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The Triumph of the Winter Queen
SOPHIA, HAVING BEEN ABSENT FROM Hanover at the time of the murder, was not implicated in the crime, nor should she have been. Although she had no love for her daughter-in-law and wished she had not been required to marry Sophie Dorothea to her son, an international disgrace of that magnitude, irresistibly picked up and repeated as prurient gossip by courts all over Europe, was the last thing the electress would have wanted. Sophia had had enough experience with scandal growing up at the Winter Queen’s court at The Hague to understand that the stain of disrepute was not easily washed away and could tarnish the lives of even those innocent of any wrongdoing. More to the point, it could interfere with her family’s political advancement, and in this area the electress harbored large ambitions. Specifically, she wished her children to ascend to royalty—not by going to war for a crown, as her parents had, but through astute negotiation. And she had already targeted the agent by whom she would achieve her goals: William, prince of Orange and king of England, the man responsible for getting Ernst Augustus his electorate.
At the time of William and Mary’s ascension to the English throne, Parliament, concerned about the legality of deposing its former king in so rude a fashion and seeking to prevent James II or his young son from ever returning to rule, passed an act of succession prohibiting anyone who was not a Protestant from gaining the monarchy. Although Sophia had sympathy for James II and his son and believed the boy to be the legitimate heir to the throne, this law changed the qualifications by which the crown would be awarded in the future. It didn’t take the electress of Hanover long to realize that if all the Catholic members of the extended Stuart family were to be precluded from the succession, she and her progeny had suddenly vaulted to the head of the line. So at the same time that Ernst Augustus was negotiating with William for his electorate, she had petitioned to have her family mentioned specifically as heirs to the throne, after any children William and Mary or Mary’s younger sister, Anne, might have, of course. It was such a long shot anyway—Anne already had a son and kept getting pregnant year after year, although so far none of these other children had survived—that William, keen to keep Hanover in the alliance, promised he would see to it.
But William was a man who made many promises, none of which he let get in the way of his political self-interest. His principal goal, even as king of England, was to protect Holland from further French incursion, and on September 1, 1695, the year following the Königsmarck scandal, William had scored a huge victory against France by facing down the entire enemy army and retaking the city of Namur. Suddenly Louis XIV, his kingdom financially and spiritually exhausted from decades of war, was willing to treat for peace.
William, who was now in a bargaining position with France that would have been unthinkable before this key battle, agreed to secret negotiations. Together they settled that Louis XIV would keep southern Flanders and Hainaut but would retreat from French positions farther north. Orange and Maastricht, which had been occupied, were returned to the Dutch. On the imperial side, the French kept Franche-Comté and Freiburg, but everything else went back to the way it had been at the time of the Peace of Westphalia.
This was a good deal for William. He would stop the war, which was bankrupting England and starting to cause protests to his rule; save lives; and maintain a buffer zone between Holland and France. Louis XIV also agreed to recognize William as king of England, something he had refused to do in the past, and stop trying to unseat him, but only on the condition that James II’s young son, a Catholic, be recognized as heir to the English throne after William’s death. William not only agreed to this stipulation, he pledged to repeal the act of succession. So much for his promise to Sophia.
It is unclear whether England would have accepted this version of the treaty once all the terms were made public, but luckily William did not have to defend it. Unbelievably, James II, sitting in useless exile in France, rejected it on the grounds that his son could not be king while he, his father, was still alive. Faced with this act of political suicide—for by this time Louis XIV understood that, although England might be willing to consider the son’s rights to the throne, they would never allow James II to return—the Sun King shook his head and signed a peace treaty with England on September 10, 1697, that made no mention of the succession. The act prohibiting a Catholic sovereign from ruling England remained in place.
Since William’s negotiations had been conducted in secret, it’s unclear whether Sophia ever knew that he had gone back on his word. She might have suspected it, especially when Parliament did not take up the question of her rights to the succession even after the peace treaty was signed. But by then she was probably not paying that much attention to English affairs, as events at home were drawing to a critical point. Ernst Augustus was dying.
