An attempt had been indeed made, or suggested, to utilise the Queen’s friendly expressions for a bold venture on the part of the House of Hanover; but it had been still-born. After Grote’s death in March, Kreyenberg had carried on the affairs of the Hanoverian Legation in London; and reports were also from time to time sent to Hanover by the Dutch resident in London, L’Hermitage. In one of these (dated May 9th, 1713)^[177] the very important proposal was made that the Electoral Prince should come over to England on his own account, inasmuch as the Queen would never send for him. The notion found the utmost favour with the Whig leaders, who knew how much depended on the issue of the approaching election, and who hoped that it might be influenced by so bold a step on the part of the Hanoverian family. But Bernstorff, who was in favour of the scheme and without whose persuasion there was no prospect at all of the Elector approving it, was ill at the time; and, when he recovered, the Elector was found to be entirely under the influence of advice against action. An attempt to bring about the repeal of the Union with Scotland was defeated, without the question of the Hanoverian Succession playing more than a subsidiary part in the dispute.

When, in the following July, Parliament, after approving a number of the Treaties which formed the Peace of Utrecht,^[178] was prorogued, on the eve of a General Election, the Queen’s Speech significantly omitted the usual announcement of her readiness to support the Protestant Succession. While the versatile intellect of Leibniz was still devising new schemes for bringing about the desired result, the Elector adhered more closely than ever to his original policy. In August, 1713, Baron von Schütz the younger (George William Helwig Sinold), the son of the former envoy of the Court of St. James and the grandson of the Celle Chancellor, arrived in London as envoy. The choice of this agent was at the time unfavourably criticised by some of the Whigs, who thought that a politician of greater experience should have been selected. Sophia would not commit herself to Bothmer on the question whether Schütz would be better liked than her correspondent had been in England; ‘at all events,’ she said, ‘nobody will be attracted by his appearance’ (il ne payera pas de mine). We shall have to enquire immediately whether, in the great diplomatic catastrophe which befell him, the younger Schütz was himself deserving of blame. He was instructed by the Elector in the sense of an absolute abstinence from interference in British affairs. Even as to the question of inviting a member of the Electoral family to England he was to take up a distinctly negative position; but, at the same time, he was to treat as indispensable measures the removal of the Pretender from Lorraine and a provision for the Electress as Heiress Presumptive of Great Britain. The envoy’s reports were far from encouraging, and his information as to the views and intentions of the Queen and her advisers again agrees with that transmitted by Berwick to the Pretender.

The tide of danger was unmistakably rising. Parliament was dissolved in August, 1713; and a proposal was on foot to bring to bear upon Queen Anne at the opening of the new Parliament the direct personal influence of the presence of her half-brother in England. In the attitude of Oxford and Bolingbroke no hopeful alteration occurred. In defiance of the manifest irritation of the Queen, the Elector coldly declared himself unsatisfied with the guarantees which he had so far received, and declined to sanction any expenditure on pamphlets or newspapers, or on more direct means of influencing elections or gaining over necessitous Peers. Yet, to the amusement of Sophia, whose sense of humour never deserted her, Hanover and Herrenhausen continued to attract not a few Englishmen desirous of being found in this vicinity at the critical moment. They were, however, she thought, reckoning without their host in hoping to strew palms before her on her entrance into London; she feared that she could not contrive to live as long as Queen Anne, so as to prove to them her gratitude. And yet, when in the last days of the year Queen Anne herself fell ill, and the agitation in England was raised to an unprecedented pitch, it seemed as if, notwithstanding what Sophia described as her ‘incurable malady of having passed her eighty-fourth year,’ her repeated prediction that she would never herself mount the British throne would after all be falsified. In November she had herself been ill, suffering so seriously from an affection (erysipelas) to which she was subject, that fears were entertained for her life. But she soon recovered sufficiently to write to the Duchess of Orleans, and with her usual spirit she insisted on following the Elector to the Göhrde.

