Queen Victoria

Richard Rivington Holmes

QUEEN VICTORIA

Arcadia Ebooks 2016

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Richard Rivington Holmes

Queen Victoria

(1897)

Victoria, Queen and Empress, holds her unique position among the Sovereigns of Great Britain not solely on account of the duration of her reign. Her Majesty, alone among the Queens Regnant who have preceded her, has been blessed with direct heirs. On three previous occasions the sceptre has been held by female hands, and on each, at the death of the holder, the direct line of succession has been interrupted. Mary, the elder daughter of Henry VII, who, after a short and troubled reign, died in 1558, left no issue by her husband, Philip of Spain. Under her successor, her half-sister Elizabeth, the English nation freed itself from the domination of Rome, crushed the power of Spain, laid the foundations of empire beyond the seas, and produced a literature which is the glory of our language. But Elizabeth died unmarried. At her death the direct line of the house of Tudor came to an end. The succession passed to the house of Stuart, through the marriage of Margaret, daughter of Henry VII, with James IV of Scotland; and her great-grandson, James VI of Scotland, the son of Elizabeth’s rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, succeeded to the English throne. With the death of Queen Anne, the dynasty of the Stuarts, after giving four kings and two queens to the list of English Sovereigns, terminated. Anne’s elder sister, Mary, had indeed enjoyed the title of Queen, but she shared the throne with her husband, William of Orange, who survived her. On William’s death Anne became sole monarch, and proved to be the last Queen Regnant till the present reign. Her rule, like that of Elizabeth, was distinguished for triumphs both in peace and war, as well as for brilliancy in literature. By her marriage with George, Prince of Denmark, the promise of direct heirs was frequent; but of all her children one only, William, Duke of Gloucester, lived long enough to make the direct succession probable, and, at the age of eleven, he, too, sickened and died. Direct heirs of James II did indeed exist, but their claim to the Crown was debarred by the Act of Settlement of 1701, which confined the succession to Sophia, Electress Dowager of Hanover, and her successors, being Protestants.

Sophia, Electress of Hanover, was the twelfth child and youngest daughter of Frederick V, Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia, and of Elizabeth, daughter of James I of England and VI of Scotland. Born in 1630, at The Hague, when the fortunes of her parents were at their lowest ebb, her own fortunes were as changeable, though in an inverse manner. Her memoirs give an interesting picture of her life at The Hague in her early years, and of the manners and intrigues of the exiled English Court. From her cousin, Charles, Prince of Wales, and afterwards King, she attracted much attention, and by many of the Royalists it was both believed and hoped that she would become their future sovereign. In the Royal Library at Windsor is preserved a curious memento of this passage in her life. It is a copy of a very early edition of the “Eikon Basilike,” in which the young King, not liking the coarsely-executed portrait of himself bound up in the volume, has attempted to soften its features by touches of a pen. These not proving satisfactory, he has inserted another and more pleasing engraving of himself, on the back of which he has written, “For the Princess Sophia.” The young Princess, however, had strength of mind to resist the advances of the Prince, and obtained permission to leave The Hague. Several suitors for her hand appeared, and at length, shortly before the Restoration, she became the wife of Duke Ernest of Brunswick-Luneburg, afterwards Elector of Hanover. To him she proved an attached and faithful wife till his death in 1698. Sprightly, clever, and intelligent in her youth, she retained throughout her long life her powers of mind. A warm admirer and correspondent of Descartes, she was also a close and intimate friend of Leibnitz, who was her constant visitor at Herren-hausen, where she relieved her studies in philosophy by the care she bestowed upon her gardens. In 1701 the Act of Settlement placed her next in succession to the Crown, which forty years before had been within her reach. But she died in the lifetime of Queen Anne, at whose death, a few weeks later, her son George, Elector of Hanover, was summoned to the vacant throne. Besides this Prince, the Electress Sophia had five other sons. Her only daughter, Sophia Charlotte, who married Frederick I, King of Prussia, and was mother of Frederick the Great, was a strong-minded and amiable princess, and had no small share in forming the character of the Princess Caroline of Anspach, of whom mention will be made presently.

In writing the life of a Queen whose personal influence upon her time has been so extraordinary, it is natural to pay some attention to those female members of her ancestry who, though not themselves Queens Regnant, have influenced the course of events during their lives, and have transmitted to their descendants unmistakable traces of their personality.

Margaret Tudor, through whom the blood of the earlier kings descends to the present race, bore a decided resemblance to her brother, Henry VIII Impetuous, fond of power and loving display, she yet exhibited great firmness and capacity in the troublous times which succeeded the death of her husband at Flodden, as well as in the guardianship of his son, James V.

