Sophia: Mother of Kings

The Finest Queen Britain Never Had

Catherine Curzon

• Publisher: Pen & Sword History
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526755353
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

From the Thirty Years' War to the formation of Great Britain, the royal mother of the House of Hanover comes to life in this historical biography. Princess Sophia of Hanover was born to greatness and yet fated to obscurity. The 1701 Act of Settlement made her the heiress presumptive to the thrones of England and Ireland, and yet she died mere weeks before becoming queen. Granddaughter of James I and mother to George I, she was perhaps the finest queen that Britain never had. As the daughter of Frederick V, the deposed King of Bohemia, Sophia spent an impoverished childhood in exile. Emerging as a woman of sparkling intelligence and cutting wit, she married Ernest Augustus and became the first Electress of Hanover. Sophia: Mother of Kings, brings this remarkable woman and her tumultuous era vividly to life. In a world where battles raged across the continent and courtiers fought behind closed doors, Sophia kept the home fires burning. Through personal tragedy and public triumph, Sophia raised a royal family and survived illness, miscarriage, and accusations of conspiracy. As the mother of Great Britain's first Georgian king, Sophia of Hanover began one of the most glittering dynasties the world has ever known. From the House of Stuart to the House of Hanover, this is the story of her remarkable life.

Act Two

Duchess

‘I, being resolved to love him, was delighted to find how amiable he was.’

A Married Woman

On 30 September 1658, Sophia of the Palatinate married Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. The wedding took place, as her brother was dead set that it would, in Heidelberg. Sophia had waited a long time to reach this day and she was determined to make a splash. It took so long for Miss Carey to adorn her friend in a gown of silver brocade and dress her loose hair with a diamond crown that the ceremony, scheduled for 6.00 pm, didn’t take place until 9.00 pm. Four ladies-in-waiting bore the bride’s immense train and not one but two brothers escorted her to the altar, for the elector was joined by the Roman Catholic Edward, who had travelled from his home in Paris to see his little sister get married. Her mother, still smarting from Charles Louis’ rejection of her requests for financial help and unable to leave her creditors in The Hague, did not attend. She did, however, write to Charles II and request that her new son-in-law be granted the Order of the Garter. The request was duly granted.

A sobbing and abandoned Electress Charlotte was likewise absent, watching the festivities from a secluded spot out of sight of the other attendees. Perhaps unsurprisingly, none of Ernest Augustus’ family was in attendance. George William could hardly occupy a front row seat at the wedding of the girl he had abandoned and John Frederick, still sour from not being offered his own chance to woo Sophia, wouldn’t even consider attending.

Though Ernest Augustus had been keen for a smallish wedding, in the event it turned out to be anything but. Sophia herself looked back on the ceremony with obvious pride, for this was the day that she finally graduated from supporting player to lead.

‘Twenty-four gentleman marched before us, bearing lighted torches, adorned with ribbons in our armorial colours, (blue and white for me, red and yellow for the Duke). Cannon were fired at the moment when the clergyman united us. We were then placed opposite to each other, under a canopy, the Elector also having one apart for himself, while the Te Deum was sung. After the ceremony we returned to our apartments, where I renounced all claim to the Palatinate.’

Just as George William had renounced his rights to wed, so now did Sophia renounce her territory. The difference was, only one of them would keep the promise they made.

After an opulent wedding feast that began at 11.00 pm, the couple finally retired to bed at 6.00 am. Though what happened behind those closed doors must remain a secret shared only by those who were present, there can be little doubt from Sophia’s recollections that she was delighted with her husband and that he was equally smitten with her. The newlyweds didn’t emerge from their chambers until the following afternoon and by this time, Sophia and Ernest Augustus might reasonably be expected to have done rather more than practise their guitar chords.

The festivities were followed by a parting, as Ernest Augustus had official business that kept him from accompanying his new bride to Hanover. As the couple parted, Charles Louis finally made his secret divorce a matter of public knowledge. Sophia was too busy being dazzled by her dashing duke to bother with any domestic drama. Instead she was determined to fall in love. Not for her the misery of the Elector and Electress Palatine, their relationship marked and marred by mutual combat and a love that had long since turned to loathing. In some ways, to fall in love in such circumstances might seem like a stretch to our modern sensibilities but Sophia was a proud sort of woman and when she considered the question of her husband she reflected that she had resolved to love him no matter what, so she was relieved and not a little delighted to find that he was, at least, amiable.

Simply put, Sophia had made a conscious decision to love the man she was to marry regardless of whether he was loveable and often, he was anything but. Fortunately, she convinced herself that he was or at least that he might grow on her, which must have made her resolution easier to keep. Her union was certainly to prove more successful than some royal marriages were, including that of her brother and later, the disastrous match she made for her eldest son.

