Chapter 30 of 30 · 4761 words · ~24 min read

CHAPTER XXIX.

RETRIBUTION. (1727.)

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain. SHAKESPEARE, _King Richard III_.

Over in England the King heard the news of his wife’s death with ill-concealed concern, born not of remorse, but fear. In his superstitious soul he remembered the prophecy and trembled. His forebodings of evil were not lessened when Prince Waldeck arrived from Hanover with secret despatches, which gave a detailed account of the awful deathbed at Ahlden and the dying woman’s appeal to the retribution of Heaven. Nor did the King derive much comfort from his withered mistresses, for the Duchess of Kendal, to whom he confided all, had a firm faith in omens, visions, and soothsayers, and was even more troubled than he. By way of averting the curse she became more devout than ever, and attended church as many as four times a day, notwithstanding the fact that the Lutheran minister at the German Chapel Royal refused her the communion on the ground that she was living in unrepentant adultery. King George sought to shake off his depression by every means in his power, and the very evening that he learned the tidings his wife was no more he sought distraction by going to see a performance of the Italian comedians at the Haymarket, accompanied by the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Darlington. The next day he commanded a special performance at the King’s Theatre, which was followed by others, though up to now the play was a pastime he had very rarely indulged in. But all his efforts were ineffectual, for the shade of his victim haunted him, and her dying cry for vengeance rang in his ears. Sophie Dorothea was more powerful in death than in life.

Outwardly the court of St. James ignored the event, and, beyond a line in the _London Gazette_ to the effect that the “Duchess of Ahlden” had died at Ahlden on a date specified, the death of the wife of the King of England and the mother of the King to be received no official notice whatever. But the court of Hanover on receipt of the news from Ahlden had very properly assumed mourning, as on the occasion of the decease of the Duchess of Celle. When King George heard this he waxed exceeding wroth, and sent peremptory orders to the Hanoverian officials to return to their ordinary wear. His anger was increased when he learned that the court of Berlin had decreed the deepest mourning, as for a Queen of England who was also mother of the Queen of Prussia. It was a natural mark of respect for the daughter to pay, and it showed to all the world that she believed her mother to be an injured woman. George I. resented the court mourning at Berlin as a personal affront, and protested; but his protest was in vain. Thus did his mean malice pursue his victim even in death.

Meanwhile the body of Sophie Dorothea lay in a plain leaden coffin in the vaults of the castle of Ahlden, awaiting the King’s orders. None dared pay the remains any honour, nor even give them a decent and Christian burial, for fear of offending the tyrant in England. With the new year (1727) Prince Waldeck came back from London with the royal command that the “Duchess of Ahlden” should be buried with as little ceremony as possible in a grave dug in the garden of the castle. But the season was rainy and the Aller overflowed its banks, and though the grave-diggers dug again and again in the swampy ground the waters always rushed into the grave and rendered their labours vain. It was impossible to communicate quickly with the King across the sea, so the coffin was ignominiously carried back again to the cellar, covered over with a heap of sand, and left until further orders. It would have been left there until now, for all the King cared, had he not been a prey to superstitious fears. He could not sleep, he could not rest, and life was becoming a burden to him. This may have been due to advancing years and an impaired digestion, for he was a coarse and heavy eater; but the Duchess of Kendal declared that she was warned in a dream that it was all the work of the unquiet spirit of Sophie Dorothea, and her ghost would never rest, nor let the King rest, until her body was laid by the side of her ancestors at Celle.

[Illustration: THE CHURCH AT CELLE, WHERE SOPHIE DOROTHEA IS BURIED.]

One May morning, therefore, a King’s messenger arrived at Ahlden from England with orders, under the royal sign manual, that the remains of the “Duchess of Ahlden” should be interred in the ducal burial-vaults in the old church of Celle as quietly and expeditiously as possible. That same night the body was taken from the cellar, hoisted on to a vehicle, and conveyed across the moorland to Celle, where it arrived while the little town was still sleeping. Three or four workmen from the castle were waiting in the church and everything was in readiness. Without any ceremony or religious service the coffin was hurried down to the vaults under the chancel, where it lies until this day.

