CHAPTER VI.
THE KÖNIGSMARKS.
Count Charles John Königsmark’s roving and adventurous life—The great heiress—An intriguing countess—‘Tom of Ten Thousand’—The murder of Lord John Thynne—The fate of the count’s accomplices—Court influence shelters the guilty count.
The circumstance of the sojourn of a Count Königsmark at Zell, during the childhood of Sophia Dorothea, has been before noticed. Originally the family of the Königsmarks was of the Mark of Brandenburgh, but a chief of the family settled in Sweden, and the name carried lustre with it into more than one country. In the army, the cabinet, and the church, the Königsmarks had representatives of whom they might be proud; and generals, statesmen, and prince-bishops, all labouring with glory in their respective departments, sustained the high reputation of this once celebrated name. From the period, early in the seventeenth century, that the first Königsmark (Count John Christopher) withdrew from the imperial service and joined that of Sweden, the men of that house devoted themselves, almost exclusively, to the profession of arms. This Count John is famous as the subduer of Prague, in 1648, at the end of the Thirty Years’ War. Of all the costly booty which he carried with him from that city, none has continued to be so well cared for by the Swedes as the silver book containing the Mœso-Gothic Gospels of Bishop Ulphilas, still preserved with pride at learned Upsal.
John Christopher was the father of two sons. Otho William, a marshal of France, a valued friend of Charles XII., and a gallant servant of the state of Venice, whose government honoured his tomb with an inscription, Semper Victori, was the younger. He was pious as well as brave, and he enriched German literature with a collection of very fervid and spiritual hymns. The elder son, Conrad Christopher, was killed in the year 1673, when fighting on the Dutch and imperial side, at the siege of Bonn. He left four children, three of whom became famous. His sons were Charles John, and Philip Christopher. His daughters were Maria Aurora (mother of the famous Maurice of Saxony) and Amelia Wilhelmina. The latter was fortunate enough to achieve happiness without being celebrated. If she has not been talked of beyond her own Swedish fireside, she passed there a life of as calm felicity as she and her husband, Charles von Loewenhaupt, could enjoy when they had relations so celebrated, and so troublesome, as Counts Charles John and Philip Christopher, and the Countess Maria Aurora, the ‘favourite’ of Augustus of Poland, and the only royal concubine, perhaps, who almost deserved as much respect as though she had won greatness by a legitimate process.
It was this Philip Christopher who was for a brief season the playfellow or companion of Sophia Dorothea, in the young days of both, in the quiet gardens and galleries of Zell. It is only told of him that, after his departure from Zell, he sojourned with various members of his family, travelled with them, and returned at intervals to reside with his mother, Maria Christina, of the German family of Wrangel, who unhappily survived long enough to be acquainted with the crimes as well as misfortunes of three of her children.
In the year 1682, Philip Christopher was in England. The elder brother, who had more than once been a visitor to this country, and a welcome, because a witty, one at the Court of Charles II., had brought his younger brother hither, in order (so it was said) to have him instructed more completely in the tenets of the Protestant religion, and ultimately to place him at Oxford. In the meantime Charles John lodged Philip with a ‘governor,’ at the riding academy, near the Haymarket, of that Major Foubert, whose second establishment (where he taught ‘noble horsemanship’) is still commemorated by the passage out of Regent Street, which bears the name of the French Protestant refugee and professor of equestrianism.
The elder brother of these two Königsmarks was a superb scoundrel. He had led a roving and adventurous life, and was in England when not more that fifteen years of age, in the year 1674. During the next half-dozen years he had rendered the ladies of the Court of France ecstatic at his impudence, and had won golden opinions from the ‘marine knights’ of Malta, whom he had accompanied on a ‘caravane,’ or cruise, against the Turks, wherein he took hard blows cheerfully, and had well-nigh been drowned by his impetuous gallantry. At some of the courts of southern Europe he appeared with an éclat which made the men hate and envy him; but nowhere did he produce more effect than at Madrid, where he appeared at the period of the festivities held to celebrate the marriage of Charles II. with Maria Louisa of Orleans. The marriage of the last-named august pair was followed by the fiercest and the finest bull-fights which had ever been witnessed in Spain. At one of these Charles John made himself the champion of a lady, fought in her honour in the arena, with the wildest bull of the company, and got dreadfully mauled for his pains. His horse was slain, and he himself, staggering and faint, and blind with loss of blood, and with deep wounds, had finally only strength enough left to pass his sword into the neck of the other brute, his antagonist, and to be carried half-dead and quite senseless out of the arena, amid the approbation of the gentle ladies, who purred applause upon the unconscious hero, like satisfied tigresses.