The situation was now coming to be one of a very high tension. On the one hand, Strafford, who never ceased from trying to persuade the Electress that the Tories were her friends, and that there was not a Jacobite left in the party, assured her that what he had observed during the Queen’s illness had convinced him of the strength of popular opinion in England in favour of the Protestant Succession. And Steinghens, the Elector Palatine’s minister in London, who was on a footing of intimacy with Oxford, declared to his correspondent, General von der Schulenburg, that had Queen Anne died during her illness the Princess Sophia would have been proclaimed on the same day. Assurances of devotion poured in from every side; in February, Secretary Bromley laid himself at the Electress’ feet; and Archbishop Dawes entreated attention to his own humble endeavours and to the faithfulness and zeal of the whole body of the clergy. On the other hand, the demeanour and utterances of those in power were not growing more propitious as the new year came in. Cautious as Oxford was in his utterances, perhaps the most striking of all the self-revelations reported of him at this critical time was that which, in December, 1713, he made to the Abbé Gaultier, according to the statement of the latter to De Torcy: ‘So long as I live, England shall not be governed by a German.’ Except through Gaultier, however, Oxford was inaccessible on the subject, and though, in January, 1714, he was said to have sent a private messenger to the Pretender, in the following month Berwick heard that the Lord Treasurer’s intentions were still quite unknown, and suggested to James to make sure of the Queen and Bolingbroke by writing to them himself. Berwick’s scheme of the Pretender coming over to England in secret, so as to enable the Queen to declare in his favour at the opening of Parliament, was quite visionary; for Louis XIV was not inclined to make any move in his support, except by placing two men-of-war at Havre at his disposal; and the Tory leaders were wholly intent upon removing, in the first instance, the insuperable obstacle to any chance of the Pretender’s success by inducing him to come over—to the Church of England. As for Bolingbroke, who must have known that such a solution was not to be looked for, he seems to have been willing to depend on the double chance of something unexpected happening at the critical moment, and of the Hanoverian successor proving unable to maintain herself—or himself—on the throne even after mounting it. Thus, as the crisis drew nearer and nearer, the Tory leaders were becoming less and less prepared to meet it.^[179]

And so it came to pass that, when, in February, 1714, the new Parliament met, with a Tory majority in the Commons outnumbering their opponents by at least two to one, the Queen’s Speech could hardly have been more ambiguous in tone than it actually proved. She, like her ministers, had no wish for the House of Hanover, and saw no present chance for the Stewarts. While, therefore, discrediting all reports implying that the Protestant Succession, as settled in the House of Hanover, was in danger, the Speech also referred to the attempts ‘to weaken the Queen’s authority or to render the possession of the Crown uneasy to her’—obviously alluding to the design of bringing over a member of the Electoral family. While Bolingbroke may have been prepared to make use of this design so as to bring about a complete rupture between the Queen and the House of Hanover, Oxford could not but directly oppose a step which would have forced the hands of the Government, and removed the ultimate use of the situation out of his own wary hands. Yet nothing could have been more distinctly double-faced than his action in the early months of 1714. He dangled before Schütz the offer of a revision of the Regency Bill of 1705, which was to enable the court of Hanover to name the whole body of Regents, but which also might have furnished an opportunity for giving the quietus to the entire Bill. Not long afterwards, in March, he expressed his intention to bring in a Bill declaring the introduction of foreign troops into England an act of high treason. But ‘under which King,’ or under what Government, could the foreign troops whose arrival was thus to be prevented have been levied?^[180]

Though the calculated untrustworthiness of Oxford, and the reckless speculativeness of Bolingbroke, had by this time become as much of an open secret as had the consuming desire of the Secretary of State to supplant the Lord Treasurer, there was even now no disposition on the part of the court of Hanover to commit itself by any rash act. There had never been any real divergence of policy between the Electress and her son, the Elector, though his consistency of conduct had perhaps been the more formally complete, and we cannot follow him, as we can the Electress, in his private comments on the angular points which from time to time presented themselves in the situation. Now, they were more than ever at one in their determination to abstain from precipitate action. Robethon’s memorandum of Reasons for not sending the Electoral Prince to England (January, 1714), whether or not the Elector’s dislike of his son had anything to do with the conclusions reached, reiterated the old objection of the Electress to a course which would appear to be dictated by a desire to gratify the Whigs by offending the Tories, instead of uniting the moderate men of both parties in support of the Succession. Sophia had, by this time, come to have so little faith in either of the English political parties that, as she told Strafford, she disliked the very names of Whig and Tory; and, as an octogenarian, she was inevitably indisposed to run any great personal risk or court any serious personal change. She gave Schulenburg to understand that she would never consent to proceed to England without the Elector. Yet neither she nor her son, who might be depended upon not to start for England a day too soon, affected indifference towards the Succession; and even on the question of sending the Electoral Prince to England, there were signs that, in deference to Bothmer’s advice, this course might after all be adopted, so soon as the Emperor should have concluded his peace with France.^[181] It is no doubt in this connexion that, in the very last letter to Leibniz preserved from the hand of the Electress Sophia—which bears the date of May 20th, 1714 (N.S.)—she refers to a step which, as we shall see, she had just taken, and which Queen Anne had chosen to regard as a provocation offered to herself.