The church above is full of effigies of Sophie Dorothea’s ancestors, whose deeds and renown are blazoned forth in brass and marble and painted glass; but there is neither memorial nor inscription to mark the last resting-place of the heiress of Celle, who, by virtue of her sufferings, was the most famous of them all. In the dark vault below, her remains could not be identified at all were it not for a small shield on the top right-hand corner of the coffin, containing her name and the dates of birth and death. Hard by in the “French Garden” of Celle there stands a monument to Caroline Matilda, Princess of England and Queen of Denmark, whose sad lot closely resembled that of her ancestress Sophie Dorothea, and whose body was deposited in the same vault half a century later. But of the heiress of Celle, direct ancestress of two of the mightiest sovereigns in the modern world, there exists no monument whatever. Now that the flight of years has obliterated the bitterness which clung around her name it is surely time that some memorial were raised to her memory. And where more fitting than in the place of her birth, near the grey walls of the old castle? She was the last princess of Celle, and in the hearts of the people the tradition of her beauty and her woes still lingers.

The vision which appeared to the Duchess of Kendal must have been a lying spirit, for though Sophie Dorothea slept with her forefathers, no relief came to her oppressor. King George was overwrought, nervous, and dispirited. His government was honeycombed with intrigues, his quarrel with his son was intensified in bitterness; and not all his avaricious mistresses with their ruddled cheeks could give him comfort. He was consumed with a desire to return to Hanover. Peradventure, like certain criminals, he felt impelled to revisit the scene of his crime.

On June 3, 1727, a month after the tardy burial of his victim, the King set out from England for Hanover. Travelling night and day, he reached Dalden on the far frontier of Holland at midnight on June 9th. Here he stopped to change horses and he devoured a huge supper. Instead of tarrying for the night, as his suite expected and his travelling physician advised, for he had eaten heavily and was worn out with the long journey, the King was seized with an overpowering restlessness to reach Hanover, and started off again at three o’clock in the morning.

As the royal coach rumbled out of the courtyard a man stepped forth from the shadow and threw a document through the window on to the King’s knees. Neither his Majesty nor his escort thought anything of the incident, supposing the paper to be one of those many petitions with which George was wont to be pestered on his return to the electorate. By the grey light of the dawn the King broke the seal and read, and as he read his hands shook and his face grew ashen. It was a letter from his dead wife, written when she felt the hand of death upon her. The trusty messenger, to whom she had given the packet, had waited and waited until the King should come from England that he might surely deliver it into his hands. It was an awful letter for a woman to write, doubly awful for the man to receive. It was penned evidently when Sophie Dorothea’s brain was on fire with her wrongs—when her reason was trembling in the balance; in it she reiterated her sufferings and his cruelty, cursed him with her dying breath, and summoned him to meet her within a year and a day before the judgment throne of God, there to answer for the wrong he had done her. To the trembling tyrant it came like a voice from the dead. He recalled again the prophecy that he would not long outlive his wife, and now came the confirmation of his fears. He heard his victim, like an accusing angel, calling him to his doom—a year and a day—a year and a day,—and that was last November. The letter fell from his nerveless hands, there was a rush of blood to his eyes, a beating in his brain, and he fell forward in a fit.

In great alarm the equerry called a halt, and the long procession of coaches and escort, pulled up by the wayside. But the King recovered almost immediately, and, insisting that it was nothing, angrily commanded them to proceed. Landen, the next stopping-place, was reached in a few hours, and here dinner awaited the royal traveller. But the King could not eat. His indisposition was evidently worse than he would admit. The surgeons bled him and dosed him and advised a rest; but their patient would hear no reason, his one desire was to push forward to his beloved Hanover.