In 1681, at the age of twenty-two, master of all manly vices, and ready for any adventure, he was once more in England, where he seized the opportunity afforded him by the times and their events, and hastened to join the expedition against Tangier. On the conclusion of the warm affair at Tangier, he went as an amateur against the Algerines, and without commission inflicted on them and their ‘uncle’ (as the word dey implies) as much injury as though he had been chartered general at the head of a destroying host. When he returned to England, he was received with enthusiasm. His handsome face, his long flaxen hair, his stupendous periwig for state occasions, and his ineffable impudence, made him the delight of the impudent people of those impudent times.
Now, of all those people, the supercilious Charles John cared but for one, and she, there is reason to believe, knew little and cared less for this presuming scion of the House of Königsmark.
Joscelyn, eleventh Earl of Northumberland, who died in the year 1670—the last of the male line of his house—left an only daughter, four years of age, named Elizabeth. Her father’s death made her the possessor—awaiting her majority—of vast wealth, to which increase was made by succession to other inheritances. Her widowed mother married Ralph Montague, English ambassador in Paris. When the widow of Joscelyn espoused Montague, her daughter Elizabeth went to reside with the mother of Joscelyn, Dowager Countess of Northumberland, and co-heiress to the Suffolk estate, destined to be added to the possessions of the little Elizabeth. She was an intriguing, indelicate, self-willed, and worthless old woman; and with respect to the poor little girl of whom she was the unworthy guardian, she made her the subject of constant intrigues with men of power who wished for wealth, and with rich men who wished for rank and power. Before the unhappy little heiress had attained the age of thirteen, her grandmother had bound her in marriage with Henry Cavendish, Earl Ogle. Though the ceremony was performed, the parties did not, of course, reside together. The dowager countess and the earl were satisfied that the fortune of the heiress was secured, and they were further content to wait for what might follow.
That which followed was what they least expected—death; the bridegroom died within a year of his union with Elizabeth Percy; and this child, wife, and widow was again at the disposal of her wretched grandmother. The heiress of countless thousands was anything but the mistress of herself.
At this period the proprietor of the house and domain of Longleat, in Wiltshire, was that Thomas Thynne, whom Dryden has celebrated as the Issachar of his ‘Absalom and Achitophel.’ He was the friend of the Duke of Monmouth, was spoken of as ‘Tom of Ten Thousand,’ and was a very unworthy fellow, although the member of a worthy house. Tom’s Ten Thousand virtues were of that metal which the Dowager Countess of Northumberland most approved; and her grand-daughter had not been many months the widow of Lord Ogle, when her precious guardian united her by private marriage to Thynne. The newly-married couple were at once separated. The marriage was the result of an infamous intrigue between infamous people, some of whom, subsequently to Thynne’s death, sued his executors for money which he had bound himself to pay for services rendered to further the marriage.
When Charles John Königsmark returned to England, in January 1682, all England was talking of the match wherein a poor child had been sold, although the purchaser had not yet possession of either his victim or her fortune. The common talk must have had deep influence on the count, who appears to have been impressed with the idea that if Thynne were dead, Count Charles John Königsmark might succeed to his place and expectations.
On the evening of Sunday, the 12th of February 1682, Thynne was in his coach, from which the Duke of Monmouth had only just previously alighted, and was riding along that part of Pall-Mall which abuts upon Cockspur Street, when the carriage was stopped by three men on horseback, one of whom discharged a carbine into it, whereby Tom of Ten Thousand was so desperately wounded that he died in a few hours.
The persons charged with this murder were chiefly discovered by means of individuals of ill repute with whom they associated. By such means were arrested a German, Captain Vratz, Borosky a Pole, and a fellow, half knave, half enthusiast, described as Lieutenant Stern. Vratz had accompanied Königsmark to England. They lodged together, first in the Haymarket, next in Rupert Street, and finally in St. Martin’s Lane. Borosky had been clothed and armed at the count’s expense; and Stern was employed as a likely tool to help them in this enterprise. It was proved on the trial, that, after the deed was committed, these men were at the count’s lodgings, that a sudden separation took place, and that the count himself, upon some sudden fear, took flight to the water-side; there he lay hid for a while, and then dodged about the river, in various disguises, in order to elude pursuit, until he finally landed at Gravesend, where he was pounced upon by two expert thief-catchers.
