1756. ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. Dismissal of Pitt and his Friends Defeat of Admiral Byng off Minorca Consternation in England from the Loss of that Island Parliamentary Enquiry Resignation of Fox and the Duke of Newcastle xix - 326 - 327 - 328 329 330 - 331 - 332 1758. Deaths of the Queen of Poland and the Princess Caroline 352 Unparralleled Successes at Sea Naval Actions at Havre-de-Grace and off Gibraltar French Armament defeated in the Bay of Quiberon Grand Plan of a Campaign for the Conquest of Canada Hopelessness of his Situation Gallant Enterprise against the Town Death of General Wolfe - 367 368 369 A. D. Parliamentary Qualification Act Page Riots in Dublin respecting the Union with England The Hereditary Prince dies of his Wounds Assault on Quebec by the French Capitulation of Montreal, and conquest of Canada 374 375 - 381 - 382 Lord George Sackville tried by Court-martial; Death of George II. Character of the King HISTORY OF ENGLAND. CHAPTER I. 1714-1716. ACCESSION OF GEORGE 1. STATE OF PARTIES. ASCENDENCY OF THE WHIGS. - GERMAN PREDILECTIONS OF THE KING.SETTLEMENT OF THE COURT AND CIVIL LIST. - NEW PARLIAMENT SUMMONED. - CORONATION SERMON. STORMY DISCUSSION ON THE PEACE OF UTRECHT.-SEIZURE OF THE PAPERS OF THE NEGOTIATORS. REPORT OF THE SECRET COMMITTEE. IMPEACHMENT OF BOLINGBROKE, OXFORD, ORMOND, AND STRAFFORD. FLIGHT OF BOLINGBROKE AND ORMOND ΤΟ FRANCE. BILLS OF ATTAINDER FOUND AGAINST THEM.OXFORD COMMITTED TO THE TOWER. TUMULTS IN LONDON. - CLOSE OF THE - ARREST OF MEMBERS OF THE COMMONS. GEORGE I. was called to the throne of England with every prepossession against him except the paramount one of religion. He was in the fifty-fifth year of his He age, with the habits of a petty sovereign governing by his will and pleasure a stranger to the language *, manners, laws, and liberties of the English people. left his wife behind him shut up in a tower †, and he brought over at his side that common state symbol of *See lady M. W. Montagu's humorous account of the court of George I. The fact of his majesty's ignorance of the English language was frequently alluded to even in parliament. Shippen, one of the most inflexible patriots of the time, observed, in a debate on the army estimates,"It is the infelicity of his majesty's reign, that he is unacquainted with our language and constitution.' "He could speak no English," says lady Mary W. Montagu, "and was past the age of learning it. Our customs and laws were all mysteries to him, which he neither tried to understand, nor was capable of understanding if he endeavoured it." The story or the mystery of Sophia Dorothea, the unfortunate wife of George I., and her lover, count Koningsmark (see his trial for the assassination of Mr. Thynne, and the iniquitous screening of his guilt, in the State Trials, vol. ix.), has been often mentioned and canvassed in print. She was the daughter of the duke and duchess of Zell, who obliged her to marry George, then electoral prince. Koningsmark took advantage of the husband's temporary absence to be admitted to her chamber, on leaving which he was seized and strangled by assassins posted in the antechamber for the purpose. His body, according to some (Lemontey, Histoire de la Régence), was burned in an oven- according to others (Coxe's Walpole and Horace Walpole's Reminiscences), was buried, and afterwards discovered by workmen making repairs under the floor of the unfortunate princess's dressing-room. Shut up in the castle of Alden, she constantly protested her innocence of all but allowing him to take a final leave of her, and was believed by many. It was further said (Coxe's Walpole) that the countess Platen, her father-in-law's mistress (the father and son had their mistresses installed under the same roof with their wives in this moral family), loved Koningsmark, was slighted by him, and out of jealous spite introduced him without the consent of the princess in order to ruin both. She lived thirty-two years in her confinement, and died only a few months before her husband. A French prophetess warned him "to take care of his wife, as he would not survive her a year;" and Horace Walpole, who tells the story, insinuates that the oracle was dictated by the duke and duchess of Zell to prevent foul practices upon her life. Such was the uncompromising firmness with