Quitting Landen at sunset, the royal _cortége_ thundered forward with all speed. An hour later the King became much worse, but he hastened on as though pursued by a legion of furies. His escort would fain have halted; but still the King urged them on, leaning forward from the window, and shouting “To Osnabrück! to Osnabrück!” as the horses galloped through the gathering dusk. Osnabrück was reached at ten o’clock; but by that time the King had again collapsed, falling forward into the arms of his gentleman-in-waiting. They bore him into the palace, now occupied by his youngest brother Ernest Augustus, bled him again, chafed his clenched hands, applied restoratives; but all in vain. George never recovered consciousness, and died at midnight in the very room where he was born sixty-seven years before. He had obeyed the dread summons, and had gone to meet his wife before the judgment throne of God.

Thus died George I., the first of our Hanoverian kings, unloved and unmourned—nay, not quite unmourned, for even this man had one who loved him. His aged mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, had not been able to pack up in time to travel with her liege, but was following him with all speed. When the news of his death was brought her on the road she gave way to the loudest demonstrations of grief, beating her breast, tearing her hair, and filling the air with lamentations. She had lived with him nigh on forty years, and though he had not been true to her—for it was not his nature to be true to any one—in his way he had been fond of her; she had become as indispensable to him as he had to her.

The new King, George II., did nothing so far as we know to clear his mother’s memory, though Horace Walpole writes: “The second George loved his mother as much as he hated his father, and purposed, it was said, if she had survived, to have brought her over and declared her Queen-Dowager. Lady Suffolk told me her surprise, on going to the new Queen the morning after George I.’s death, at seeing hung up in the Queen’s dressing-room the whole length of a lady in royal robes, and in the bed-chamber a half-length of the same person, which Lady Suffolk had never seen before.”[249] They were pictures of his mother, which the Prince had till then kept concealed. This hardly tallies with Lord Hervey’s testimony of George II.’s reticence concerning his mother, “whom,” he writes, “on no occasion I ever heard him mention, not even inadvertently or indirectly, any more than if such a person had ever had a being”.[250] The Jacobites used to call George II. “the little Königsmarck” (an unfounded libel if ever there was one!), and this may have accounted for his silence. Another poetaster twitted “dapper George” with being governed by his Queen, and advised him

... if you would have us fall down and adore you, Lock up your fat spouse, as your dad did before you,

which shows that Sophie Dorothea’s imprisonment at Ahlden was fairly familiar to the English public.

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Footnote 249:

Walpole’s _Reminiscences_.

Footnote 250:

Lord Hervey’s _Memoirs_.

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That the true story of his mother’s life became known to George II. is certain, for on his first visit to Hanover after ascending the throne of England he ordered the secret records of the divorce proceedings, and some of the incriminating letters to be brought to him, and read them through carefully. Extraordinary care was taken at Hanover to suppress any and every compromising document or paper which contained mention of Sophie Dorothea or Königsmarck. Despite these precautions, the most damning evidence of all came to light. Some workmen employed in renovating the wing formerly occupied by Sophie Dorothea in the Palace of Hanover, came across the skeleton of a man, almost unrecognisable from quicklime, but, from a ring and fragments of clothing, was identified as that of the missing Count Königsmarck. Orders were given that the place should be bricked up again, and the remains were thrust out of sight once for all—probably pulverised and cast into the river Leine.

[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF OSNABRÜCK.]

These things go to prove that the son lacked the courage to do justice to his mother’s memory, or he believed her guilty. In death, as in life, Sophie Dorothea continued to be the family skeleton of the House of Hanover.

But we can afford to be more merciful in our judgment. Whatever were the faults of her youth, she atoned for them fourfold. Her dauntless spirit, her fortitude, her dignified resignation through long years of captivity, invest her memory with a halo of suffering. Her love and her sorrows plead for her—her sorrows most of all, for it may be doubted if either history or romance can offer a parallel to the long-drawn agony of the life of this uncrowned queen.

APPENDIX.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES QUOTED, AND BOOKS TO WHICH REFERENCE HAS BEEN MADE.

UNPUBLISHED MSS.

_The Correspondence of Princess Sophie Dorothea and Philip Christopher, Count Königsmarck, 1691-1693_ (in French). Preserved in the University Library of Lund, Sweden.

