governor of the gaol to the demons of the adjacent mountains. She subsequently became lady-in-waiting to Sophia Dorothea’s daughter.

Sophia Dorothea had now but one immediate earnest wish, namely, to retire from Hanover. Already the subject of a divorce had been mooted, but the Elector being somewhat fearful that a divorce might affect his son’s succession to his wife’s inheritance, and even obstruct the union of Zell with Hanover, an endeavour was made to reconcile the antagonistic spouses, and to bury past dissensions in oblivion.

It was previous to this attempt being entered upon, and perhaps because it was contemplated, that the princess voluntarily underwent a very solemn ordeal. The ceremony was as public as it could be rendered by the presence of part of the Electoral family and the great official dignitaries of the church and government. Before them Sophia Dorothea partook of the sacrament, and then made solemn protestation of her innocence, and of her unspotted faith towards the Electoral Prince, her husband. At the termination of this ceremony she was insulted by an incredulous smile which she saw upon the face of Count von Platen; whereat the natural woman was moved within her to ask him if his own excellent wife could take the same oath, in attestation of her unbroken faithfulness to him!

The strange essay at reconciliation was marred by an attempt made to induce the Electoral Princess to confess that she had been guilty of sins of disobedience towards the expressed will of her consort. All endeavour in this direction was fruitless; and though grave men made it, it shows how very little they comprehended their delicate mission. The princess remained fixed in her desire to withdraw from Hanover; but when she was informed of the wound this would be to the feelings of the Elector and Electress, and that George Louis himself was heartily averse to it, she began to waver, and applied to her friends at Zell, among others to Bernstorf, the Hanoverian minister there, asking for counsel in this her great need.

Bernstorf, an ally of the von Platens, secretly advised her to insist upon leaving Hanover. He assured her, pledging his word for what he said, that she would find a happy asylum at Zell; that even her father, so long estranged from her, would receive her with open arms; and that in the adoption of such a step alone could she hope for happiness and peace during the remainder of her life.

She was as untruthfully served by some of the ladies of her circle, who, while professing friendship and fidelity, were really the spies of her husband and her husband’s mistress. They were of that class of women who were especially bred for courts and court intrigues, and whose hopes of fortune rested upon their doing credit to their education.

As the princess not merely insisted upon quitting Hanover, but firmly refused to acknowledge that she had been guilty of any wrong to her most guilty husband, a course was adopted by her enemies which, they considered, would not merely punish her, but would transfer her possessions to her consort, without affecting the long projected union of Zell, after the duke’s death, with the territory of Hanover. An accusation of adultery, even if it could be sustained, of which there was not the shadow of a chance, might, if carried out and followed by a divorce, in some way affect the transfer of a dominion to Hanover, which transfer rested partly on the rights of the wife of the Electoral Prince. A divorce might destroy the ex-husband’s claims; but he was well-provided with lawyers to watch and guard the case to an ultimate conclusion in his favour.

A Consistorial Court was formed, of a strangely mixed character, for it consisted of four ecclesiastical lawyers and four civil authorities of Hanover and Zell. It had no other authority to warrant its proceedings than the command or sanction of the Elector, and the consent of the Duke of Zell, whose ill-feeling towards his child seemed to increase daily. The only charge laid against the princess before this anomalous court was one of incompatibility of temper, added to some little failings of character; not the most distant allusion to serious guilt with Königsmark, or any one else, was made. His name was never once mentioned. Her consent to live again in Hanover and let by-gones be by-gones was indignantly refused by her. She would never, she protested, live again among people who had murdered the only man in the world who loved her well enough to be a friend to her who was otherwise friendless. Her passionate tears flowed abundantly; Fräulein von Knesebeck states that whenever the mysterious fate of Königsmark was referred to, the princess’s grief was so violent that it might almost lead those who witnessed it to suspect that she took too great an interest in the man made away with almost at her chamber-door.

The court affected to attempt an adjustment of the matter; but as the attempt was always based on another to drag from the princess a confession of her having, wittingly or unwittingly, given cause of offence to her husband, she continued firmly to refuse to place her consort in the right by doing herself and her cause extremest wrong.