The amiable man who she was determined to adore sent his new wife to Hanover at the head of a magnificent and stately procession. During the journey she had spent an interlude as a guest of her marital uncle, George II, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, where the woman raised at first at the Winter Queen’s chaotic court in exile, then in the fiery household of the Elector Palatine, caught a tantalising glimpse of just how protocol-ridden a court could be. Despite or perhaps because of her eventful youth, Sophia longed for order. It wasn’t the stifling routine of her childhood with its multiple curtsies and mind-numbing adherence to precedence that she craved, but a sense of things being done correctly and according to rank and title. Here in Darmstadt, she saw that being taken to its extremes.

In her memoirs, Sophia notes the rigid etiquette she witnessed when she was a guest of the landgrave and his wife, Sophia Eleanor. From the ceremony of their first meeting outside of the town, when the married ladies could not ride with the princesses and the princesses could not ride with the countesses, to the carefully appointed rooms from which each rank was permitted to watch a firework display, she observed the full weight and discipline of protocol. Sophia’s companions, used to being her constant shadow, were not at all happy to be kept so distant from her and when they saw the landgravine’s ladies-in-waiting forming a guard of honour beside the halberdiers outside their mistresses’ room, Sophia’s attendants were flabbergasted. They certainly weren’t about to snap to attention.

As a newly married lady of rank Sophia loved being treated as an equal by the landgravine, who joined her children to perform a ballet in honour of her guests. Now she knew what it was to be more than a sister or daughter and though she would miss her brother dreadfully, Sophia was more than ready for this next chapter.

Home at Last

When Sophia neared Hanover, her husband and his three brothers travelled to meet her at the head of a flamboyant cavalcade. Also in the procession was her mother-in-law, Anne Eleonore of Hesse-Darmstadt, at whose etiquette-observing brother’s court Sophia had enjoyed a break during her journey. After a speech of welcome was given by Christian Louis, the dukes all crammed into Sophia’s carriage to enter the city. It proved quite a challenge thanks to the bulk of the very portly John Frederick. Then the rather squeezed party proceeded to the Leineschloss where stunning apartments had been prepared for the new arrival. Sophia first saw her new rooms in the company of the court, not the husband whom she had longed to be reunited with, but they would be alone soon enough. No doubt she paid particular attention to the flight of stairs which she only need to descend to reach Ernest Augustus’ own rooms, as they were situated directly beneath her own. This was the establishment she had craved and she was determined to make it work for everybody.

Once again, there was ceremony and show and once again, Sophia and Ernest Augustus were the centre of attention. The following day the couple were guests of honour at a celebration of their wedding but all the time, they longed to be alone together, rather than surrounded by adoring courtiers and family. Sophia was determined to fall in love, after all.

That moment finally came on the third day. Years later when her husband was long dead and her days of wine and roses were behind her, Sophia wrote that she took ‘pleasure in remembering how rejoiced we were to be left to ourselves when all the guests were gone, and how great was the Duke’s devotion to me.’ She had not expected anything but the need to create both heir and spare, for this marriage was a business arrangement and with the benefit of hindsight, Sophia claimed that she would have been perfectly content with that arrangement too. Perhaps Sophia was surprised to find that Ernest Augustus, who had seemed keen to marry her only because it made business sense, was as adoring of her as she was of him.

‘Marrying from interest only he had expected beforehand to feel nothing but indifference for me; but now his feelings were such that I had the fond conviction that he would love me forever, while I in return so idolised him that without him I felt as if I were lost.’

For all Sophia’s claims that she would have been happy with nothing but a companionate marriage of convenience, I simply don’t believe it. Written in her dotage, Sophia’s fond memories of the early days of her marriage positively shine from the page. Pragmatism and the years that had passed could do nothing to dim the memory, nor lessen the sense of a woman reliving her happiest hours.

Sophia wanted to spend her every waking moment beside her husband and her friends saw less and less of her with each day that passed. When the ever-loyal Miss Carey sought permission to leave Hanover and return to The Hague to marry Baron Franz Ludwig von Bonstetten, Sophia readily granted it, so enamoured was she of the company of Ernest Augustus. As far as she was concerned, she had no need of her female companions now, for she had the constant presence of the man she had resolved to adore.

Was this really wise, though?

There is much to be said for the company of friends, for wonderful though it is to have a devoted spouse, Sophia was soon to find that her husband’s attention to her wasn’t quite as idyllic as hers was to him. There were, to paraphrase another princess, three people in the marriage.