_The Despatches and Correspondence of Sir William Dutton Colt, Envoy-Extraordinary to the Princes of Brunswick and Lüneburg, 1689-1693._ In the State Paper Office, London.

_The Despatches and Correspondence of Mr. Cresset (who succeeded Sir W. D. Colt at Hanover) and his Secretaries, 1693-1702._ In the State Paper Office, London.

_The Despatches of Mr. Poley (who succeeded Mr. Cresset at Hanover), 1705._ In the State Paper Office, London.

_Sundry Letters of Mr. Stepney, sometime British Envoy to the Court of Dresden, 1694-1695._ In the State Paper Office, London.

_Sundry Letters and Papers_ (in French and German), specified elsewhere. Preserved in the Royal Archives and Library, Hanover, and at Brunswick and Dresden.

SOME PUBLISHED WORKS.

_Die Herzogin von Ahlden, Stammutter der Königlichen Häuser Hannover und Preussen._ Leipzig, 1852. Now out of print. Written anonymously by Count Schulenburg-Klosterrode.

_Die Prinzessin von Ahlden._ By Dr. Adolph Köcher. Two articles in _Sybel’s Historische Zeitschrift_, 1882, vol. xlviii.

_Römischen Octavia_, 1707, vol. vi. By Duke Antony Ulrich of Wolfenbüttel.

_The Magazine of the Historical Association of Lower Saxony_, 1879.

_Sophie Dorothea, Prinzessin von Ahlden und Kurfürstin Sophie von Hannover._ By A. F. H. Schaumann. Hanover, 1879.

_Briefe der Herzogin von Orleans, Elizabeth Charlotte, an die Kurfürstin Sophie von Hannover._

_Briefe der Prinzessin Elizabeth Charlotte von Orleans, 1676-1722._

_Memoiren der Herzogin Sophie, nachmals Kurfürstin von Hannover._ Dr. Adolph Köcher. Leipzig, 1879.

_Memoires du règne de George I._ “Anon.” The Hague, 1729.

_Letters with Varied Contents._ Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1772.

_Geschichte der Herzogin von Ahlden._ Copenhagen, 1786.

_Short Narrative of My Fate and Imprisonment._ Hamburg, 1840. Edited by “W. L. Mollor” (Major Müller).

This purports to be an autobiography written by the Princess Sophie Dorothea, but it is spurious. Yet the deeds and letters quoted show that the author had access to genuine documents, and show the writer to be Major Müller, librarian to the late Duke of Cambridge, Regent of Hanover.

_Memoirs of Sophie Dorothea._ Two vols. London, 1845. Out of print. Translated into the German also. Written anonymously. [By Major Müller, sometime librarian to the late Duke of Cambridge.]

This covers much the same ground as the _Short Narrative_, and also contains some authentic documents and papers. Like the _Short Narrative_ it is evidently based on Duke Antony Ulrich’s _Octavia_. But the “Diary of Conversations,” in vol. ii., purporting to be written by Sophie Dorothea, is undoubtedly spurious.

_Aurora Königsmarck._ By Professor W. F. Palmbald. Six vols. Translated from the Swedish into the German. Leipzig, 1853. Out of print.

_Memoirs of Aurora von Königsmarck._ By Cramer.

An article on _Fresh Contributions to the History of the Hanoverian Princess Sophie Dorothea_. By Edward Bodemann.

_Histoire Secrette de la Duchesse d’Hanover, Épouse de Georges Premier._ London, 1732. Ascribed to Baron von Poëllnitz (some say erroneously).

_The Electress Sophia._ Article in _The Quarterly Review_, vol. 161.

_Eléonore d’Olbreuse._ By the Baroness von Amstel. Article in _Nineteenth Century_, 1898.

INDEX.