In the meantime, during an adjournment of the court, she withdrew to Lauenau. She was prohibited from repairing to Zell, but there was no longer any opposition made to her leaving the capital of the Electorate. She was, however, strictly prohibited from taking her children with her. Her parting from these was as painful a scene as can well be imagined, for she is said to have felt that she would never again be united with them. Her son, George Augustus, was then ten years of age; her daughter, Sophia, was still younger. The homage of these children was rendered to their mother long after their hearts had ceased to pay any to their father beyond a mere conventional respect.

In her temporary retirement at Lauenau, she was permitted to enjoy very little repose. The friends of the Electoral Prince seem to have been anxious lest she should publish more than was yet known of the details of his private life. This fear alone can account for their anxiety, or professed anxiety, for a reconciliation. The lawyers, singly or in couples, and now and then a leash of them together, went down to Lauenau to hold conference with her. They assailed her socially, scripturally, legally; they pointed out how salubrious was the discipline which subjected a wife to confess her faults. They read to her whole chapters from Corinthians, on the duties of married ladies, and asked her if she could be so obstinate and unorthodox as to disregard the injunctions of St. Paul. Finally, they quoted codes and pandects, to prove that a sentence might be pronounced against her under contumacy, and concluded by recommending her to trust to the mercy of the Crown Prince, if she would but cast herself upon his honour.

They were grave men; sage, learned, experienced men; crafty, cunning, far-seeing men; in all the circles of the empire men were not to be found more skilled in surmounting difficulties than these indefatigable men, who were all foiled by the simplicity and firmness of a mere child. ‘If I am guilty,’ said she, ‘I am unworthy of the prince: if I am innocent, he is unworthy of me!’

Here was a conclusion with which she utterly confounded the sages. They could not gainsay it, nor refute the logic by which it was arrived at, and which gave it force. They were ‘perplexed in the extreme,’ but neither social experience, nor scriptural reading, nor legal knowledge afforded them weapons wherewith to beat down the simple defences behind which the princess had entrenched herself. They tried repeatedly, but tried in vain. At the end of every trial she slowly and calmly enunciated the same reply:—‘If I am guilty I am unworthy of him: if I am innocent, he is unworthy of me!’

From this text she would not depart; nor could all the chicanery of all the courts of Germany move her. ‘At least,’ said the luminaries of the law, as they took their way homewards, re infecta, ‘at least this woman may, of a surety, be convicted of obstinacy.’ We always stigmatise as obstinate those whom we cannot convince. It is the only, and the poor, triumph of the vanquished.

This triumph was achieved by the Consistory Court, the members of which, unable to prove the princess guilty of crime, were angry because she would not even confess to the commission of a fault; that is, of such a fault as should authorise her husband, covered with guilt triple-piled, to separate from her person, yet maintain present and future property over her estates.

In point of fact, George Louis did not wish to be separated from his wife. His counsel, Rath Livius, accused her, in her husband’s name, of lack of both love and obedience towards him; of having falsely charged him with infidelity, to his parents and her own; and of having repeatedly refused to again live with him; for this act of disobedience, and for no other reason, he asked the judgment of the court. Sophia Dorothea’s own counsellors, Rudolph Thies and Joachin von Bulow, put it to her whether she would return to her husband or abide judgment for disobeying his repeated desire. Nothing could move her. She despised her husband, and would never again live under the same roof with him. Her own desire was to live, henceforward, in seclusion—to pass the remainder of her unhappy life in peace and humiliation.

The court came to a decision on the 28th of December, 1694. Their judgment was, that as she refused to live with her husband, she was guilty of desertion, and on that ground alone a decree of separation, or divorce, was recorded. When told that she had a right to appeal, she contemptuously refused to avail herself of it. The terms of the sentence were extraordinary, for they amounted to a decree of divorce without expressly mentioning the fact. The judgment, wherein nothing was judged, conferred on the prince, George Louis, the right of marrying again, if he should be so minded and could find a lady willing to be won. It, however, explicitly debarred his wife from entering into a second union. Not a word was written down against her, alleging that she was criminal. The name of Königsmark was not even alluded to. Notwithstanding these facts, and that the husband was the really guilty party, while the utmost which can be said against the princess was that she may have been indiscreet—notwithstanding this, not only was he declared to be an exceedingly injured individual, but the poor lady, whom he held in his heart’s hottest hate, was deprived of her property, possession of which was transferred to George Louis, in trust for the children; and the princess, endowed with an annual pension of some eight or ten thousand thalers, was condemned to close captivity in the castle of Ahlden, near Zell, with a retinue of domestics, whose office was to watch her actions, and a body of armed gaolers, whose only duty was to keep the captive secure in her bonds.

