The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I (34 page)

Melusine’s magnificent staircase at Kensington Palace.

Notes on Illustrations

1. Portrait of Countess Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal (1667–1743) (oil on canvas). 18th Century.
Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library

2. Portrait of Countess Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal (1667–1743) (oil on canvas). 18th Century.
Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library

3. General Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg by Giovanni Antonio Guardi (1698–1760). 18th Century.
Ca’ Rezzonico, Museo del Settecento, Venice/The Bridgeman Art Library

4. Sophie, electress of Hanover, (1630–1714). Copper engraving, unsigned and undated,
c
. 1701.
akg-images

5. King George I as Prince of Hanover by Kneller, engraved by Richard Tompson after a painting by Sir Geoffrey Kneller.
Fotomas/TopFoto

6. George I (1646–1723),
c
. 1715, Studio of Sir Geoffrey Kneller.
The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library/The Bridgeman Art Library

7. Gertrud von Schuamburg-Lippe, daughter of Melusine von der Schulenburg.
Kloster Barsinghausen

8. Sophia Charlotte von Platen und Hallermund (1669–1726) by School of Sir Godfrey Kneller. Oil on canvas.
culture-images/Lebrecht Music & Arts

9. Klara Elisabeth von Platen, Countess of Platen Hallermund, née Meysenbugh (1650–1700).
culture-images/Lebrecht Music & Arts

10. Sophia Dorothea, (1666–1726), Hereditary Princess of Hanover, with her children Georg and Sophia Dorothea, painting by Jacques Vaillant,
c.
1692.
Mary Evans Picture Library/INTERFOTO/ARTCOLOR

11. Königsmarck, Philip Christoph Count of, (1665–1694), painting by Martin Meytens.
Mary Evans Picture Library/INTERFOTO/Friedrich

12. King George II Georgius Augustus Electoral Prince of Brunswick (1683–1760).
Fotomas/TopFoto

13. Princess Caroline Elizabeth by John Faber Jr, after Hans Hysing mezzotint, mid-18th century.
© National Portrait Gallery, London

14. Portrait of Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745) (oil on canvas) by Charles Jervas.18th Century.
Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library

15. Melusine von der Schulenburg, unknown artist,
c
. 1720, oil on canvas, ©
Bomann-Museum Celle

16. Frederick William Ernest, Count of Schaumberg-Lippe,
c.
1767 (oil on canvas).
The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

17. ‘The Brabant Skreen’, 1721. A satire on the South Sea company. The Duchess of Kendal gives money to Robert Knight (treasurer of the company), to enable him to escape. Illustration from ‘Social Caricature in the Eighteenth Century . . . With over two hundred illustrations’ by George Paston (pseudonym of Emily Morse Symonds) (London, 1905).
Print Collector/HIP/TopFoto

18. Herrenhausen Palace (built 1666–1714, rebuilt 1820–66 by Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves). View of the palace and the Great Garden (established from 1666). Copper engraving, 1714, unsigned; coloured at a later stage.
akg-images

19. A Royal Hunting Party at Göhrde, 1725 (oil on panel). English School.
The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library

20. Kensington Palace,
c.
1924
© Country Life

21. Kensington Palace,
c.
1924
© Country Life

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank my agent, Vivienne Schuster, and my editor, Joshua Ireland, for their encouragement and enthusiasm. I am indebted to Professor Aubrey Newman, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Leicester, who encouraged me throughout this project and first led me to believe that there was a book here. Huge thanks to my linguist friends who helped me with the translation of German and French sources, particularly Yehuda Shapiro and Jerry Gotel. Dr Amanda Jones at the Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York, was enormously helpful regarding a morganatic marriage, and I am grateful to Antonio Jimenez-Milian, library assistant at York Minster Library, for his information on Lancelot Blackburn, Archbishop of York. Dr Joanna Marshner, Senior Curator at Kensington Palace, generously gave up a morning of her time to guide me behind the scenes there.

In Germany the curator at Celle Castle, Anke Wiesbrich, helped to make my trip there extremely productive. I am particularly grateful to her for unearthing a portrait of Melusine, previously unknown, in the bowels of Celle Castle, and for her detailed tour of Sophia Dorothea’s childhood home. The local historian Rolf Sahlfeld was very generous with his time and gave me an impromptu tour of Barsinghausen. Thanks to the ever-helpful staff at the London Library and the British Library.

The amazing Katy Rose cared for my children while I wrote. My mother Trudy Gold and my sister Tanya Gold were founts of wisdom and childcare.

Above all, my love and thanks go to my boys, Asher and Jake, and to my husband Phil. I am so grateful to them all for their affection, patience, and humour.