We must go back for a moment to the previous month of April, in which the relations between Queen Anne and the House of Hanover seemed to have become rather easier. Had she and her advisers—Oxford in particular—gained some special insight into the fundamental weakness of the Jacobite position? Though the secret was open enough, one is almost inclined to some conclusion of the kind, in view of a communication from Berwick to James, dated April 11th, which describes the situation so lucidly that it seems worth while to extract from it the following passage (substituting real names for the transparent pseudonyms):—

Not long afterwards, Berwick had no better advice to give his royal kinsman, than that he should keep his own counsel as to the point on which he had made up his mind, and not allow his friends in England to think the desired consummation (his adoption of the Protestant faith) an event altogether out of the question. When the signs of the times seemed so unpromising to those who watched them with the most direct and personal interest, and when, as to the problem on which chances mainly turned, they could only advise a policy of temporising and dissimulation, Oxford may well have been more desirous than ever to safeguard his own future by seeking to maintain a good understanding with the other side. In this month of April, he is accordingly found tendering assurances not only of his own devotion, but also of Lady Masham’s, to the Hanoverian Succession, and declaring his conviction that the Queen was for it; though, as towards her, he again guarded himself by deprecating the establishment of a second Court in England. About the same time, his kinsman Thomas Harley again arrived at Hanover, with a letter from the Queen to the Electress, blandly enquiring whether there was anything which in her judgment would further secure the Succession of her House. Should she have no suggestion of further guarantees to offer, this would be taken as implying that the existing guarantees were regarded as sufficient. At the same time, the House of Hanover was warned against giving any encouragement, directly or indirectly, to a faction which was working for its own advantage only. Harley brought no message from the Queen inviting any member of the House to England; and the above-mentioned enquiry, as Bolingbroke’s comments on it to Strafford implied, suggested a defiance rather than an invitation. He was specifically instructed to offer her on the part of the Queen an annuity (pension) for herself; but this the Electress, with her usual quickness of insight, declined. The revenue desired by her was, she said, one that should be granted to her in due form as Heiress Presumptive by Queen and Parliament, in accordance with the precedent of the allowance made to Queen Anne herself, when Princess of Denmark in the preceding reign. Either before or after the Electress sent this reply—on May 7th—both she and the Elector attached their signatures to a formal answer to the enquiry brought by Thomas Harley. In this important memorandum they reiterated the view which had been expressed in Schütz’s instructions, that the Succession could not be held to be really assured unless an end were put to the danger of invasion by the Pretender by his being made to leave his present residence in Lorraine, and that it was desirable to secure a revenue to the Electress by Act of Parliament. They further declared it to be desirable that a member of the House of Hanover should be established in England, in order to watch over the important interests at issue. There can be no doubt but that the Electoral Prince was the member of the family whom the memorandum had in view. The document was signed and sealed by both the Elector and the Electress; and a covering letter from the former to the Queen thanked her in the most conciliatory tone for her continued care for the Protestant Succession. This memorandum, for which the Elector was directly responsible in conjunction with his mother, takes the bottom out of the supposition that he was at this time ready, if he could do so with honour, to relinquish his claims.

