The sixteenth duke, Otho, was the first who is supposed to have brought a blot upon the ducal scutcheon, by honestly marrying rather according to his heart than his interests. His wife was a simple lady of Brunswick, named Matilda de Campen. It became the common object of all the dukes of the various Brunswick branches to increase the importance of a house which had contributed something to the imperial greatness of Germany. They endeavoured to accomplish this common object by intermarriages; but the desired consummation was not achieved until a comparatively recent period, when the branch of Brunswick-Luneburg became Electors, and subsequently Kings of Hanover, and that of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Sovereign Dukes of Brunswick. The grandfather of our George I., William, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, had seven sons, and all these were dukes, like their father. On the decease of the latter, they affected to discover that if the seven heirs, each with his little dukedom, were to marry, the greatness of the house would suffer alarming diminution. They accordingly determined that one alone of the brothers should form a legal matrimonial connection, and that the naming of the lucky re-founder of the dignity of Brunswick should be left to chance! The seven brothers met in the hall of state in their deceased father’s mansion, and there threw dice as to who should live on in single blessedness, and which should gain the prize, not of a wife, but of permission to find one. ‘Double sixes’ were thrown by George, the sixth son. The lady whom he cavalierly wooed and readily won, was Anne Eleanore, daughter of the Landgraf of Hesse-Darmstadt. The heir-apparent of this marriage was Frederick Ernest Augustus, who, in 1659, married Sophia, the daughter of Frederick and Elizabeth, the short-lived King and Queen of Bohemia; the latter the daughter of James I. The eldest child of this last marriage was George Louis, who ultimately became King of Great Britain. When Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, the French Protestants who refused to be converted were executed or imprisoned. Some found safety, with suffering, in exile; and confiscation made beggars of thousands. When towns, where the Protestants were in the majority, exhibited tardiness in coming over to the king’s way of thinking, dragoons were ordered thither, and this order was of such significance, that when it was made known, the population, to escape massacre, usually professed recantation of error in a mass. This daily accession of thousands who made abjuration under the sword, and walked thence to confession and reception of the Sacrament under an implied form in which they had no faith, was described to the willingly duped king by the _ultra-montane_ bishops as a miracle as astounding as any in Scripture.