The Impeachment of the House of BrunswickBradlaugh, Charles
History
The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick
Bradlaugh, Charles
Great Britain -- History -- 1714-1837; Hanover, House of
Although George I. brought with him no wife to England, he was
accompanied by at least two of his mistresses, and our peerage roll
was enriched by the addition of Madame Kielmansegge as Countess of
Darlington, and Mademoiselle Erangard Melosine de Schulenberg as
Duchess of Kendal and Munster, Baroness of Glastonbury, and Countess
of Feversham. These peeresses were received with high favor by the Whig
aristocracy, although the Tories refused to countenance them, and "they
were often hooted by the mob as they passed through the streets." The
_Edinburgh Review_ described them as "two big blowsy German women."
Here I have no room to deal fairly with Charlotte Sophia, Baroness of
Brentford and Countess of Darlington; her title is extinct, and I can
write nothing of any good or useful act to revive her memory. Lord
Chesterfield says of George I.: "No woman came amiss to him, if she were
only very willing and very fat." John Heneage Jesse, in his "Memoirs of
the Court of England"--speaking of the Duchess of Kendal, the Countess
Platen (the co-partner in the murder of Konigsmark), afterwards Countess
of Darlington, and many others less known to infamy--says that George
I. "had the folly and wickedness to encumber himself with a seraglio of
hideous German prostitutes." The Duchess of Kendal was for many years
the chief mistress of George, and being tall and lean was caricatured
as the Maypole or the Giraffe. She had a pension of £7,500 a year, the
profits of the place of Master of the Horse, and other plunder. The
Countess of Darlington's figure may be judged from the name of Elephant
or Camel, popularly awarded to her. Horace Walpole says of her: "I
remember as a boy being terrified at her enormous figure. The fierce
black eyes, large and rolling, between two lofty-arched eyebrows, two
acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed,
and was not distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part
restrained by stays. No wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress."
She died 1724. Mahon says: "She was unwieldy in person, and rapacious in
character."
Phillimore declares that "George I. brought with him from Hanover
mistresses as rapacious, and satellites as ignoble, as those which drew
down such deserved obloquy on Charles H., Bothman, Bernstoff, Robethon,
and two Turks--Mustapha and Mahomet,--meddled more with public affairs,
and were to the full as venal as Chiffin, Pepys and Smith." Mahon, who
calls Robethon "a prying, impertinent, venomous creature," adds that
"coming from a poor electorate, a flight of hungry Hanoverians, like
so many famished vultures, fell with keen eyes and bended talons on the
fruitful soil of England."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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