CHAPTER XI.
AHLDEN AND ENGLAND.
The neglected captive of Ahlden—Unnoticed by her son-in-law, except to secure her property—Madame von Schulenburg—The Queen of Prussia prohibited from corresponding with her imprisoned mother—The captive betrayed by Count de Bar—Death of Queen Anne—Anxiety felt for the arrival of King George—The Duke of Marlborough’s entry—Funeral of the Queen—Public entry of the King—Adulation of Dr. Young—Madame Kielmansegge, the new royal favourite—Horace Walpole’s account of her—‘A Hanover garland’—Ned Ward, the Tory poet—Expression of the public opinion—The Duchess of Kendal bribed by Lord Bolingbroke—Bribery and corruption general—Abhorrence of parade by the King.
During marriage festivals and court fêtes held to celebrate some step in greatness, Sophia Dorothea continued to vegetate in Ahlden. She was politically dead; and even in the domestic occurrences of her family, events in which a mother might be gracefully allowed to have a part, she enjoyed no share. The marriages of her children and the births of their children were not officially communicated to her. She was left to learn them through chance or the courtesy of individuals.
Her daughter was now the second Queen of Prussia, but the King cared not to exercise his influence in behalf of his unfortunate mother-in-law. Not that he was unconcerned with respect to her. His consort was heiress to property over which her mother had control, and Frederick was not tranquil of mind until this property had been secured as the indisputable inheritance of his wife. He was earnest enough in his correspondence with Sophia Dorothea until this consummation was arrived at; and when he held the writings which secured the succession of certain portions of the property of the duchess on his consort, he ceased to trouble himself further with any question connected with the unfortunate prisoner; except, indeed, that he forbade his wife to hold any further intercourse with her mother, by letter or otherwise.
Few and trivial are the incidents told of her long captivity. The latter had been embittered, in 1703, by the knowledge that Mademoiselle von der Schulenburg was the mother of another daughter, Margaret Gertrude, of whom the Elector was the father. This child was ten years younger than her sister, Petronilla Melusina, who subsequently figured at the Court of George II. as Countess of Walsingham, and who was the uncared-for wife of Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield.
Previous to the prohibition laid on his wife by the King of Prussia, an epistolary intercourse had been privately maintained between Sophia Dorothea and her daughter. Such intercourse had never received the King’s sanction; and when it came to his knowledge, at the period of the settlement of part of the maternal property on the daughter, he peremptorily ordered its cessation. It had been maintained chiefly by means of a Chevalier de Bar; Ludwig, a privy-councillor at Berlin; Frederick, a page of the Queen’s; and a bailiff of the castle of Ahlden. There were too many confederates in a matter so simple, and the whole of them betrayed the poor lady, for whom they professed to act. The most important agent was the chevalier: in him the duchess confided longest, and in his want of faith she was the last to believe. He had introduced himself to her by sending her presents of snuff, no unusual present to a lady in those days—though it is pretended that these gifts bore a peculiar signification, known only to the donor and the recipient. They probably had less meaning than the presents forwarded to the prisoner by her daughter, consisting now of her portrait, another time of a watch, or some other trinket, which served to pass a letter with it, in which were filial injunctions to the poor mother to be patient and resigned, and to put no trust in the Count de Bar.
The prisoner did not heed the counsel, but continued to confide in a man who was prodigal of promise, and traitorous of performance. Her hopes were fixed upon escaping, but they were foiled by the watchfulness of noble spies, who exultingly told her that her husband was a king. And it is asserted that she might have been a recognised queen if she would but have confessed that she had failed in obedience towards her husband. It is certain that a renewed, but it may not have been an honest, attempt at reconciliation was made just previous to the accession of George I., but the old reply fell from the prisoner’s lips:—‘If I am guilty, I am not worthy of him: if I am innocent, he is not worthy of me.’
The death of the Electress Sophia, in 1714, was followed very shortly after by the demise of Queen Anne. This event had taken all parties somewhat by surprise. They stood face to face, as it were, over the dying Queen. The Jacobites were longing for her to name her brother as her successor, whom they would have proclaimed at once at the head of the army. The Hanoverian party were feverish with fears and anticipations; but they had the regency dressed up and ready in the back ground, and Secretary Craggs, booted and spurred, was making such haste as could then be made on his road to Hanover, to summon King George. The Jacobite portion of the cabinet was individually bold in resolving what ought to be done, but they were, bodily, afraid of the responsibility of doing it. Each man of each faction had his king’s name ready upon his lips, awaiting only that the lethargy of the Queen should be succeeded by irretrievable death to give it joyful utterance. Anne died on the 1st of August 1714; the Jacobites drew a breath of hesitation; and in the meantime the active Whigs instantly proclaimed King George, gave Addison the mission of announcing the demise of one sovereign to another, who was that sovereign’s successor, and left the Jacobites to their vexation and their threatened redress.
