"Notice being given that the King was come down to supper, Lady Walsingham took me alone into the Duchess's ante-room, where we found alone the King and her. I knelt down and kissed his hand. He said a few words to me, and my conductress led me back to my mother. "The person of the King is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him but yesterday. It was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins; not tall, of an aspect rather good than august, with a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches of snuff-coloured cloth, with stockings of the same colour, and a blue riband over all. So entirely was he my object, that I do not believe I once looked at the Duchess; but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I remember that just beyond his Majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill-favoured old lady; but I did not retain the least idea of her features, nor know what the colour of her dress was." Walpole informs us elsewhere, that the King took him up in his arms, kissed him, and "chatted some time." In the last years of his life, the King paid his English subjects the compliment of taking an Englishwoman for his mistress. This lady was Anne Brett, a daughter of the repudiated Countess of Macclesfield by her second husband, and a sister of Savage, the poet. Her hair and eyes are said to have been extremely dark, so much so, that she might have been mistaken for a Spanish beauty. She seems to have been as ambitious as she was handsome, and as she had been promised a coronet, as the reward of her complaisance, as soon as her royal lover returned from the last visit. which he paid to Hanover, she would, probably, have proved a dangerous rival to the Duchess of Kendal, had the King's life been extended a few years. Insolence-a quality which she, probably, inherited from her unprincipled mother, Lady Macclesfield-appears to have been the chief characteristic of this new Sultana. Previously to the King's last departure for Hanover, he had left his new mistress in St. James's palace, in apartments contiguous to those of his granddaughters, the Princesses Anne, Amelia, and Elizabeth. "When the King set out," says Walpole, "Miss Brett ordered a door to be broken out of her apartment into the royal garden. Anne, the eldest of the Princesses, offended at that freedom, and not choosing such a companion in her walks, ordered the door to be walled up again. Miss Brett as imperiously reversed that command. The King died suddenly, and the empire of the new mistress, and her promised coronet, vanished. She afterwards married Sir William Leman, and was forgotten before her reign had transpired beyond the confines of Westminster." George the First, at an earlier period of his life, had been warned by a French prophetess to take care of his wife, as it was fated that he would not survive her more than a twelvemonth. Like most Germans, he was superstitious, and such an effect had the prediction on his mind, that shortly after his wife's death, on taking leave of his son and the Princess of Wales, when on the eve of his departure for Hanover, he told them, with tears in his eyes, that he should never see them again. However, notwithstanding his firm conviction that the hour of his dissolution was at hand, the circumstance seems to have had no effect in deterring him from the commission of a very gross act of injustice and crime. With a contempt of all laws, human and divine, he gave directions that his wife's will should be burnt; and this for the mere purpose, it seems, of depriving his own son of some valuable legacies bequeathed to him by his unfortunate mother. It is a remarkable and a melancholy fact that his wife and his only son appear to have been the two persons whom George the First detested most in the world. On the 3rd of June, 1727, the King departed from Greenwich on his last visit to his beloved electorate. He landed in Holland four days afterwards, and on reaching Delden, on the 9th of the month, appeared to be in the enjoyment of his usual health. It appears, however, that about twenty miles from that place he had supped with the Count de Twittel, at the country-seat of that nobleman, on which occasion he had eaten an unusual quantity of melons, an act of imprudence to which was subsequently ascribed the disorder that caused his death. He proceeded the same evening to Delden, and, cup having breakfasted the following morning on a of chocolate, set off on his way to Osnaburg. The circumstances which attended the King's last illness are minutely detailed by Archdeacon Coxe, from the account of persons who were either eye-witnesses of, or who remembered, the event. "On his arrival at Bentham," says Coxe, "the King felt himself indisposed, but continued his journey, in opposition to the repeated entreaties of his suite. His indisposition increased, and when he arrived at Ippenburen, he was quite lethargic; his hand fell down as if lifeless, and his tongue hung out of his mouth. He gave, however, signs of life, by continually crying out, as well as he could articulate, Osnaburg, Osnaburg.' This impatience to reach Osnaburg induced the attendants not to stop at Ippenburen, but to hasten on in hopes of arriving at that city before he died. But it was too late. The exact time and place of his death cannot be ascertained; but it is most probable that he expired either as the carriage was ascending the hill near Ippenburen, or on the summit. On their arrival at the palace of his brother, the Bishop of Osnaburg, he was immediately bled, but all attempts to recover him proved ineffectual."* Etough, in a letter to Dr. Birch, preserved in the British Museum, intimates that the extraordinary vigour of the King's constitution seemed to promise him an existence of more than com*Coxe's Life of Sir Robert Walpole, vol. i. p. 266. mon duration: he adds, however, that his fondness for sturgeon, and other strong food, and his custom of indulging in hearty suppers at late hours of the night, counteracted the exertions made by nature in his behalf.* These presumptions of the King's want of prudence, in regard to his daily diet, render it the more probable that the excess to which he indulged at the table of the Count de Twittel, was the immediate cause of his death. Among the Marchmont Papers there is a letter, dated 15th June, 1727, addressed by George Baillie, Esq., to Alexander, Earl of Marchmont, detailing some further particulars relating to the death of George the First. The narrative, it may be remarked, differs in no material degree from that of Coxe. "It is with great grief and concern," says the writer, "that I am to tell you of our most excellent King's death. The melancholy news came by express yesterday. He had been ill at sea, and continued so on the road, but would not stop. On Friday night he was taken ill with a severe purging and great sweating, which weakened him very much. He would, however, go on; and upon Saturday lost his speech and the power of one side, but still made signs with his hand to proceed, and in the evening arrived at Osnaburg, where he died about one o'clock on Sunday morning; a fatal day, were we not happy in the Prince his successor."† * Add. MSS. Brit. Mus. 4326. B. |