But before the memorandum was actually transmitted, a cold blast had suddenly blown athwart the relations between the House of Hanover and Queen Anne. In the ordinary course of things the Electoral Prince, as Duke of Cambridge, would have, like any other English Peer, received his writ of summons to attend the Queen in Parliament. Aware, however, of her sensitiveness on the subject of the presence of a member of the Hanoverian family in England, the Lord Chancellor (Lord Harcourt) had thought proper to delay indefinitely the issue of the writ. The demand for it had originally been suggested to Schütz by the Earl of Nottingham, who, though a High Church Tory, had long broken with the court; and, though an attempt to obtain the writ from the Lord Chancellor made at the instigation of the Whig Lord Cowper had failed, Schütz had naturally felt uneasy at its issue being delayed. When, in a letter to him, the Electress Sophia had given vent to her astonishment at the fact that the patent of the Duke of Cambridge had not been in due course followed by a writ, and had expressed her opinion that the Lord Chancellor would not object to Schütz’s ‘asking for it and the reason’ (of the delay), he had interpreted this expression of opinion as a command. The Whig leaders, including the Duke of Somerset, to whom Schütz had shown the Electress’ ‘order,’ had, according to his own account, been delighted with it, and had approved of his proposal to take action upon it. In the Electress’ letter to Leibniz of May 20th, already mentioned, she explicitly states, not, as Schütz puts it, that she had ‘ordered the writ,’ but that she had directed him to enquire from the Lord Chancellor whether the Electoral Prince ought not to receive it—which is not quite the same thing. But her letter to Schütz, on which the whole matter turns, cannot be said to be ambiguous, or to allow of any interpretation but that put upon it by him.^[182] Even if it be the case that the memoranda of Hoffmann, the Imperial resident at the Court of St. James’, imply that, so far as he knew, there was no intention at Hanover of actually demanding the writ till the meeting of the next Parliament, this would not make it necessary to place a forced interpretation upon the Electress’ letter, with which in any case the Elector had no concern, and which can hardly have referred to the next Parliament, when the present was little more than two months old. The Hanoverian court had been pressed both by Marlborough and by Prince Eugene (who never believed in a policy of masterly inaction) to do what it could to obtain a summons for the Electoral Prince, and the Electress is known to have had this matter at heart, while the Elector’s feelings towards his son made him from first to last averse to carrying it into execution.

Schütz, who, it must be remembered, was accredited from the Electress as well as from the Elector, had acted in accordance with his instructions; but he can hardly be acquitted of precipitancy, and of an excessive readiness to listen to the opinion of the Whig leaders before assuring himself of the approval of the Elector. In any case, the die had now been cast. Harcourt had replied that the writ was quite ready, but that it was not customary for Peers to demand their writ except when on the spot; he would, however, mention the subject to the Queen. The Cabinet, summoned to deal with the envoy’s demand, decided that the writ could not be refused, though, according to Gaultier’s information, Bolingbroke had supported the Queen’s opinion in favour of refusing it. On April 17th, it was handed to Schütz by the Lord Chancellor, or in accordance with his orders. Being requested to state by whom he had been directed to demand the writ, Schütz seems to have mentioned the name of the Electress; but this is not attested by evidence at first hand. Schütz was speedily informed by Oxford that he would do well not to show himself at Court, and was afterwards formally prohibited from appearing there; but, as a matter of course, there was no question whatever of breaking off diplomatic relations, these being carried on for the time by Kreyenberg. Presently—on April 22nd—the envoy took his departure. On his arrival at Hanover, the Elector made a point of declining to receive Schütz; censured him for having obeyed any orders but the Elector’s; and told Thomas Harley, who, before taking his departure from Hanover, waited on him, with his whole posse of Englishmen, that Schütz had never been instructed to demand the writ, and that he (the Elector) had never intended to send his son to England without the knowledge of the Queen. This formula may perhaps be reconcilable with the information given by Robethon to Lord Polwarth,^[183] according to which the Elector, though he knew nothing about the demand for the writ, would have sent the Electoral Prince to England in the end, had it not been for the Queen’s letter to be mentioned immediately, which ‘changed the entire system.’ There seems to have been a good deal of feeling at Hanover—a feeling shared both by the Whig leaders in England and by Bothmer at the Hague—that, the writ having been now secured, the Electoral Prince should be sent over. But this the Elector refused to do; and the success with which he had thus kept out of the whole of this transaction—the single wrong move made on the Hanoverian side in the whole course of the game—must be placed to the credit of his judgment, whatever course he may have intended to take at a later date. But how far both he and the Electress were from being intimidated by the displeasure of the Queen, is shown by the fact that at Thomas Harley’s farewell audience the Elector placed in his hands the outspoken memorandum signed by the Electress and himself on May 7th. As for Sophia, the tone of her letter to Leibniz containing a narrative of the entire transaction is perfectly cool; and in it she as usual expresses the belief that, in spite of her recent illness, Queen Anne will outlive her Heiress Presumptive, and cites the proverb, ‘krakende Wagens gân lang.’^[184] Her reply to Strafford’s letter entreating her to signify her disapproval of Schütz’s action is unfortunately lost, though its purport was said to have been the same as that of the Elector’s parting declaration to Thomas Harley. The situation seemed far less terrific at Hanover than it did in London, where the Queen’s wrath was visibly ablaze, so that the House of Commons deferred voting payment of the arrears due to the Hanoverian troops, and where it was believed that if the Electoral Prince were after all sent over an invitation to the Pretender would follow. Moreover (though this is a matter into which it is impossible to enter here), the opposite views taken by Oxford and Bolingbroke as to the final issue of the writ undoubtedly helped materially to hasten the fleeting triumph of the younger over the older minister.