The confession of the accomplices, save Vratz, did not affect the count. His defence took a high Protestant turn—made allusion to his Protestant ancestors and their deeds in behalf of Protestantism, lauded Protestant England, alluded to his younger brother, brought expressly here to be educated in Protestant principles, and altogether was exceedingly clever, but in no wise convincing. It was known that the King would learn with pleasure that the count had been acquitted. As this knowledge was possessed by judges who were removable at the King’s pleasure, it had a strong influence; and the arch-murderer, the most cowardly of the infamous company, was acquitted accordingly. In his case, the verdict, as regarded him, was given in, last. The other three persons were indicted for the actual commission of the fact, Königsmark as accessory before the fact, hiring them, and instigating them to the crime. Thrice he had heard the word ‘Guilty’ pronounced, and, despite his recklessness, was somewhat moved when the jury were asked as to their verdict respecting him. ‘Not Guilty,’ murmured the foreman; and then the noble count, mindful only of himself, and forgetful of the three unhappy men whom he had dragged to death, exclaimed in his unmanly joy, ‘God bless the King, and this honourable bench!’ The meaner assassins were flung to the gallows. Vratz went to his fate, like Pierre; declared that the murder was the result of a mistake, that he had no hand in it, and that as he was a gentleman, God would assuredly deal with him as such! This ‘gentleman’ accounted for his presence at the murder as having arisen by his entertaining a quarrel with Mr. Thynne, whom he was about to challenge, when the Pole, mistaking his orders and inclinations, discharged his carbine into the carriage, and slew the occupant. The other two confessed to the murder, as the hired instruments of Vratz. Count Charles John repaired to the Court of France, where he was received in that sort of gentlemanly fashion which Vratz looked for in Paradise. His sword gleamed in many an action fought in various battle-fields of Europe during the next few years, at the head of a French regiment, of which he was colonel. Finally, in 1686, he was in the service of the Venetians in the Morea. On the 29th of August he was before Argos, when a sortie was made by the garrison, and in the bloody struggle which ensued he was mortally wounded. For Thynne’s monument in Westminster Abbey a Latin inscription was prepared, which more than merely hinted that Königsmark was the murderer of Tom of Ten Thousand. ‘Small, servile, Spratt,’ then Dean of Westminster, would not allow the inscription to be set up; and his apologists, who advance in his behalf that he would have done wrong had he allowed a man, cleared by a jury from the charge of murder, to be permanently set down in hard record of marble as an assassin, have much reason in what they advance.
The youthful maid, wife, and widow, Lady Ogle, remained at Amsterdam (whither she had gone, some persons said fled), after her marriage with Thynne, until the three of his murderers, who had been executed, had expiated their crime, as far as human justice was concerned, upon the scaffold. She then returned to England; but the young lady did not ‘appear public,’ as the phrase went, for six or seven weeks, and when she did so, it was found that she had just married Charles Seymour, third Duke of Somerset—a match which made one of two silly persons and a couple of colossal fortunes.
This red-haired lady died in the fifty-sixth year of her age, A.D. 1722; and the duke, then sixty-four, found speedy consolation for his loss in a marriage with the youthful Lady Charlotte Finch, who was at once his wife, nurse, and secretary. It is said of her, that she one day, in the course of conversation, tapped her husband familiarly on the shoulder with her fan; whereupon that amiable gentleman indignantly cried out: ‘Madam, my first wife was a Percy, and she never took such a liberty!’
Königsmark, whose fate was so bound up with that of Sophia Dorothea, left England with his brother, and like his brother, he led an adventurous and roving life, never betraying any symptom of the Christian spirit of the religion of the Church of England, of which he first tasted what little could be found in Major Foubert’s riding-school. A portion of his time was spent at Hamburg with his mother and two sisters. His renown was sufficient for a cavalier who loved to live splendidly; and when he appeared at the Court of Hanover, in search of military employment, he was welcomed as cavaliers are who are so comfortably endowed. In 1688 we first hear of him in the electoral capital, bearing arms under the Elector and a guest at the table of George Louis and Sophia Dorothea. This was a year after the birth of the second and last child of that ill-matched couple.