The Electress Sophia and the Hanoverian Succession

In the burial-vault of the Guelfs, at Hanover, stands a coffin enclosing the remains of the Electress Sophia, and bearing the inscription: Magnæ Britanniæ Hæres. These words sum up her story as that of a great hope, long cherished but never fulfilled. Yet a biography of this Princess, who died, though herself uncrowned, the ‘mother of our Kings to be,’ will, if truthful, be found to treat a nobler theme than a personal ambition born of chance upon chance, vexed by prolonged delays, and doomed to final disappointment. The Electress Sophia was in herself worthy to be the source of a dynasty whose last and most august member left to her successor a throne far securer than that which was mounted by Sophia’s eldest son. But the nation, of whose institutions a limited monarchy has long formed an integral part, also owes a debt to the very fact of the accession of the House of Hanover, and therefore to the insight and self-control exhibited by that House, and conspicuously by the Electress Sophia, during the entire preceding period of uncertainty. At a highly critical date in the course of those years, when the Electress and her family were most anxious to avoid any rash or false step on their own part, she told a correspondent that, at the English Court, it was held indispensable to pretend to wish for the succession of the Electoral line—because of the people. Although there were, in those days, Jacobites enough and to spare in London and other parts of the kingdom, and although the stolidity of our first Hanoverian King, and the self-conceit of his successor, retarded the growth of personal sympathy between monarch and subjects, yet the perception, in both dynasty and nation, of a definite community of interests formed a sufficient beginning for the growth of a close mutual attachment. To this the Electress Sophia contributed, it is not too much to say, both by the circumstances of her birth and by the conduct of her life. She was the daughter of a Stewart Princess, on whose Protestant marriage the nation had set its hopes, and whom it had seen condemned, because of her husband’s youthful venture in the cause of militant Protestantism, to long years of exile and privation. In her own conduct Sophia displayed a prudence, a dignity, and a sincerity, which have rarely, under conditions so trying, been so consistently combined. The legend, indeed, of her having often declared that she would die content if those other words, ‘Sophia, Queen of Great Britain,’ could be inscribed on her tomb, is irreconcileable with the whole tenor of her known private thoughts, as well as of her public acts. She was far from indifferent to the greatness that might be in store for her, or to the necessity, in the interests of her House, of constant vigilance, promptitude, and tact. But she deemed it enough to be found, at no stage of her career, either unequal to her present fortunes or unready for those responsibilities of a greater future which cast their shadow before them. Thus it is largely due to her, and, as it is but just to acknowledge, with her and after her, to the next heir to her expectations, that, so far as the House of Hanover is concerned, the history of its succession to the British throne may be reviewed without the feelings of humiliation too often aroused by narratives of disputed inheritances. At the same time, the essential significance of that history would, in any case, have to be sought deeper than in the vicissitudes of personal ambitions or the machinations of families or factions. The Hanoverian Succession was, in fact, only another name for the Protestant Succession in flesh and blood, and, as such, represented the principal gain which most Englishmen and Scotchmen were intent upon bringing home out of the long struggle against the Stewart monarchy. Not that the disputes and efforts connected with the Hanoverian Succession throughout, or, at times, mainly addressed themselves to the religious issue; but it would be futile to ignore, or to seek to obscure, the origin and basis of the great political transaction in which the Electress Sophia was called upon to play so prominent a part. She was fitted to play it, alike by the circumstances of her descent and marriage, and by the qualities of her character and intellect, and above all by a perfect self-control, joined to a freedom of spirit in which, during the efforts and trials of her life, she found encouragement and consolation. From the relation in which the Electress Sophia stood to the question of the British Succession, that loomed so large on the political horizon during her later years, the story of her life derives its paramount interest. Even on the experiences of her earlier years, whose memories carry us back to the time of the Thirty Years’ War and of the great Civil Conflict in this island, it is impossible to dwell without thinking of the great destiny reserved for her line, and of the many helps and hindrances which were to facilitate or to impede its accomplishment. But in the semi-obscurity of her youth, as under the gaze of inquisitive eyes to which her maturity was exposed, she remains true to herself; and few biographical records could prove more fascinating than one covering her fourscore years, were it but possible to depict her from first to last in the same life-like colours in which she has portrayed herself in her Memoirs, and in which she reappears on almost every page of her correspondence. Unfortunately, it is difficult to convey by extracts, and impossible to preserve in translation, the constant alertness of thought, and refreshing vivacity of expression, frequently touched by real humour, and, at all times, free from any tinge of affectation, which are not less characteristic of her letters than they must have been of her conversation. As for her autobiography, it breaks off as early as 1681, and thus fails to cover that longer half of her life in which she was to become a figure of importance in European affairs. For it was the ‘abdication’ by flight of King James II and the subsequent passing of the Bill of Rights which brought about and established the restriction of the English Succession to Protestants, and which first placed Sophia and her line, though not as yet by name, in direct relation to that Succession as a question of practical politics.