From what has been said it will appear how greatly the facts of the case are exaggerated and distorted in the tradition attributing the death of the Electress Sophia, which took place at Herrenhausen on June 8th, 1714, to the agitation caused by the letter addressed to her by Queen Anne in connexion with the affair of the writ, and accompanied by two letters from the Queen on the same subject to the Elector and the Electoral Prince. Undeniably, the Queen’s letter to the Electress Sophia, though taking a less severe form of reprimand than the companion missive to the Electoral Prince, was both offensive and insolent; for Queen Anne, who (with the exception of the Prayer-book Order) had taken no step towards admitting the Electress and her descendants into the royal family, could not lay claim to any formal authority over them. That this view was widely taken of the letters may be gathered from the fact that Boyer (Swift’s ‘Whig dog’), who had been taken into custody on a warrant from Bolingbroke for publishing them, was, a few months after the accession of George I, discharged—so that their publication was evidently regarded as having proved serviceable towards that result. Nor was the effect of the letters likely to be mitigated by the honeyed protestations of Oxford, whose system of procedure the letters almost hopelessly traversed, in a communication to the Elector accompanying them. The sharp wit of the Electoral Princess Caroline suspected that it was not he, but Bolingbroke, who was their draughtsman; and there can be little or no doubt as to the correctness of this surmise. It cannot but have been shared by the old Electress, and must have contributed to make her stand firm against a blow contrived by an all but avowed adversary of the lawful claims of herself and her House.

Yet there can be no doubt that at the time the death of the Electress Sophia was very generally connected with, if not directly attributed to, the advent of the Queen’s letters. The very straightforward account transmitted to Marlborough by Molyneux, who had been sent to Hanover by the Duke to counteract the effects of Thomas Harley’s mission, shows the Electress to have been much agitated on the evening of the day (Wednesday, June 6th) on which, about noon, the letters had been delivered to her at Herrenhausen. On the following day, though Molyneux was told she was not well, she ordered him to send copies of the letters to Marlborough;^[185] on Friday, June 8th, she seemed well, but was still occupied with the subject and ordering fresh copies of the letters; she dined with the Elector, and in the evening was, according to her habit, walking in the gardens, when rain suddenly fell. As she quickened her speed in order to find a shelter, she dropped down and rapidly passed away. The letters of the Countess of Bückeburg^[186] to the Electress’ niece and constant companion during the last fifteen years, the Raugravine Louisa, corroborates this account, and adds one or two significant touches. On the Wednesday the Electress said to the writer of the letter: ‘This affair will certainly make me ill—I shall never get over it’ (j’y succombrai). ‘But,’ she added, ‘I shall have this gracious letter printed, so that all the world may see that it will not have been by my fault, if my children lose the three Kingdoms.’ And, on the Friday, though to all appearance in her usual strength, she continued to talk of English affairs with the Electoral Princess. And, since the Electoral Princess Caroline herself informed Leibniz, on June 7th, that the Electress and the Electoral Prince intended to send the Queen’s letters to England, it may be concluded that this high-spirited but rather venturesome design still further excited the old lady. Although the outer world had continued to believe her to be as full of vigour as ever, she had of late begun to take some thought of her health—a notable sign, inasmuch as ordinarily she set no high value on medical advice, being of opinion that no doctor can predict anything with certainty except that a person who died in February will not be ill in March. Probably, she was aware of the tendency to apoplexy which, already thirteen years earlier, her faithful friend Leibniz had observed in her. On the whole, the natural conclusion appears to be that the agitation produced in her by the Queen’s letters, together with her own resolution not to sit still under the affront, contributed to the collapse of a frame enfeebled by advanced old age, but that this trouble was the occasion rather than the cause of her decease. For her epitaph seems to tell the truth when, in perfect agreement with the Countess of Bückeburg’s statement that ‘never was there seen a death more gentle or more happy,’ it describes the Electress’ death as having been not less peaceful than sudden. Her character lies almost open to us in her private letters, and, as she told Leibniz in April, 1713, she had made it a principle to keep her mind tranquil, and not to allow it to be affected by either public or private troubles. As to her death, she had written to him a little later, it would no doubt be a finer affair if, in accordance with his wishes, her remains were interred at Westminster; ‘but the truth is that my mind, which hitherto has managed to rule my body, at present suggests no such sad thoughts to me, and that the talk about the Succession annoys me.’ Read in the way in which so many of her letters ought to be read, as half-ironical, the words just quoted attest the self-control and self-possession that were on the whole the most noteworthy features in the character of this remarkable woman. But neither this passage, nor anything else that remains from her hand, contradicts the belief which is derived from a review of her entire career, that from first to last she proved herself equal to the responsibilities of her life, and that, had she been actually called to the throne, she would have been not less ready than worthy to reign as a Queen.