Lord Berkley was sent with the fleet to Orange Polder, in Holland, there to bring over the new King; but Craggs had not only taken a very long time to carry his invitation to the monarch, but the husband of Sophia, when he received it, showed no hot haste to take advantage thereof. The Earl of Dorset was despatched over to press his immediate coming, on the ground of the affectionate impatience of his new subjects. The King was no more moved thereby than he was by the first announcement of Lord Clarendon, the English ambassador, at Hanover. On the night of the 5th of August that envoy had received an express, announcing the demise of the Queen. At two o’clock in the morning he hastened with what he supposed the joyful intelligence to Herrnhausen, and caused George Louis to be aroused, that he might be the first to salute him as King. The new monarch yawned, expressed himself vexed, and went to sleep again as calmly as any serene highness. In the morning some one delicately hinted, as if to encourage the husband of Sophia Dorothea in staying where he was, that the presbyterian party in England was a dangerous regicidal party. ‘Not so,’ said George, who seemed to be satisfied that there was no peril in the new greatness; ‘not so; I have nothing to fear from the king-killers; they are all on my side.’ But still he tarried; one day decreeing the abolition of the excise, the next ordering, like King Arthur in Fielding’s tragedy, all the insolvent debtors to be released from prison. While thus engaged, London was busy with various pleasant occupations.
On the 3rd of August the late Queen was opened; and on the following day her bowels were buried, with as much ceremony as they deserved, in Westminster Abbey. The day subsequent to this ceremony, the Duke of Marlborough, who had been in voluntary exile abroad, and whose office in command of the imperial armies had been held for a short time, and not discreditably, by George Louis, made a triumphant entry into London. The triumph, however, was marred by the sudden breaking down of his coach at Temple-Bar—an accident ominous of his not again rising to power. The Lords and Commons then sent renewed assurances of loyalty to Hanover, and renewed prayers that the lord there would doff his electoral cap, and come and try his kingly crown. To quicken this, the lower house, on the 10th, voted him the same revenues the late Queen had enjoyed—excepting those arising from the Duchy of Cornwall, which were, by law, invested in the Prince of Wales. On the 13th Craggs arrived in town to herald the King’s coming; and on the 14th the Hanoverian party were delighted to hear that on the Pretender repairing from Lorraine to Versailles, to implore of Louis to acknowledge him publicly as king, the French monarch had pleaded, in bar, his engagements with the House of Hanover, and that thereon the Pretender had returned dispirited to Lorraine. On the 24th of the month the late Queen’s body was privately buried in Westminster Abbey, by order of her successor, who appeared to have a dread of finding the old lady of his young love yet upon the earth. This order was followed by another, which ejected from their places many officials who had hoped to retain them—and chief of these was Bolingbroke. London then became excited at hearing that the King had arrived at the Hague on the 5th of September. It was calculated that the nearer he got to his kingdom the more accelerated would be his speed; but George was not to be hurried. Madame Kielmansegge, who shared what was called his regard with Mademoiselle von der Schulenburg, had been retarded in her departure from Hanover by the heaviness of her debts. The daughter of the Countess von Platen would not have been worthy of her mother had she suffered herself to be long detained by such a trifle. She, accordingly, gave her creditors the slip, set off to Holland, and was received with a heavy sort of delight by the King. The exemplary couple tarried above a week at the Hague; and, on the 16th of September George and his retinue set sail for England. Between that day and the day of his arrival at Greenwich, the heads of the Regency were busy in issuing decrees:—now it was for the prohibition of fireworks on the day of his Majesty’s entry; next against the admission of unprivileged carriages into Greenwich Park on the King’s arrival; and, lastly, one promising one hundred thousand pounds to any loyal subject who might be lucky enough to catch the Pretender in England, and who would bring him a prisoner to London.
On the 18th of September the King landed at Greenwich; and on the two following days, while he sojourned there, he was waited on by various officials, who went smiling to the foot of the throne, and came away frowning at the cold treatment they received there. They who thought themselves the most secure endured the most disgraceful falls, especially the Duke of Ormond, who, as captain-general, had been three parts inclined to proclaim the Pretender. He repaired in gorgeous array to do homage to King George; but the King would only receive his staff of office, and would not see the ex-bearer of it; who returned home with one dignity the less, and for George one enemy the more.
The public entry into London on the 20th was splendid, and so was the court holden at St. James’s on the following day. A lively incident, however, marked the proceedings of this first court. Colonel Chudleigh, in the crowd, branded Mr. Allworth, M.P. for New Windsor, as a Jacobite; whereupon they both left the palace, went in a coach to Marylebone Fields, and there fought a duel, in which Mr. Allworth was killed on the spot. This was the first libation of blood offered to the King.
