I learned from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, mistress to George the Second, the fact mentioned in text, of George the First burning his wife’s testament. That Princess, the Electress of Hanover, liked the famous Count Konigsmark, while her husband was at the Army. The old Elector, father of George the First, ordered him away. The Electress, then Hereditary Princess, was persuaded to let him kiss her hand before his departure. She saw him in bed--he retired, and was never heard of more. When George the Second went first to Hanover after his father’s death, and made some alterations in the palace, the body of Konigsmark was found under the floor of the chamber next to the Electress’s chamber. He had been strangled immediately on leaving her, by the old Elector’s order, and buried under the floor. This fact _Queen Caroline related to my father_, Sir Robert Walpole. George the Second told it to his wife, but never to his mistress, Lady Suffolk, who had never heard it till I told it to her many years after. The Electress was separated from George I. on that amour, and was called Duchess of Halle; and he married the Duchess of Kendal with his left hand. When the French threatened Hanover in Queen Anne’s war, the Duchess of Halle was sent to her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Zelle, who doted on her their only child, and she stayed a year with them; but though they were most earnest to retain her, she was forced to return to her confinement, in which she died the year before her husband. Some French prophetess, as supposed hired by the Duke of Zelle, warned George I. to take care of his wife, for he would not long outlive her. As the Germans are very superstitious, he believed the prophecy; and when he took leave of his son and the Princess of Wales, Caroline, he told them he should never see them more. George II., who hated his father and was very fond of his mother, meant, if she had survived her husband, to bring her over, and declare her Queen Dowager. Lady Suffolk told me, that the morning after the news of the death of George I. arrived, when she went, as Woman of the Bed-chamber, to the new Queen, she found a whole and half-length portraits of the Electress hung up in the apartment; George II. had had them locked up, but had not dared to produce them. Princess Amelie has the half-length at her house in Cavendish-square. George I. told the Duchess of Kendal, that if he could, he would appear to her after his death. Soon after that event, a large bird, I forget of what sort, flew into her window. She believed it was the King’s soul, and took the utmost care of it. George II. was not less credulous; he believed in vampires. His son Frederic affected the same contradictory fondness for his grandfather, and erected the statue of George I. in Leicester-fields; and intended, if he had come to the crown, to place a monument to his memory in St. Paul’s.