With Wilson died his extraordinary secret. Law was apprehended, and subsequently tried and condemned; but having the good fortune to break out of prison, he escaped to the Low Countries, where his expensive manner of living so far exceeded his ostensible means of subsistence, as to afford grounds for curiosity and surmise. Law, it may be remarked, who mingled a life of pleasure with an application to more methodical pursuits, died at Venice in 1729, at the age of fifty-eight.

277

His birth.

GEORGE THE FIRST.

CHAPTER I.

His near relationship to the Stuarts. Sketch of his mother. Serves a campaign under his father, when in his fifteenth year. Fights in the Imperial army against the Turks. Accompanies King William during a series of campaigns. Created by him a Knight of the Garter. Is subsequently created by Queen Anne, Marquis and Duke of Cambridge, &c. with precedency of all the peers of Great Britain.-Visits England with a view to make overtures for the hand of the Princess Anne, afterwards Queen.-Recalled by his father, and forced to marry the daughter of the Duke of Zell.—Story of Sophia Dorothea, of Zell.—Her compulsory marriage with George the First in her sixteenth year. Her beauty and intelligence.-Neglected and insulted by her husband. - Count Coningsmark's avowed admiration of her.-Indignation of her father-in-law.-Imprisoned in the Castle of Alden.-Divorced from her husband in 1694. -Her criminality doubtful. Her son's affection for her.Her dignified conduct during her imprisonment.-Her death in 1726.-George the First's accession to the English throne. -His indifference on the subject.-His arrival at Greenwich, -Anecdote.-His person and habits.-Extracts from Horace Walpole, and Archdeacon Coxe.-The King's male favourites. Their rapacity. The King's aversion to the English. -His profligate expenditure.

GEORGE LEWIS, Elector of Hanover, who, agreeably with the provisions of the Act of Set

tlement, succeeded to the throne of these realms, as the head of the only Protestant branch of the House of Stuart, was born at Osnaburg, on the 28th of May, 1660. He was the eldest son of Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover, by Sophia the youngest daughter of Elizabeth, the amiable, and unfortunate Queen of Bohemia, only daughter of King James the First of England. King George was thus nearly related to the several members of the House of Stuart. He was great-grandson of King James I., nephew to King Charles I., first cousin to King Charles II. and James II., and first cousin, once removed, to Queen Mary, Queen Anne, and James Frederick Edward, commonly called the Pretender.

Of Ernest Augustus, the father of King George, we know little but that he was a brave and bustling man, who expired in 1698, before the intended aggrandizement of his family, as insured by the Act of Settlement, could have been known to him. His consort, however, the Electress Sophia, as well from her close relationship to the royal family of England as from her being one of the most extraordinary women of her time, claims to be particularly mentioned in a memoir of her son.

The Electress Sophia, the youngest of the twelve children of Frederick, the titular King of Bohemia, and his interesting consort, was born the 13th of October, 1630, and at the age of eighteen became the wife of Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover. Beautiful in her person, refined in

her manners, and distinguished by the most captivating conversational powers, she mingled with these graceful accomplishments an almost masculine strength of mind, and an honourable respect for literature and science.* She is said to have made the laws and constitution of England her chief study, and by severe application, to have mastered the languages of Holland, Germany, Italy, France and England, which she spoke with so much ease and correctness, that she might have passed for a native of any one of these countries. Promoting, by every means in her power, the happiness of those about her; and always anxious, even in extreme old age, to originate scenes of social mirth and harmless diversion, she continued to unite with these endearing qualities a taste for graver studies and pursuits, and, besides extending her patronage to several eminent men of learning and science, was for many years the friend and correspondent of the celebrated philosopher Leibnitz. Distinguished for her sense of justice, and a regard for the sufferings of others, which was not exhibited by either of her contempo

* The Electress would seem to have been stricter in the performance of her social than of her religious duties. "The Princess Sophia," says Dean Lockier, "was a woman of good sense, and excellent conversation. I was very well acquainted with her. She sat very loose in her religious principles, and used to take a particular pleasure in setting a heretic, whenever she could meet with such, and one of her chaplains a disputing together."-Spence's Anecdotes, p. 169.

raries Queen Mary, or Queen Anne; she conceived a lively interest in the fortunes of the exiled branch of the Stuarts, and even endeavoured to persuade her relation, King William, to pass over her own claims, and to restore the unfortunate James to his hereditary rights. The Electress retained, even to a very late period of life, not only her early freshness of feeling, but the beauty for which she had once been so distinguished. Toland, who was introduced to her at Hanover, when she was in her seventy-fourth year, describes her as reading without spectacles, and as still conspicuous for her graceful manners and commanding figure; with

* Lord Dartmouth, who visited Hanover in the reign of William the Third, has bequeathed us the following interesting notice of the Electress Sophia : "She sent a coach to bring me to dinner to Herenhausen every day as long as I stayed. She was very free in her discourse, and said, she held a constant correspondence with King James, and his daughter, our Queen, with many particulars of a very extraordinary nature, that were great proofs of his being a very weak man, and her being a very good woman. She seemed piqued at the Princess Anne, and spoke of her with little kindness. She told me the King and Queen had both invited her to make them a visit into England: but she was grown old, and could not leave the Elector and her family; otherwise, should be glad to see her own country (as she was pleased to call it) before she died, and should willingly have her bones laid by her mother's in the Abbey, at Westminster, whom she always mentioned with great veneration. She took it unkindly, that the Duke of Zell should have the Garter before her husband, who, she thought, might have expected it upon her account; and told me, she was once like to have been married to King Charles the Second, which would not have been worse