No poet affected to deplore the decease of Anne with such profundity of jingling grief as Young. He had not then achieved a name, and he was eagerly desirous to build up a fortune. His threnodia on the death of Queen Anne is a fine piece of measured maudlin; but the author appears to have bethought himself, before he had expended half his stock of sorrows, that there would be more profit in welcoming a living than bewailing a defunct monarch. Accordingly, wiping up his tears, and arraying his face in the blandest of smiles, he addressed himself to the double task of recording the reception of George and registering his merits. He first, however, apologetically states, as his warrant for turning from weeping for Anne to cheering for George, that all the sorrow in the world cannot reverse doom, that groans cannot ‘unlock th’ inexorable tomb’; that a fond indulgence of woe is sad folly, for, from such a course, he exclaims, with a fine eye to a poet’s profit—
So, turning his face from the tomb of Anne to the throne of George, he grandiosely waves his hat, and thus he sings:—
This sneer at the Pretender is as contemptible as the flattery of George is gross; and the picture of an entire nation on its knees, blessing Olympus, and bidding the gods to restrain all further gifts, is as magnificent a mixture of bombast and blasphemy as ever was made up by venal poet. But here is more of it:—
Such is the record of a rhymer: Walpole, in plain and truthful prose, tells a very different story. He informs us that the London mob were highly diverted at the importation by the King of his uncommon seraglio of ugly women. ‘They were food,’ he says, ‘for all the venom of the Jacobites,’ and so far from Britain thanking him for coming himself, or for bringing with him these numerous tokens of his princely grace, ‘nothing could be grosser than the ribaldry vomited out in lampoons, libels, and every channel of abuse, against the sovereign and the new court, and chanted even in their hearing about the public streets.’ Mademoiselle von Schulemberg (sic) was created Duchess of Kendal. ‘The younger Mademoiselle von Schulemberg, who came over with her, and was created Countess of Walsingham, passed for her niece, but was so like the King, that it is not very credible that the duchess, who had affected to pass for cruel, had waited for the left-handed marriage.’ Lady Walsingham, as previously said, was afterwards married to the celebrated Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield.
To the Duchess of Kendal—George (who was so shocked at the infidelity of which his wife was alleged to be guilty) was to the mistress as inconstant as to the wife he had been untrue. He set aside the former, to put in her place Madame Kielmansegge, called, like her mother, Countess von Platen. On the death of her husband, in 1721, he raised her to the rank of Countess of Leinster in Ireland, Countess of Darlington and Baroness of Brentford in England. Coxe says of her, that her power over the King was not equal to that of the Duchess of Kendal, but her character for rapacity was not inferior. Horace Walpole has graphically portrayed Lady Darlington in the following passage:—
‘Lady Darlington, whom I saw at my mother’s in my infancy, and whom I remember by being terrified at her enormous figure, was as corpulent and ample as the duchess was long and emaciated. The fierce black eyes, large, and rolling beneath two lofty arched eyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed, and was not distinguished from, the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays—no wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress.’
The mob had a strong Tory leaven at this time, and among the multitude circulated a mass of broadsides and ballads, of so openly a seditious character that the power of the law was stringently applied to suppress the evil. Before the year was out half the provincial towns in England were infected with seditious sentiments against the Whig government, which had brought in a King whose way of life was a scandal to them. This feeling of contempt for both King and government was wide as well as deep; and it was so craftily made use of by the leaders of public opinion, that, before George had been three months upon the throne, the ‘High-church rabble,’ as the Tory party was called, in various country towns were violent in their proceedings against the government; and at Axminster, in Devonshire, shouted for the Pretender, and drank his health as King of England. The conduct of George to his wife, Sophia Dorothea, was as satirically dealt with, in the way of censure, as any of his delinquencies, and his character as a husband was not forgotten in the yearly tumults of his time, which broke out on every recurring anniversary of Queen Anne’s birthday (April the 23rd) to the end of his reign.
If the new King was dissatisfied with his new subjects, he liked as little the manners of England. ‘This is a strange country,’ said his Majesty; ‘the first morning after my arrival at St. James’s, I looked out of the window, and saw a park, with walks, a canal, and so forth, which they told me were mine. The next day, Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of my park, sent me a fine brace of carp out of my canal, and I was told that I must give five guineas to Lord Chetwynd’s servant, for bringing me my own carp, out of my own canal, in my own park!’
The monarch’s mistresses loved as much to receive money as the King himself loved little to part from it. The Duchess of Kendal’s rapacity has been mentioned: one instance of it is mentioned by Coxe, on the authority of Sir Robert Walpole, to the effect that ‘the restoration of Lord Bolingbroke was the work of the Duchess of Kendal. He gained the duchess by a present of eleven thousand pounds, and obtained a promise to use her influence over the King for the purpose of forwarding his complete restoration.’ Horace Walpole states that the duchess was no friend of Sir Robert, and wished to make Lord Bolingbroke minister in his room. The rapacious mistress was jealous of Sir Robert’s credit with the monarch. Monarch and minister transacted business through the medium of indifferent Latin; the King not being able to speak English, and Sir Robert, like a country gentleman of England, knowing nothing of either German or French. ‘It was much talked of,’ says the lively writer of the ‘Reminiscences of the Courts of the first two Georges,’ ‘that Sir Robert, detecting one of the Hanoverian ministers in some trick or falsehood before the King’s face, had the firmness to say to the German, “Mentiris impudentissime!” The good-humoured monarch only laughed, as he often did when Sir Robert complained to him of his Hanoverians selling places, nor would be persuaded that it was not the practice of the English court.’ The singularity of this complaint is, that it was made by a minister who was notorious for complacently saying, that ‘Every man in the House of Commons had his price.’