He had been very ill for several years, during which time Sophia had fully recovered her place at court. It turned out that the elector much preferred his wife to his mistress when it came to round-the-clock nursing, and so Countess Platen had finally been unseated. When Ernst Augustus at last died, on January 24, 1698, at the age of sixty-eight, Sophia took it as something of a blessing that at least he did not have to endure more pain. By right of primogeniture, thirty-seven-year-old George Louis got all of his father’s property and took over as elector of Hanover.
Her husband’s death freed Sophia to put in motion a plan she had evidently been contemplating for some time. It was only a matter of waiting for the right opportunity. That moment came two years later when uncertainty over the future sovereign of Spain and with it the growing possibility of renewed hostilities between the empire and France gripped Europe.
By the summer of 1700, it was clear that the Spanish king was very ill. As he had been unable to father children, this meant that when he died, which was daily expected, his property would have to go to a cousin, and therein lay the problem. Would the emperor’s son, a Habsburg, inherit, as tradition dictated? Or would Louis XIV claim the throne for his grandson the duke of Anjou in the name of his dead queen, who had been the sister of the ailing Spanish monarch? The question was vital because more than just the kingdom of Spain was involved—there was also the issue of the sovereignty of Naples, Sicily, Tuscany, Milan, and the Netherlands, as these regions were all included in the Spanish inheritance. It was this last territory that touched William. He had worked so hard to create a buffer zone around Holland; would the French now legally inherit the very property he had just forced them to evacuate? He tried to work out another secret deal with Louis XIV to split the Spanish territories between the empire and France, with the French taking the Italian properties and the emperor’s son getting Spain (leaving the Netherlands as a separate independent entity), but this fell through.
And then, on July 29, 1700, Princess Anne’s only surviving child, the duke of Gloucester, fell ill and died just days after his eleventh birthday. At once, the prospect that James II’s Catholic son, who had been befriended by Louis XIV, would claim the throne after William’s death loomed again as a very real possibility. Suddenly, it was not only the Spanish inheritance but also the English line of succession that was threatened by France.
Sophia, carefully monitoring events from Germany, saw her chance and moved swiftly. Pretending that her daughter needed to take the waters for her health, she and Figuelotte traveled to Brussels in August and then on the way back in September went north and met secretly with William, who was staying at his summer palace at Loo, about ninety miles east of Amsterdam. There is no record of their conversation but it is clear what they discussed. Seventy-year-old Sophia and thirty-two-year-old Figuelotte were arranging an alliance to help support William through the coming struggle. Their price: that William would use his influence with the emperor to have Figuelotte and her husband, the elector of Brandenburg, promoted to sovereignty and that Sophia’s family would be legally acknowledged as heirs to the English throne. There were no ambassadors or advisers in
volved; just William and two highly educated women negotiating a shift in power that would ultimately change the face of Europe.
They had gotten to him just in time. William went back to England in October, after which events escalated with frightening rapidity. On November 1, 1700, the king of Spain died and it was revealed that he had been convinced by the pope to change his will at the last moment and leave everything to Louis XIV’s grandson, the duke of Anjou. The emperor contested the inheritance and the Dutch immediately rejected the French claims and instead recognized the imperial candidate as king of Spain. The rush for allies was on again, and within two months the emperor had created the kingdom of Prussia out of the old electorate of Brandenburg. Figuelotte’s husband was crowned Frederick I on January 18, 1701. Sophia’s daughter was now queen of Prussia. In February, Louis XIV broke the peace and attacked Holland.
And on February 6, 1701, with his beloved homeland once again at risk, William delivered a persuasive speech to Parliament to ensure that the English line of succession remained Protestant. On June 22, 1701, a law known as the Act of Settlement was approved that read: “Be it enacted and declared by the King’s most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spirituall and Temporall, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, That the most excellent Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess Dowager of Hannover, daughter of the most excellent Princess Elizabeth, late Queen of Bohemia, daughter of our late Sovereign Lord King James the First, of happy memory, be and is hereby declared to be the next in succession in the Protestant line to the Imperiall Crown and Dignity of the said Realms of England… and Ireland, with the Dominions and territories thereunto belonging, after his Majesty and the Princess Ann… and in default of issue of the said Princess Ann and of his Majesty respectively.”