The third person in the union wasn’t another woman, nor was it a lover, but a sibling. In fact it was George William, that brother who had not wanted to marry Sophia when her hand had been his to take. He was a constant presence in the Leineschloss and where Ernest Augustus and Sophia went, George William wasn’t far away. He and Ernest Augustus were extraordinarily close, but George William seemed to be hinting that he would like to be extraordinarily close to Sophia too, which was a step too far for the husband and wife. Over the months that followed he became Sophia’s shadow, as we will see, but should we be suspicious of the picture she paints in her memoirs, where he is always around every corner, popping up like an unwelcome smell? There is always the possibility that she exaggerated his interest to make herself feel better for his having rejected her but to me that’s just not her style. Sophia never expected her memoirs to be made public and most importantly of all, she cared for her reputation far too much to risk it on fancies that weren’t true. George William simply wanted what he couldn’t have; he was a boy who couldn’t reach the biscuit tin.

George William, that fast-loving, hard-living Duke of Brunswick- Lüneburg, was laid up by illness one day when his brother and sister-inlaw paid him a visit. Ernest Augustus was relaxing with a book whilst his wife sat at George William’s bedside and chatted about this and that, as she was quite happy to do with her husband’s favourite brother and closest friend. By way of small talk, Sophia commented that George William must be sorry to be stuck here in bed rather than partying in Italy, his favourite place in the world. Never one to let an opportunity go by, George William declared that so long as Sophia was at his side, he didn’t care where he was. She laughed off the comment and archly quoted the words of a song that the trio loved, telling him:

‘Quand on n’a pas ce que l’on aime,

Il faut aimer ce’que l’on a.’

Or to put it another way:

‘When you cannot have what you love,

Love what you have.’

Unfortunately, it was at precisely this moment that Ernest Augustus chose to look up from his book, just in time to hear his wife’s throwaway comment. Having missed the first half of the conversation and any reference to not being able to travel to Italy, Ernest Augustus believed what he had heard was his wife dropping a fairly large hint that she had married him because she couldn’t have his brother. To say that Ernest Augustus was furious doesn’t quite capture exactly how distressed the misunderstanding left him and for what was left of the visit, he was mute. His silence continued until the couple was alone and Sophia begged him to tell her what had happened, but still she was faced with her husband’s agonising silence.

Sophia was utterly bereft at the thought that she had upset the husband she was so keen to idolise and he, in true spoiled brat mode, had decided that the best response was to send her to Coventry. Faced with his silent anger, Sophia wished that she was dead, unable to imagine a life without her dashing duke. If this seems like a rather melodramatic reaction to a tiff, spare a moment to remember exactly how Sophia’s life had been lived to date. She had never known a normal marriage between loving spouses and had seen no useful example of how a relatively normal couple would behave. Instead she had witnessed violent explosions in Heidelberg, seeing outbursts of physical violence and such extremes of emotion from both Charlotte and Charles Louis that it’s little wonder that, at 28, she still burst into tears more suited to a child.

Eventually, with Sophia was in floods of tears, Ernest Augustus broke his silence. Upon hearing that he had mistaken her little Italian joke for a secret message of love to his brother, Sophia ‘clearly proved to him his mistake. Thus peace was made very quickly between us.’

I suspect that peace was made may be the polite way of putting it.

Ironically, it was the siren song of Italy that tempted Ernest Augustus away from his dutiful, devoted wife when he and George William took a trip there to escape the Hanover winter. Though Sophia had hoped to join them, the journey proved too much for her and she was forced to turn back after just one day on the road, leaving the men to travel on without her company.

Bereft all over again, Sophia was caught in a cycle of being distressed by her own distress. She withdrew from public appearances so that nobody would see how unhappy Ernest Augustus’ absence had left her, and delighted only when she received his letters. There was also a sniffy missive from a piqued George William and this was the cause of anything but delight. The duke, who wanted Sophia only when he could no longer have her, was behaving like a spoiled child with a favourite toy, trying to snatch back what he had already rejected. The cause of his annoyance this time was his belief that his sister-in-law had deliberately pulled her hand away from him when she exited the carriage to leave the brothers to their journey. He had been about to kiss Sophia’s hand, he complained, and she had coldly robbed him of the opportunity.

Now, Sophia might weep bitter tears when Ernest Augustus slighted her, but she wasn’t about to spare any of them for George William. His letter of complaint went unanswered and Sophia’s fair hand stayed resolutely and happily unkissed.

There was to be one more rejection for George William. When the brothers returned, protocol demanded that Sophia greet him before her spouse. Instead she dashed straight past her brother-in-law and into her husband’s arms.

Quite by accident, of course.

Even now George William wouldn’t be cowed and less than a year after the wedding, he was still making loaded comments to his sisterin-law until, one day, he told her that he regretted letting her go. Sophia pretended not to have heard because what could she possibly say to that? Perhaps, she speculated, there was another aspect of Italian life that he hoped to emulate, this one rather eye-opening. Sophia had heard that in Italy, when one brother married, all declared, ‘siamo maritati’, meaning that all had married the bride of the favourite.

If that was what George William hoped for himself, he was to be sorely disappointed. Sophia was married to one man and one alone, but just as she had seen the destructive powers of jealousy in Heidelberg, now she was to experience it firsthand. No matter how mu...