Act of Settlement, 100 Ahlden, prisoner of, 388 — Author’s notes on, 392 Alte Palais at Hanover, 60 Amalie Wilhelmina, Countess Lewenhaupt, 82 Angelica d’Olbreuse, 11 Anne, Princess of York, 38 — Queen of England, 411 — death of, 420 Antony Ulrich, Duke of Wolfenbüttel, 1 — _Roman Octavia_, 417 Appendix, 445 Arenswald, Madame von, 396 Augustus, Duke of Brunswick, 1 — Frederick of Wolfenbüttel, 21 — betrothed to Sophie Dorothea, 22 — death of, 25 — the Strong (Elector of Saxony), 89 — and Aurora Königsmarck, 369 Aurora Königsmarck, 82 — and Augustus the Strong, 369 Authorities quoted, 445 Author’s notes on Ahlden, 392

Bar, Count de, 425 Bergest, Count Sigismund, 396 Berlin, 250 Bernstorff, Prime Minister of Celle, 33 Bill of Succession, 41 Bohemia, Queen of, 7 Books of reference, 445 Borosky, 86 Bothmer, Charles Augustus von, 396 Boyne, battle of the, 109 Brandenburg, Elector of, 69 — Electress of, 69 — death of, 414 Breda, 7 Brockhausen, the tryst at, 256 Brunswick, 111 Buccolini, Lucas (Bucco or Buccow), 3 — Signora, 3 Bull-baiting, 83 Bülow, Minister of Celle, 374 Bussche, Councillor, 30 — marriage of, 31 — Madame, Mistress of George Louis, 32 — banished from Hanover, 59 — George von, 396

Cambridge and Prince George Louis, 42 Carlsbad, 109 Caroline, Consort of George IV., 1 — of Anspach, marriage of, 415 Catherine of Braganza, 38 Celle, Castle of, 13 Charleroy, 39 Charles II. of England, 4 Charles, Prince of Brunswick-Lüneburg, 108 — death of, 108 Christian Louis, Duke of Celle, 1 Christian, Duke of Celle, 9 Coalition against Louis XIV., 98 Colt, Sir William Dutton, 101 Consarbrück, 39 Correspondence between Sophie Dorothea and Königsmarck, 174 — history and authenticity of the, 118 Correspondence, theory of key to cypher, 126 — between Knesebeck and Königsmarck, 198 Court mistresses, 32 Cresset, envoy at Hanover, 354 Crossing the Rubicon, 156

Danes, campaign against, 277 Darlington, Countess of, 426 Denmark, King of, 325 De Reuss, Comte, 11 De Tarente, Princess, 7 Dist, 243 D’Olbreuse, Angelica, 11 — Eléonore, 8 — Marquis, 8 Doubts and fears, 189

East Friesland, Princess-Dowager of, 160 Edict of Nantes, 7 Elector Palatine of the Rhenish Provinces, 4 Electors of the German Empire, 99 Eléonore d’Olbreuse, 7 — married to George William, 10 — Madame von Harburg, 10 — progress of, 13 — Countess of Wilhelmsburg, 19 — Duchess of Celle, 23 — will of, 412 — death of, 428 Elizabeth, daughter of James I., 3 — Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans, 18 Epsdorff, 146 Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, 1 Ernest Augustus betrothed to Sophia, 6 — married to Sophia, 6 — attempt to murder, 157

Flanders, campaign in, 150 Fortière, Seigneur de la, 371 Foubert’s Academy, 84 Frankfort Fair, 233 Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, 1 Frederick, Prince Palatine, ex-King of Bohemia, 3 — the Great of Prussia, 75 — Augustus of Saxony, 89 — Elector of Saxony, 329 — William, Crown Prince of Prussia, 416

Gadd, J. H., assistant-librarian at Lund, 122 Gardie, Count de la, 121 George, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, 1 — Augustus of Hanover (George II.), birth of, 65 — reminiscences, 405 — attempt to see Sophie Dorothea, 406 — marriage of, 415 — Frederick, Elector of Saxony, 329 — Louis (George I.), birth of, 6 — goes a-wooing, 38 — disposition of, 39 — at the Court of Louis XIV., 39 — visit to England, 40 — betrothed to Sophie Dorothea, 49 — married to Sophie Dorothea, 58 — illness of, 150 — Elector of Hanover, 399 — Knight of the Garter, 409 — King of England, 421 — entry into London, 422 — death of, 441 — William, Duke of Hanover, 1 — betrothed to Sophia, 5 — wooing of Eléonore, 8 — Duke of Celle, 9 — married to Eléonore, 10 — fondness for George II., 405 — death of, 412 German Empire, Electors of, 99 Germany, Emperor of, 14 Ghent, 316 Gloucester, Duke of, 400 Glove, the embroidered, 107 Göhre, 146 Green, Mrs. Everett, 122