Two months later, a special delegation from England consisting of some forty officials arrived in Hanover to present Sophia with her own copy of this important document. An Irishman named John Toland accompanied the head of this expedition, the earl of Macclesfield, as his secretary, and left a detailed description of Sophia, the court, and the ceremony. “You may be sure… that the Earl of Macclesfield’s Reception at the Court of Hanover was extraordinary magnificent, and that a Person who came on his Errand must needs be very welcome,” Toland reported. “He [Macclesfield]… was sent by the King [William]… both to grace it with a Man of that Quality, and as his Father bore a relation to the Queen of Bohemia’s Court… He was received by Deputys of the best Quality on the Frontiers of the Country, and his Expences were defrayed on the Road with all his Retinue, till he arriv’d at Hanover. There one of the largest Houses in the whole City was assign’d for his Entertainment… The Elector’s own Servants waited on them every Morning with Silver Coffee and Tea-pots to their Chambers. Burgundy, Champagne, Rhenish, and all manner of Wines were as common as Beer. A number of Coaches and Chairs were appointed to bring ’em every Day to Court, to carry ’em back to their Lodgings, and to go whither-soever else they would. They were entertained with Music, Balls, and Plays… There was a very fine Ball, and a splendid appearance of Ladys, the Evening after my Lord deliver’d the Act of Succession to the Electress,” he enthused.
Toland, used to English princesses like Anne, who, though only thirty-six, was already severely overweight and burdened with many ailments, was amazed by Sophia. “The Electress is three and seventy Years of Age, which she bears so wonderfully well, that had I not many Vouchers, I shou’d scarce dare venture to relate it,” he marveled.* “She has ever enjoy’d extraordinary Health, which keeps her still very vigorous, of a cheerful Countenance, and a merry Disposition. She steps as firm and erect as any young Lady, has not one Wrinkle in her Face which is still very agreeable, nor one Tooth out of her Head, and reads without Spectacles, as I often saw her do Letters of a small Character in the dusk of the Evening… She’s the most constant and greatest Walker I ever knew, never missing a Day, if it proves fair, for one or two hours… She perfectly tires all those of her Court that attend her in that Exercise,” he continued. “I was the first who had the Honor of kneeling and kissing her Hand on the account of the Act of Succession; and she said, among other Discourse, that she was afraid the Nation had already repented their Choice of an old Woman, but that she hop’d none of her Posterity wou’d give them any Reasons to grow weary of their Dominion.”
Thus did the twelfth child and youngest daughter in the female line descending from Mary, queen of Scots, married to the youngest of four brothers of a minor German principality, inherit what would become the throne of Great Britain. By some estimates as many as fifty-seven claimants by birth or sex had precedence over Sophia as heir. But this honor did not come solely by fate or luck. She had fought for it as surely as her mother had fought for Bohemia.
Sophia, electress of Hanover and heiress of Great Britain
In Gerrit van Honthorst’s 1635 allegorical masterpiece Triumph of the Winter Queen, Sophia, then a child of five, is portrayed as a cherub in a long white dress flying over the queen of Bohemia’s chariot while clutching a laurel wreath. This painting has turned out to be stunningly prophetic. Of the thirteen children depicted in the family portrait, it is Sophia who is carrying the crown.