Sophia Dorothea entered on her imprisonment with a calm, if not with a cheerful heart: certainly with more placidity and true joy than George Louis felt, surrounded by his mistresses and all the pomp of the Electoral State. All Germany is said to have been scandalised by the judgment delivered by the court. The illegality and the incompetency of the court from which it emanated, were so manifest, that the sentence was looked upon as a mere wanton cruelty, carrying with it neither conviction nor lawful consequence. So satisfied was the princess’s advocate on this point that he requested her to give him a letter declaring him non-responsible for having so far recognised the authority of the court as to have pleaded her cause before it! What is perhaps more singular still is the doubt which long existed whether this court ever sat at all; and whether decree of separation or divorce was ever pronounced in the cause of Sophia Dorothea of Zell and George Louis, Electoral Prince of Hanover.

Horace Walpole says, on this subject: ‘I am not acquainted with the laws of Germany relative to divorce or separation, nor do I know or suppose that despotism and pride allow the law to insist on much formality when a sovereign has reason or mind to get rid of his wife. Perhaps too much difficulty in untying the Gordian knot of matrimony, thrown in the way of an absolute prince, would be no kindness to the ladies, but might prompt him to use a sharper weapon, like that butchering husband, our Henry VIII. Sovereigns who narrow or let out the law of God according to their prejudices and passions mould their own laws, no doubt, to the standard of their convenience. Genealogic purity of blood is the predominant folly of Germany; and the Code of Malta seems to have more force in the empire than the Ten Commandments. Thence was introduced that most absurd evasion of the indissolubility of marriage, espousals with the left hand, as if the Almighty had restrained his ordinance to one half of a man’s person, and allowed a greater latitude to his left side than to his right, or pronounced the former more ignoble than the latter. The consciences both of princely and noble persons in Germany are quieted if the more plebeian side is married to one who would degrade the more illustrious moiety; but, as if the laws of matrimony had no reference to the children to be thence propagated, the children of a left-handed alliance are not entitled to inherit. Shocking consequence of a senseless equivocation, which only satisfies pride, not justice, and is calculated for an acquittal at the herald’s office, not at the last tribunal.

‘Separated the Princess (Sophia) Dorothea certainly was, and never admitted even to the nominal honours of her rank, being thenceforward always styled the Duchess of Halle (Ahlden). Whether divorced is problematic, at least to me; nor can I pronounce—as, though it was generally believed, I am not certain—that George espoused the Duchess of Kendal (Mdlle. von der Schulenburg) with his left hand. But though German casuistry might allow a husband to take another wife with his left hand because his legal wife had suffered her right hand to be kissed by a gallant, even Westphalian or Aulic counsellors could not have pronounced that such a momentary adieu constituted adultery; and, therefore, of a formal divorce I must doubt; and there I must leave that case of conscience undecided until future search into the Hanoverian Chancery shall clear up a point of little real importance.’ Coxe, in his Memoirs of Walpole, says, on the other hand, very decidedly:—‘George I., who never loved his wife, gave implicit credit to the account of her infidelity, as related by his father; consented to her imprisonment, and obtained from the ecclesiastical consistory a divorce, which was passed on the 20th of December 1694.’

The researches into the Chancery of Hanover, which Walpole left to posterity, appear to have been made, and the decree of the Consistorial Court which condemned Sophia Dorothea has been copied and published. It is quoted in the ‘Life of the Princess,’ published anonymously in 1845, and it is inserted below for the benefit of those who like to read history by the light of documents.

It has been said that such a decree could only have been purchased by rank bribery, which is likely enough; for the courts of Germany were so utterly corrupt that nothing could equal them in infamy—except the corruption which prevailed in England.