To the romantic and eventful life of her granddaughter, Mary Queen of Scots, her complex character and tragic fate, a whole literature has been dedicated. No personage in history has commanded more potent advocacy or been assailed by fiercer criticism. Born in 1542, she became Queen of Scotland at her father’s death at the close of the same year. Before six years had elapsed she was sent to France, as the betrothed bride of the Dauphin, afterwards Francis II. There she was educated, and her abilities, naturally great, were carefully developed. Her religious instruction was superintended with even more solicitude, for, as Queen of Scotland and a claimant to the throne of England, the hopes of Catholicism, and of the return of the British Islands to the supremacy of Rome rested upon her. She was married to Francis in April, 1556, and, on the death of Mary of England in November of the same year, she laid formal claim to the English throne in right of her descent from Henry VII, alleging as ground for her conduct the illegitimacy of Elizabeth; and, notwithstanding that the latter was declared Queen without opposition, Mary and her husband assumed, and after their succession to the French throne, on the death of Henry II in 1559, continued to use, the titles of King and Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland. This was the beginning of the bitter and lifelong animosity between the rival Queens.

At the close of 1560, a few days before she was eighteen years of age, Mary Stuart’s husband died. Her career in France was over; her rule over Scotland was but nominal, and her own religion was there proscribed. Still, after much hesitation, she ventured to return, and on the 18th of August, 1561, landed at Leith. After this, her marriages, her romantic friendships, her battles, successes and defeats, her imprisonment and escapes, her flight from her kingdom, her lonely captivity and final trial and execution, have been inexhaustible themes for poets, painters, and dramatists of every land. They are universally known; and it is unnecessary here to give even the merest outline of her history, particularly as the first volume of the series of historical works, of which the present volume forms a part, has been devoted to an exhaustive discussion of the subject, and the second contains the history of her great rival Queen Elizabeth, the two representing, from opposite points of view, the struggles of Catholicism and Protestantism for ascendancy in this kingdom. With the death of Mary the last hope of the revival of the domination of Rome departed.

The consort of her son, James I of England, the Princess Anne, was the second daughter of Frederick II of Denmark and Sophia, of the House of Mecklenburg. By her mother, who was a highly-accomplished woman, skilled in astronomy, chemistry and other sciences, the future Queen was educated with the greatest care. A lively temperament, and a quick and cultured intelligence were not the only charms of the Queen. She added to these the personal attractions of fine features and a brilliant complexion. It was from her that the Stuart family derived the features which are so familiar in the portraits of Henry, Prince of Wales, and of Charles I and his descendants - a type so persistent and remarkable that, as Mr. Lang records in his latest work, describing Charles Edward Stuart in his youth, “A distinguished artist who outlined Charles’s profile, and applied it to another of Her present Majesty in her youth, tells me that they are almost exact counterparts.” In politics Anne took little part; her tastes lay in other directions, and she is chiefly remembered by her connection with the history of the English stage, and by her patronage of Ben Jonson. She was a good wife and mother, and died beloved and respected by the nation.

The noble character, heroic courage, and bitter misfortunes of her daughter Elizabeth have surrounded her memory with an immortal halo of romance. Born in 1596, she accompanied her parents to England. There she was brought up in those principles of the Protestant religion, by her steady adherence to which she was the means of raising her descendants to her father’s throne. In the pride of her youth and beauty she was married to the young Elector Palatine, Frederick V, a nephew of the famous warrior, Maurice, Prince of Orange. The alliance was universally popular, as it connected the English royal family with some of the chief Protestant Courts in Europe. For some years her married life at Heidelberg was happy and even splendid; but her husband’s acceptance of the offer of the vacant Crown of Bohemia was the beginning of the series of difficulties which ended in the loss not only of that Crown, but of his ancient dominions in the Palatinate. The Princess died in England in 1662, leaving behind her a name, long revered by the nation as that of a martyr in the cause of the religion to which they were so firmly attached.

Caroline of Brandenburg-Anspach, wife of George II, is another ancestress of the Queen who can never be passed over or forgotten in the history of the dynasty. Born in 1683, she lost her father at an early age. The greater part of her childhood was passed at Dresden at the gay court of the Elector of Saxony, who had become the second husband of her mother. In 1696 another change in her life occurred. Left an orphan by her mother’s death, she remained for some years with her guardian, Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg, afterwards King of Prussia, and his wife, Sophia Charlotte, daughter of the Electress Sophia of Hanover. Under the care of this highly-gifted woman, the character of the young princess was moulded. Firm in her adhesion to the Protestant religion, she refused the splendour of an alliance with the future Emperor Charles VI, because such an union would have necessitated a change of faith. In her resistance to the proposals made to her, she was encouraged by the old Electress, and by Leibnitz, who was thus intimately connected with three generations of the house, which has played so important a part in English history. By his means, and with the aid of the old Electress Sophia, her marriage with the hereditary Prince of Hanover was accomplished. Of the story of her after life it is not necessary here to speak. Of her character, and especially of her devotion, and self-sacrifice, it is difficult to say too much. Literature and the arts found in her a discriminating patron. The excellence of her own artistic taste is proved by the fact that she decorated her sitting-room at Kensington with the drawings by Holbein of the ladies and nobles of the Court of Henry VIII, which, with the equally priceless volume of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, had been recently discovered in a cupboard of the Palace, and with the miniature portraits by Cooper and others, which are still not the least valuable of the treasures of the Crown. Till her death she retained her beauty, and the marked type of her features is perpetuated in the great family resemblance which is so noticeable in her descendants to the present day.