We possess a minute official account of the proceedings after the Electress Sophia’s death—of the sealing-up of her personal effects by the Elector’s orders; of the embalming of the corpse, the night-watch over it, and its transportation on the evening of the following day to Hanover.^[187] Unfortunately, the list of those who paid her the last honours at Herrenhausen does not include the names of the ladies and ‘cavaliers’ who had been in personal attendance upon her.^[188] Her remains were deposited in the chapel of the royal palace—the old church of the Minorites—at Hanover, with proper care and decorum, but, as is formally stated, ‘without ceremony,’ i.e. without any religious service. A record likewise exists of the Court-mourning ordered, and the black draping of the chapel and of the apartments of the late Electress and the members of the Electoral family at Herrenhausen. To make the formal announcement of his mother’s death and of his own assumption of her claims to the British Succession, the Elector George Lewis once more sent Bothmer to London, the real object of the choice being of course the intention that this most capable diplomatist should, while keeping on good terms with the Queen’s ministers, concert further action with the Whig leaders. On June 15th, the Elector signed certain powers for the event of the Queen’s death, which would have given to his envoy an authority superior to that of the Lords Justices; but, as theirs rested on an Act of Parliament, the special authority entrusted to Bothmer was really as futile as that which had in similar terms been previously conferred on the elder Schütz, Grote, and the younger Schütz in turn. Bothmer’s reports show that Bolingbroke was believed to be acting in the interest of the Pretender; and of the truth of this charge, after he had succeeded in ousting Oxford from office, the latter, who had himself continued to be suspected of Jacobitism, personally assured the Elector’s envoy. On the part of Queen Anne, the Earl of Clarendon, a Tory Peer of high connexion, but of marked incapacity,^[189] arrived at Hanover on July 7th to express to the Elector the Queen’s sympathy with his loss. Clarendon, who had been entrusted with an extraordinary mission to Hanover before the occurrence of the Electress’ death, also brought with him an answer to the Electoral memorandum of May 7th, drafted by Bolingbroke, which declined all the demands made in the memorandum. Clarendon was charged with some polite explanations; but the Elector had no intention of trusting either to these or to the chapter of accidents. With an alertness rarely shown by him before his mother’s death in regard to matters connected with the Succession, he promptly caused a fresh instrument of Regency comprising his own nominations of Lords Justices to be prepared: and from this revised list Marlborough was omitted—either because he was not in England, or in consequence of a knowledge on the part of the Elector of the double game which even now the Duke was playing. At Hanover things seemed to be taking their usual course; but the visit paid to the Elector early in August by his nephew, the new King Frederick William I of Prussia, was not without its significance. For George Lewis was already taking thought of the safety of his Electorate in the event of his being called to England, and welcomed the assurances of support received by him from the King of Prussia and other German Princes. They could not know, but they might well suspect, the secret offers of assistance which Louis XIV had made to Queen Anne through Bolingbroke, and which the latter had contingently accepted. It was a few days after the termination of the King of Prussia’s visit that the news arrived in Hanover of the death of Queen Anne on August 1st.