OVER THE COURSE OF the next decade, the dowager electress of Hanover lived quietly at her estate in Herrenhausen, where she endured a series of personal losses. War had already claimed her second and fourth sons, Frederick Augustus and Karl Philipp, and in 1703, her fifth, Christian, was fatally shot while fighting the French in Bavaria. But the great tragedy of her life occurred on February 2, 1705, when thirty-six-year-old Figuelotte, who was in Hanover for a visit, died suddenly of pneumonia. Sophia herself had fallen ill with a cold; to keep her in bed, the danger to her daughter was minimized, and so it came as a great shock. “What makes it worse for me is that everything was kept hidden from me as to the severity of Her Majesty’s illness, and that I have lost my beloved child, without having seen her one more time,” she mourned. “I am afraid to contemplate my aunt’s state of mind, and I am heartbroken with sorrow for her,” her niece Liselotte wrote anxiously from France when she heard the news. “Why did not God take me instead of the dear Queen [of Prussia], who should have been my aunt’s joy and consolation for many years to come?” This grief was followed by the death later that year, on August 28, of Sophia’s brother-in-law George William. As contracted so long before, when he had first induced Ernst Augustus to substitute as bridegroom, all of his property went to his nephew George Louis.
Throughout this period, the Act of Settlement remained in place. William had managed to get it passed just before his own death in 1702, which was fortunate, as his sister-in-law, Anne, who succeeded to the Crown, was somewhat less enthusiastic about her Hanoverian cousins. Although William had intended to invite Sophia to England to ensure a smooth transition of power, Queen Anne declined to do so, fearing that “she herself would be so eclipsed by it, that she would be much in the successor’s power, and reign only at her or his courtesy.” In the fall of 1705, however, Parliament passed legislation naturalizing Sophia and her descendants as English citizens, and openly debated having her take up residence in London. Sophia, on Leibniz’s urging, signaled her willingness to comply in a letter to the archbishop of Canterbury of November 3, 1705. “I thank God, I am in good Health, and Live in Quiet and with Content here, therefore I have no reason to change my way of Living,” wrote the seventy-five-year-old dowager electress. “However, I am ready and willing to comply with what ever can be desired of me, by my Friends, in case that The Parliament think, that it is for the Good of the Kingdom, to Invite me into England,” adding that, of course, this must be done at the pleasure of the queen.
Unfortunately, Queen Anne was anything but pleased by this sentiment, especially after the letter was printed and made public. The resulting political squabble was smoothed over by a diplomatic letter from Sophia dated April 6, 1706. “It is from the heart
I speak… I believe that it would be for the good of England and all Europe, that the Queen should live for a hundred years,” she declared soothingly. In fact, Sophia probably never believed that she herself would rule when she wrote this letter; how could she, a woman in her midseventies, possibly outlive Anne, who was only forty-one? It was for her children and grandchildren that Sophia labored to hold on to the inheritance of what became in 1707, with the union of Scotland and England, the throne of Great Britain.
That this was her aim may be deduced from her actions six years later. In the fall of 1713, hearing that Anne was seriously ill, Sophia tried to get not herself but her thirty-year-old grandson George (George Louis and Sophie Dorothea’s son) to England, to help ensure a peaceful succession. She did it obliquely, by requesting he be named duke of Cambridge, an honor that was granted. As she knew that the bestowal of this title carried with it a seat in the House of Lords, she expected as a matter of course that he would be summoned to England to take his place in Parliament. In preparation for this, she had his wife, Caroline of Anspach, whom he had married in 1705, start taking English lessons.
But Anne, who was still childless—she had conceived a record seventeen times, only to miscarry, or, if she succeeded in delivering, to lose each baby in stillbirth or infancy*—deeply resented what she viewed as the vultures circling while she yet drew breath. By spring she had recovered sufficiently from her illness to lash out at her relative. “Madam, my sister and aunt,” she wrote coldly in a letter of May 19, 1714. “Since the right of succession to my kingdom has been declared to belong to you and your family, there have always been evil intentioned persons who, from regard to their private interests, have entered into designs to establish in my dominions, during my lifetime, a prince of your blood. I had never imagined till now that this project would have progressed so far as to have had the slightest effect on your mind. But as I have lately understood, from public reports which have very speedily spread abroad, that your Electoral Highness shares this view, it is important for the succession of your family that I should tell you that such conduct will certainly be productive of consequences prejudicial to the succession itself, which has no security except while the sovereign who actually wears the crown retains her rights,” she warned imperiously.
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