Hague, Congress at the, 112 Hamelin, Castle of, 158 Hanover, Court of, 59 — Alte Palais, 60 Harburg, Madame von, 10 Heidelberg, 5 Henry the Lion, Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, 1 Herrenhausen, 61 Hildebrand, Königsmarck’s secretary, 353 Hungary, campaign in, 326

Ilse, Abigail, 75 Ilten, General von, 72 — Madame von, 72

James I. of England, 3 — II. of England, 71 John Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, 1

Kendal, Duchess of, 426 — Countess of Darlington, 426 Knesebeck, Eléonore von, 63 — arrest of, 358 — prisoner at Springe, 374 — examination of, 374 — removal to Schartzfels, 374 — escape of, 403 Köcher, Dr., 373 Königsmarck, Amalie Wilhelmina, 82 — Aurora, 82 — Count Carl John, 83 — trial of, 87 — death of, 88 — Count Philip Christopher, boyhood at Celle, 20 — in England, 26 — at Hanover, 82 — Colonel of Hanoverian Guards, 95 — and Countess Platen, 104 — in the Morea, 106 — return to Hanover, 115 — entertainment by, 115 — correspondence with Sophie Dorothea, 139 — sent to Sweden as envoy, 141 — returns from the war, 233 — at Dresden, 332 — murder of, 340 — burial of, 350 — discovery of body of, 443

Lambeque, camp at, 173 Lambeth manuscripts, 38 Lassaye, Marquis de, 72 Leibniz, Professor, 35 Leine Schloss at Hanover, 60 Leopold, Emperor, 98 Lewenhaupt, Countess of, 82 — Count, 82 Linden, battle of, 316 Lockier, Dean, 34 Loo, 408 Louis XIV., 28 — Defender of the Faith, 28 — European coalition against, 98 Ludemann, Bailiff of Ahlden, 425 Luisburg, 217 Lund, University of, 121 Luxemburg, French General, 172

Macclesfield, Lord, 409 Maestricht, 39 Malortie, Marshal von, 89 Mannheim, 98 Marlortie, Herr and Madame, 396 Marriage settlement and contract of Sophie Dorothea and George Louis, 55 Mary, Princess of York, 38 Matilda, daughter of Henry II., 1 Maximilian, Prince of Hanover, 77 — intrigues of, 78 Meissenburg, Count Carl Philip von, 30 — Catherine Marie von, 30 — married to Bussche, 31 — Clara Elizabeth von, 30 — married to Platen, 31 Milan, 3 Moltke conspiracy, 156 — execution of, 174 Monplaisir, 67 Mons, siege and fall of, 113 Morea, the campaign in, 106

Namur, siege and fall of, 172 Naples, 72 Neerwinden, battle of, 316 Northumberland, Dowager-Countess of, 84

Ogle, Countess of, 84 Osnabrück, 30 — Court of, 30 Otho William, Count, 20 — death of, 92

Palmblad, Professor, 121 Passion, the dawn of, 139 Phillipsburg, siege of, 25 Platen, Countess, 31 — marriage of, 31 — opposed to Eléonore, 33 — mistress of Ernest Augustus, 32 — jealousy of, 68 — the power of, 70 — and Königsmarck, 90 — illness of, 391 — retirement to Monplaisir, 400 — death of, 414 Playing with fire, 94 Podevils, Marshal, 249 Poëllnitz (historian), 91 Poley, envoy to Celle, 413 Portsmouth, Duchess of, 30 Primogeniture, establishment of, 77 — opposition to, 78 Prisoner of Ahlden, 388 Prussia, Queen of, correspondence with Sophie Dorothea, 425 — marriage scheme of, 429 Pyrmont, 19