The events which had crowded on one another between the death of the Electress Sophia and that of Queen Anne belong, not to Sophia’s biography, but to that of the sovereign whose Heir Presumptive was now Sophia’s son. That this heir was a ruling foreign prince, whom no immediate descent or early associations connected with the House of Stewart, and whose own dealings (apart from his mother’s) with English politicians had been to all intents and purposes entirely with Whigs, could not but intensify the aversion from the Hanoverian Succession entertained not only by the Jacobites but also, though in a less degree, by those of the Tories whose political sentiments were in nearest touch with theirs. The bonds of party union had just been drawn closer among the Tories at large by the Schism Act, and the Church had been more decisively than before rallied to the Government. But even so, Oxford was still unable to make up his mind to risk everything by inviting or allowing the Pretender to appear on English ground. Hence, not quite a fortnight after the Electress Sophia’s death, the proclamation against the Pretender was issued, and, a fortnight later (July 9th), Parliament was prorogued to an early date in August.

During the interval, it was manifest, the Queen must make up her mind between her two chief counsellors, of whom one still thought it possible to tack and tack about, while the other was still hoping for a wind so strong and straight that he might drift before it into the desired port. The Queen decided for Bolingbroke, and, on July 27th, Oxford was dismissed from office. Bolingbroke’s moment had come, but he was unequal to its call. Instead of bringing the Pretender to England, he thought that even now there remained time for him to weld the Tory party still more closely together, by means of his Church policy above all, and to form a Jacobite Ministry that would be in readiness at the critical moment, while in any case the Whigs must be prevented from bringing over the Elector or the Electoral Prince in the interval. Bolingbroke and those in his confidence were very hopeful in this their brief day of authority; but the Whigs were more than hopeful—they were prepared.^[190] The organisation set on foot by their leaders overspread the country, and the very symbol or token of action was agreed upon, while Marlborough was waiting at Ostend to resume the command of the army. And, throughout the great body of the middle classes in England—among the Nonconformists in particular—a ready expectancy awaited the accomplishment of the Protestant Succession.

At last, and with a most extraordinary rapidity in the sequence of its events, the end came. The malady to which Queen Anne was to succumb announced itself on July 27th. By July 30th the anxiety had become so grave that, at a meeting of the Cabinet and of a few Privy Councillors not forming part of it, presided over by Shrewsbury, orders were issued to close the ports, to hold twenty men-of-war in readiness, and to make the Lord Mayor responsible for the safety of the City of London. On the following day, the control of affairs finally passed out of Bolingbroke’s hands, when, after a meeting of the whole Privy Council, at which Bothmer and Kreyenberg were present, the Queen, in accordance with the Council’s recommendation, placed the Lord Treasurer’s staff in Shrewsbury’s hands. A courier was sent to Strafford at the Hague, to remind the authorities there of the guarantee to which they were bound by treaty; and the British troops were recalled from the Netherlands. Early in the morning of August 1st, the Queen lay dead. Everything was in readiness. Kreyenberg made his appearance with a box containing the commission of the Lords Justices; and of the eighteen names included in it thirteen were found to be those of Whigs. During the morning, Peers, Privy Councillors, and Members of the House of Commons flocked in to append their signatures to the proclamation notifying the death of Queen Anne and the accession of King George. It was read by the heralds at Charing Cross and Temple Bar, and within the City; and a few days later the King was again proclaimed there, as well as at Edinburgh and Dublin. The Houses of Parliament, which had assembled for formal business on the day of the Queen’s death, four days later voted loyal addresses to her successor.