‘In the matrimonial suit of the illustrious Prince George Louis, Crown Prince of Hanover, against his consort, the illustrious Princess Sophia Dorothea, we, constituted president and judges of the Matrimonial Court of the Electorate and Duchy of Brunswick-Lunenberg, declare and pronounce judgment, after attempts have been tried and have failed, to settle the matter amicably, and, in accordance with the documents and verbal declarations of the Princess, and other detailed circumstances, we agree that her continued denial of matrimonial duty and cohabitation is well founded, and consequently that it is to be considered as an intentional desertion. In consequence whereof, we consider, sentence, and declare the ties of matrimony to be entirely dissolved and annulled. Since, in similar cases of desertion, it has been permitted to the innocent party to re-marry, which the other is forbidden, the same judicial power will be exercised in the present instance in favour of his Serene Highness the Crown Prince.

‘Published in the Consistorial Court at Hanover, December 28th, 1694.

The work from which the above document is extracted furnishes also the following, as a copy of the letter written by the princess at the request of the legal conductor of her case, as ‘security from proceedings in relation to his connexion with her affairs:’—

‘As we have now, after being made acquainted with the sentence, given it proper consideration, and resolved not to offer any opposition to it, our solicitor must act accordingly, and is not to act or proceed any further in this matter. For the rest, we hereby declare that we are gratefully content with the conduct of our aforesaid solicitor of the Court, Thies, and that by this we free him from all responsibility regarding these transactions.

(Signed)  ‘Sophia Dorothea.

‘Lauenau, December 31, 1694.’

By this last document it would seem that the Hof-Rath Thies would have denied the competency of the court had he been permitted to do so; and that he was so convinced of its illegality as to require a written prohibition from asserting the same, and acknowledgment of exemption from all responsibility, before he would feel satisfied that he had accomplished his duty towards his illustrious client.

Long before the case was heard, and four months previous to the publication of the sentence of the Consistorial Court, the two brothers, the Elector of Hanover and the Duke of Zell, had actually agreed by an enactment that the unhappy marriage between the cousins should be dissolved. The enactment provided for the means whereby this end was to be achieved, and for the disposal of the princess during the progress of the case. The anonymous author of the biography of 1845 then proceeds to state that ‘It was therein specified that her domestics should take a particular oath, and that the princess should enjoy an annual income of eight thousand thalers (exclusive of the wages of her household), to be increased one-half on the death of her father, with a further increase of six thousand thalers on her attaining the age of forty years. It was provided that the castle of Ahlden should be her permanent residence, where she was to remain well guarded. The domain of Wilhelmsburg, near Hamburg, was, at the death of the Duke of Zell, to descend to the prince, son of the Princess Sophia Dorothea—the Crown Prince, however, during his own life retaining the revenues; but should the grandson die before his father, the property would then, on payment of a stipulated sum, be inherited by the successor in the government of the son of the Elector. By a further arrangement, the mother of the princess was to possess Wienhausen, with an annual income of twelve thousand thalers, secured on the estates of Schernebeck, Garze, and Bluettingen; the castle at Lunenburg to be allowed as her residence from the commencement of her widowhood.’

Never was so much care taken to secure property on one side, and the person on the other. The contracting parties appear to have been afraid lest the prisoner should ever have an opportunity of appealing against the wrong of which she was made the victim; and her strait imprisonment was but the effect of that fear. That nothing might be neglected to make assurance doubly sure, and to deprive her of any help she might hope hereafter to receive at the hands of a father, whose heart might possibly be made to feel his own injustice and his daughter’s sorrows, the Duke of Zell was induced to promise that he would neither see nor hold communication with the daughter he had repudiated.

During the so-called trial, at Lauenau, the princess resided in the chief official residence in that place. At the close of the inquiry she took a really final leave of her children—George Augustus and Sophia Dorothea—with bitter tears, which would have been more bitter still if she had thought that she was never again to look upon them. She had concluded that she would have liberty to live with her mother in Zell. She had no idea that her father had already agreed to his brother the Elector’s desire that she should be shut up in the castle of Ahlden. She found herself a state prisoner.

The oath to be taken by her appointed household, or rather by the personal attendants—counts and countesses in waiting and persons of similar rank—was stringent and illustrative of the importance attached to the safe-keeping of the prisoner. It was to the effect ‘that nothing should be wanting to prevent anticipated intrigues; or for the perfect security of the place fixed as a residence for the Princess Sophia Dorothea, in order to maintain tranquility, and to prevent any opportunity occurring to an enemy for undertaking or imagining anything which might cause a division in the illustrious family.’