Querouaille, Louise de, 30

Ramel, Baron Hans, 120 Ratze, Marie, 398 Ratzeburg, 258 Reference, books of, 445 Retribution, 437 Reuss, Comte de, 11 — Countess de, 11 Rhine, campaign on the, 39 _Roman Octavia_, 417 Röohlitz, Countess von, 329 Royal mistresses, 331 Rudolph Augustus of Wolfenbüttel, 21 Rupert, Prince, 36 Ryswick, Peace of, 100

Sacrifice of Sophie Dorothea, 47 Sandys, Dr., 410 Saxe, Marshal de, 369 Saxony, Augustus, Elector of, 329 Schaumann, 373 Schulenburg, Ermengarda Melusina von, 78 — nickname of, 79 — Duchess of Kendal, 426 Schulenburg-Klosterrode, Count, 122 Sophia, Princess of Bohemia, 3 — betrothed to George William, 5 — betrothed to Ernest Augustus, 6 — married to Ernest Augustus, 6 — Electress of Hanover, genealogy of, 17 — moral character, 34 — and Madame Platen, 34 — and the throne of England, 36 — at Celle, 46 — death of, 420 — Charlotte, Princess of Hanover, 69 — Electress of Brandenburg, 69 Sophie Dorothea of Celle, genealogy of, 1 — birth of, 13 — legitimised, 19 — betrothed to Augustus Frederick of Wolfenbüttel, 22 — betrothed to George Louis of Hanover, 49 — disposition of, 54 — married to George Louis (George I.), 58 — entry into Hanover, 59 — birth of George Augustus, 65 — and Madame Platen, 66 — and Marquis de Lassaye, 72 — birth of Sophie Dorothea (Queen of Prussia), 74 — correspondence with Königsmarck, 174 Sophie Dorothea’s arrival at Ahlden, 362 — divorce of, 371 — prisoner at Ahlden, 392 — petitions of, 401 — return to Celle, 407 — return to Ahlden, 407 — literary labours, 424 — correspondence with Queen of Prussia, 425 — death of, 436 — burial of, 439 — curse of, 440 St. Denis, 39 Steinkirk, battle of, 204 Stepney, envoy at Dresden, 329 Stern, Lieutenant, 86

Thynne, Thomas, 85 — murder of, 86 Toland (historian), 410 Treves, siege of, 39

Venice, 70 Verona, siege of, 88 Victoria, Queen, 37 Vratz, Captain, 86

Westphalia, Treaty of, 1 Weyhe, General, 79 Wienhausen, 152 Wiesbaden, 217 Wilhelmsburg, 19 — Countess of, 19 William of Orange, 40 — and the throne of England, 100 — and the Prince of Wales, 409 Wisdom of serpents, 25 Witgenstein, Count, 366

York, Princess Mary of, 40 — Princess Anne of, 38 — Duke of, 38

THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED.

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Transcriber’s Note

Königsmarck’s name is printed several times without the umlaut, and has been corrected.

Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.

2.36 But, Mons[e]igneur Inserted. 11.42 Geo[gr/rg]e William was glad Transposed. 79.18 To do E[r]mengarda Melusina justice Inserted. 124.5 K[o/ö]nigsmarck’s Replaced. 124.40 Fr[aü/äu]lein Knesebeck Replaced. 146.36 Epsdorff and Göhre[.] Added. 162.8 K[o/ö]nigsmarck Replaced. 162.17 to have sounded K[o/ö]nigsmarck Replaced. 162.40 K[o/ö]nigsmarck Replaced. 225.20 you wrote from Eimbeck[.] Added. 269.20 the end of the week for Brockhausen.[’/”] Replaced. 315.18 Let us taste its delights.[”/’] Replaced. 448.8 Crossing the [r/R]ubicon Replaced. 448.39 Duke of Brunswick[-]Lüneburg Added. 449.42 Meissenbu[r]g, Count Carl Philip von, 30 Inserted.