CHAPTER II.

GEORGE the first, while electoral prince, had married his cousin the princess Dorothea*, only child of the duke of Zell; a match of convenience to reunite the dominions of the family. Though she was very handsome, the prince, who was extremely amorous, had several mistresses; which provocation, and his absence in the army of the confederates, probably disposed the princess to indulge some degree of coquetry. At that moment arrived at Hanover the famous and beautiful count Konismark+, the charms of whose person ought not to have obliterated the memory of his vile assassination of Mr. Thynne. His vanity, the beauty of the electoral princess, and the neglect under which he found her, encouraged his presumption to make his addresses to her, not covertly; and she, though believed not to have transgressed her duty, did receive them too indiscreetly. The old elector flamed at the insolence of so stigmatized a pretender, and ordered him to quit his dominions the next day. The princess, surrounded by women too closely connected with her husband, and consequently ene

* Her names were Sophia Dorothea; but I call her by the latter, to distinguish her from the princess Sophia, her mother-in-law, on whom the crown of Great Britain was settled.

Konismark behaved with great intrepidity, and was wounded at a bull-feast in Spain. of the comtesse Danois, vol. ii. beautiful comtesse de Konismark, second, king of Poland.

See Letters from Spain He was brother of the mistress of Augustus the

mies of the lady they injured, was persuaded by them to suffer the count to kiss her hand before his abrupt departure; and he was actually introduced by them into her bed-chamber the next morning before she rose. From that moment he disappeared; nor was it known what became of him, till on the death of George I., on his son the new king's first journey to Hanover, some alterations in the palace being ordered by him, the body of Konismark was discovered under the floor of the electoral princess's dressing-room-the count having probably been strangled there the instant he left her, and his body secreted. The discovery was hushed up; George II. entrusted the secret to his wife queen Caroline, who told it to my father: but the king was too tender of the honour of his mother to utter it to his mistress; nor did lady Suffolk ever hear of it, till I informed her of it several years afterwards. The disappearance of the count made his murder suspected, and various reports of the discovery of his body have of late years been spread, but not with the authentic circumstances.

The second George loved his mother as much as he hated his father, and purposed, as was said, had the former survived, to have brought her over and declared her queen-dowager*. Lady Suffolk has

* Lady Suffolk thought he rather would have made her regent of Hanover; and she also told me, that George I. had offered to live again with his wife, but she refused, unless her pardon were asked publicly. She said, what most affected her was the disgrace that would be brought on her children; and if she were only pardoned, that would not remove it. Lady Suffolk thought she was then divorced, though the divorce was never published; and that the old elector consented to his son's marrying the duchess

told me her surprise, on going to the new queen the morning after the news arrived of the death of George I. at seeing hung up in the queen's dressingroom a whole length of a lady in royal robes; and in the bed-chamber a half length of the same person, neither of which lady Suffolk had ever seen before. The prince had kept them concealed, not daring to produce them during the life of his father. The whole length he probably sent to Hanover*; the half length I have frequently and frequently seen in the library of princess Amelia, who told me it was the portrait of her grandmother. She bequeathed it, with other pictures of her family, to her nephew, the landgrave of Hesse.

Of the circumstances that ensued on Konismark's disappearance I am ignorant; nor am I acquainted with the laws of Germany relative to divorce or

of Kendal with the left hand-but it seems strange that George I. should offer to live again with his wife, and yet be divorced from her. Perhaps George II., to vindicate his mother, supposed that offer and her spirited refusal.

George II. was scrupulously exact in separating and keeping in each country whatever belonged to England or Hanover. Lady Suffolk told me, that on his accession he could not find a knife, fork, and spoon of gold which had belonged to queen Anne, and which he remembered to have seen here at his first arrival. He found them at Hanover on his first journey thither after he came to the crown, and brought them back to England. He could not recollect much of greater value; for on queen Anne's death, and in the interval before the arrival of the new family, such a clearance had been made of her majesty's jewels, or the new king so instantly distributed what he found amongst his German favourites, that, as lady S. told me, queen Caroline never obtained of the late queen's jewels but one pearlnecklace.

separation: nor do I know or suppose that despotism and pride allow the law to insist on much formality when a sovereign has reason or a mind to get rid of his wife. Perhaps too much difficulty of untying the Gordian knot of matrimony thrown in the way of an absolute prince would be no kindness to the ladies, but might prompt him to use a sharper weapon, like that butchering husband our Henry VIII. Sovereigns, who narrow or let out the law of God according to their prejudices and passions, mould their own laws no doubt to the standard of their convenience. Genealogic purity of blood is the predominant folly of Germany; and the code of Malta seems to have more force in the empire than the ten commandments. 'Thence was introduced that most absurd evasion of the indissolubility of marriage, espousals with the left hand

as if the Almighty had restrained his ordinance to one half of a man's person, and allowed a greater latitude to his left side than to his right, or pronounced the former more ignoble than the latter. The consciences both of princely and noble persons in Germany are quieted, if the more plebeian side is married to one who would degrade the more illustrious moiety-but, as if the laws of matrimony had no reference to the children to be thence propagated, the children of a left-handed alliance are not entitled to inherit.-Shocking consequence of a senseless equivocation, that only satisfies pride, not justice; and calculated for an acquittal at the herald's office, not at the last tribunal.

Separated the princess Dorothea certainly was, and never admitted even to the nominal honours of her rank, being thenceforward always styled duchess

of Halle. Whether divorced is problematic, at least to me; nor can I pronounce, as, though it was generally believed, I am not certain that George espoused the duchess of Kendal with his left hand. As the princess Dorothea died only some months before him, that ridiculous ceremony was scarcely deferred till then; and the extreme outward devotion of the duchess, who every Sunday went seven times to Lutheran chapels, seemed to announce a legalized wife. As the genuine wife was always detained in her husband's power, he seems not to have wholly dissolved their union; for, on the approach of the French army towards Hanover, during queen Anne's reign, the duchess of Halle was sent home to her father and mother, who doted on their only child, and did retain her for a whole year, and did implore, though in vain, that she might continue to reside with them. As her son too, George II., had thoughts of bringing her over and declaring her queen dowager, one can hardly believe that a ceremonial divorce had passed, the existence of which process would have glared in the face of her royalty. But though German casuistry might allow her husband to take another wife with his left hand, because his legal wife had suffered her right hand to be kissed in bed by a gallant, even Westphalian or Aulic counsellors could not have pronounced that such a momentary adieu constituted adultery; and therefore of a formal divorce I must doubt-and there I must leave that case of conscience undecided, till future search into the Hanoverian chancery shall clear up a point of little real importance.

I have said that the disgraced princess died but a short time before the king. It is known that in