which she asserted her innocence, that it is said, when her husband made her an offer of reconciliation (see Coxe's Walpole), she replied, "If what I am accused of is true, I am unworthy of his bed; and if my accusation is false, he is unworthy of me. I will not accept his offer." Her purity is certainly not established by a magnanimous answer of this description, which might quite as readily be made by a woman guilty of the immorality attributed to her; but there is no doubt that many individuals believed the charge to be false, and amongst the rest, her son George II., who was so passionately attached to her that he once made an attempt to visit her, crossing the Aller on horseback, opposite the castle, for that purpose, but was prevented from seeing her by the vigilance of baron Bulow, to whose charge she was committed. It was his intention, had she survived his accession, to acknowledge her as queendowager, and he always kept her portrait secretly in his possession. On the morning after the news of the death of George I. reached London, Mrs. Howard discovered in the antechamber of the king's apartment a picture of a woman in the electoral robes, which proved to be that of Sophia. It is but charitable on the whole to observe, that, if she really was guilty, the censures of the world ought to fall heavily on her husband and his father, who, in their own palace, set such a demoralising example of open infamy. 1714. THE FIRST LEVEE. 3 despotism and depravity in the minor German courts, a reigning mistress." The news of the queen's death and his accession reached him on the 5th of August. He remained in Hanover till the 31st, loitered on his way in Holland, where he was joined by lord Townshend, and landed at Greenwich on the evening of the 18th of September. This lapse of six weeks is not accounted for. Was it distaste for his new greatness?-or the more probable fear of having to dispute it, on his arrival, with jacobitism and the pretender? It would appear that he had neither to apprehend. All parties-tories and jacobites no less than whigs crouched for employment on the morning of the 19th, at the first levee of the new king. Ormond, Oxford, Harcourt, Trevor, were ungraciously repelled by him. Oxford, if his enemy Bolingbroke may be relied on, was treated with "distinguishing contempt." + Bolingbroke alone, of the late queen's ministers, did not present himself. He continued to hold the seals as secretary for a few years after her death; and the whig council of regency, indulging the malice of little minds to superior ones, subjected him to every mortification, * Schiller has exhibited the heartless tyranny and immorality of those courts in his play of "Cabal and Love." George I. brought over not only the baroness Schulenberg, the chief sultana-whom he created duchess of Kendall, and whom he is said to have espoused with his left hand, a species of marriage not uncommon in Germany-but madame Kilmassegge, sister to the countess of Platen, his father's mistress, whom he made countess of Darlington: neither did credit to his taste. They were both rapacious, and would have committed any corrupt act for money. Of the former whose share in Wood's patent rendered her notorious-sir Robert Walpole used to say she was so venal a creature that she would have sold the king's honour for a shilling advance to the highest bidder. She was a coarse and inelegant person. The countess of Darlington was a woman of great beauty, but latterly became extremely corpulent. In the last year or two of his life, George I. had another mistress, Miss Anne Brett, daughter, by colonel Brett, of the celebrated divorced countess of Macclesfield, the heartless mother of Savage the poet. Miss Brett used to live openly in the palace; and, if the king had returned from Hanover, would have been made a countess It is only surprising the nobility did not resent these frequent invasions of their order in the persons of the mistresses of royalty. To have administered to the criminal desires of the sovereign, at once established a claim to a title; and one might think that titles thus earned would be a mark of disgrace rather than honour. But we must not examine too closely the roots of the aristocracy. Time, it appears, sanctifies an inheritance which is often thus infamous in its origin, Letter to sir W. Windham. |