She departed this life on the 1st of August, 1714, almost her last intelligible words being of her brother, the Pretender: “My brother! Oh! my poor brother. What will become of you?” On July 31st, Craggs, a creature of the Whig Government, had been despatched to Hanover to convey the news that the Queen of England was dying. Craggs reached Hanover on August 5th--a journey then apparently of six days--but his performance, though accomplished, one can imagine, with all haste, was entirely eclipsed by that of one Godike, secretary to Bothmar, the Hanoverian Envoy to England, who, despatched by his master on August 1st, the day of the Queen’s death, arrived at Hanover on the 5th, the same day as Craggs, and proceeding direct to the Palace of Herrenhausen, conveyed the news to the Elector before any of the other messengers from England arrived. It was this enterprising Bothmar who really decided George in accepting the British Crown, for had not his reports from London been satisfactory as to the feeling of the people, or at any rate as to the absence of hostility to the Elector on their part, it is very unlikely that George would have left his beloved Herrenhausen at all, and England might to-day have been ruled by a Stuart King. “The late King,” wrote Dean Lockier after the death of George the First, “would never have stirred a step if there had been any strong opposition.”[8] But there was no disturbance, the people of London at any rate were quiet, probably in a state of expectancy, and the preparations of the Elector and his family for a move to England commenced forthwith. Nevertheless, the new King of England did not hurry himself to take possession of his dominions; he had been there thirty-four years before on a matrimonial venture, of which the late Queen Anne, then Princess of York, was the object, and he apparently cherished no pleasant recollections of the visit, which had proved a dismal failure. However, he started a month after the death of Queen Anne for the Hague, there to embark for England, and he took with him a numerous following of Hanoverians in which was Bernstorff, his Prime Minister, and two-thirds of his seraglio, _i.e._, the Ladies Schulemburg and Kielmansegge. It is not surprising that with his Eastern proclivities he took also a couple of Turks by name Mustapha and Mahomet, but whether these two last were eunuchs, in attendance on the two ladies of the harem or not is not mentioned in history. To his son, the Electoral Prince, George gave the command to travel with him, the Princess Caroline was to follow in a month with all her children except one. Little Prince Frederick Louis, the subject of these Memoirs, by his grandfather’s command, was to remain behind in Hanover, a child of seven, alone and separated from the rest of his kindred. FOOTNOTES: [6] The Electoral Princess Caroline to Leibnitz, Hanover, 17th June, 1714. From Wilkins’ “Caroline.”