Bothmer, who had controlled the entire process of these transactions,^[191] had promptly despatched his secretary, Goedeke, to carry to King George the great news of his accession. He arrived at Hanover on the morning of August 6th, just a day after Secretary Craggs, who brought, with other missives, a letter addressed to the Elector on the day before the Queen’s death, and informing him that everything was in readiness for his immediate journey to England so soon as that death should actually have taken place. On August 8th, the Earl of Dorset—a young Whig Lord, described, in his later days, by a severe critic as ‘a perfect English courtier’—arrived from England with his suite, to make the official announcement on behalf of the Lords Justices. Doubt has been thrown on the statement that Goedeke, having reached Hanover, communicated the news to Clarendon, who had returned from dining with the Elector and Baroness von Kielmannsegg at her villa, Fantaisie, and who at once bore the tidings to George I at Herrenhausen. In any case, the formal announcement to the new King was made by Dorset on August 9th, when he was received by George in the flower-garden of the Orangery at Herrenhausen. Inasmuch as, on that very day, the Earl of Berkeley assumed the command of the imposing naval squadron which, a little more than a week afterwards, anchored off the Dutch coast, there was no reason why the new King should delay his departure. Whether, however, because of his confidence in the circumspection of his English friends, or because of his attachment to his Electorate, George I was in no hurry. To be in no hurry may be accounted one of the minor virtues in a monarch. He left Herrenhausen on the morning of August 31st, bidding farewell to his and his mother’s favourite place of sojourn in words which, if the court chronicler is to be trusted, betray more of sentiment than he was in the habit of expressing, but at the same time show him to have had no intention of breaking with the traditions of the past. ‘Farewell, dear place, where I have spent so many enjoyable and tranquil hours. I leave you, but not for ever; for I hope to see you again from time to time.’

In the same spirit, George I’s departure was left unmarked by any solemnity or ceremonial whatever. He was accompanied on his journey by his son, with whom the death of the old Electress seems to have furnished him with an opportunity of placing himself for the time on seemlier terms. The Princess (Caroline of Ansbach) followed rather later, with her children.^[192] The King’s favourite brother, Prince Ernest Augustus, remained behind in Hanover, chiefly, no doubt, in order that he might fill the Elector’s place at the Privy Council there, and also for the purpose of taking care of his expectations at Osnabrück, which were realised a year later, when he succeeded to the bishopric formerly held by his father, his elder brother, Maximilian William, being, as a convert to Rome, left out in the cold. Six months later, the Bishop^[193] was created Duke of York. At the Hague, the royal party was joined by Baroness von Kielmannsegg; Melusina von der Schulenburg followed in due course. With the King were his prime minister, Bernstorff, and Baron von Schlitz-Görz, who was to succeed Bernstorff in the same capacity at Hanover, besides three Privy Councillors, of whom Robethon was one, and a small Chancery staff. The chief officers of the Hanoverian Court, and a fairly ample household, including ‘Mr. Mehmet and Mr. Mustapha,’ live remembrances of the King’s Turkish campaigns, raised the royal retinue to the moderate total of something less than one hundred persons.

Bolingbroke afterwards asserted that King George, though he had quitted Hanover in the apparent resolution of leaving the Tory Government in England unmolested, had during his stay in Holland, in consequence of earnest importunities on the part of the Allies, and particularly of Heinsius and some of the Whigs, come to a contrary decision. How far this assertion, and the belief that the impeachment of the Tory leaders was due more particularly to the inspiration of Bothmer, are correct, the present is not an occasion for enquiring; but enough has been said in the course of this narrative to indicate that George I was not easily led, or easily turned.

On September 16th, 1714, the new King of Great Britain sailed from Oranie Polder; on the 18th he landed at Greenwich; and two days later he held his entry into London. His Coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on October 18th. Few men who have laid claim to so dazzling and so elusive a prize as that which fell to his lot have maintained their claim with so calm a resolve and so consistent a self-restraint. Whether or not circumstances—such as an armed landing on the English coast by the Pretender, or merely his personal appearance on English soil—might have led to a counter-attempt on the part of the Heir Presumptive to assert his claim to the throne in person, who shall say? And who will lay it down whether in putting his right to the test, even at the risk of civil war, he would have done wrong? Such a step he had not been called upon to take; and his course of conduct had remained consistent throughout. Although he had little personal inclination for the change which his accession to the British throne involved, this should not detract from the tribute due to his conduct before that accession. As his claim descended to him from his mother, so he had inherited from her some, though not all, of the qualities which, in her, well became the Heiress of Great Britain. True to the friends of his House, and without fear of its enemies, he professed no feeling which he did not entertain, and shrank from no duty that was imposed upon him.

The princely sense of honour to which the Electress Sophia and her son were true in accepting the great responsibility to which they were called by the Act of Settlement was beyond a doubt their primary motive in meeting it. But, at the same time, they were alike fully conscious of the significance of the cause embodied in the Protestant Succession; nor was the triumph of that cause, to which Sophia looked forward with hardly a thought of self, merely or mainly the fulfilment of a great dynastic ambition.