Bibliography

Archives

The British Library

The National Archives

Hannover Haupstaatarchiv

Books and Articles

Ackroyd, Peter,
London, the Biography
(2007)

Aiton, E. J.,
Leibniz: a biography
(1985)

Arciszewska, Barbara,
The Hanoverian Court and the Triumph of Palladio
(2002)

Backschneider, Paula R.,
Daniel Defoe: Ambition and Innovation
(1986)

Balen, Malcolm,
A Very English Deceit: The Secret History of the South Sea Bubble and the First Great Financial Scandal
(2002)

Baring-Gould, S.,
Curious Myths of the Middle Ages
(1866)

Beattie, J. M.,
The English Court in the Reign of George I
(1976)

Bentley, Richard (ed.),
Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford
(6 vols, 1840)

Bertram, Mijndert,
Georg II: König und Kurfürst
(2004)

Binney, Marcus,
Great Houses of Europe
(2003)

Black, Jeremy,
British Foreign Policy in the Age of Walpole
(1985)

——,
George II
(2007)

——,
Robert Walpole and the Nature of Politics in Early Eighteenth Century England
(1990)

——,
The Hanoverians: The History of a Dynasty
(2004)

Bristol,
The Diary of John Hervey, first Earl of Bristol
, ed. Sydenham H. A. Hervey (1894)

Buck, Anne,
Dress in Eighteenth-Century England
(1979)

Burton, Elizabeth,
The Georgians at Home
(1967)

Byrd, William,
The London Diary 1717–1721
, ed. Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling (1958)

Calamy, Edmund, 1671–1732:
An Historical Account of My Own Life, With Some Reflections on the Times I Have Lived In (1671-1731)
(second edition, 2 vols, 1830), ed. John Towill Rutt

Callendar, Ann,
Godly Mayfair
(1980)

Campbell Orr, Clarissa, ed.,
Queenship in Britain 1660–1837: Royal Patronage, Court Culture and Dynastic Politics
(2002)

Carswell, J.,
The South Sea Bubble
(rev. edn 1993)

Chancellor, Edward,
Devil Take the Hindmost
(1999)

Chesterfield, Lord,
The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
, ed. in 6 vols by B. Dobrée (1932)

Clavering, James,
The Correspondence of Sir James Clavering
, ed. and arranged by H. T. Dickinson (1967)

Colvin, H. M., ed.,
The History of the King’s Works
, vol. V,
1660–1782
(1976)

Cowper, Mary,
The Diary of Mary, Countess Cowper 1714–1720
, ed. The Hon. C. S. Spencer Cowper (1864)

Coxe, William,
Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford: With Original Correspondence And Authentic Papers, Never Before Published
(3 vols, 1798)

Cruickshanks, Eveline, ‘Charles Spencer, Third Earl of Sunderland, and Jacobitism’, in
The English Historical Review
, vol. 113, no. 450 (Feb 1998)

Cumming, Valerie,
Royal Dress: The Image and the Reality 1580 to the Present Day
(1989)

Danneil, Johann Friedrich,
Das Geschlecht von der Schulenburg
(1847)

——,
Stammtafeln der von der Schulenburg
(1847)

Davies, Norman,
A History of Europe
(1996)

Deutsch, Otto Erich,
Handel: a Documentary Biography
(1955)

Dickson, P. G. M.,
The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit 1688–1756
(1967)

Doran, J.,
History of Court Fools
(1858)

Downie, J. A., and Thomas N. Corns, ed.,
Telling People What to Think
(1993)

Egmont,
Diary of Viscount Percival, afterwards First Earl of Egmont
, ed. R. A. Roberts (1920–3)

Ernst August,
Letters: Briefe des Herzogs Ernst August zu Braunschweig-Lüneburg an Johann Franz Diedrich von Wendt aus den Jahren 1703 bis 1726
, ed. Erich Graf Kielmansegg (1902)

Fabrice, Friedrich Ernst,
Memoiren: Die Memoiren des Kammerherrn Friedrich Ernst von Fabrice, 1683–1750
, ed. R. Grieser (1956)

Fara, Patricia,
Newton: the making of a genius
(2002)

Field, Ophelia,
The Kit-Cat Club: Friends Who Imagined a Nation
(2008)

Finke, Hans-Joachim,
The Hanoverian Junta
(DPhil dissertation, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor 1970)

Franklin, Colin,
Lord Chesterfield, His Character and Characters
(1993)

Fraser, David,
Frederick the Great
(2000)

Fraser, Flora,
Princesses: the six daughters of George III
(2004)

George, ‘George I’s letters to his daughter’, ed. R. L. Arkell, in
English Historical Review
(
EHR
) (1937)

Glendinning, Victoria,
Jonathan Swift
(1998)

Green, David,
Sarah Duchess of Marlborough
(1967)

Gwynn, J.
London & Westminster Improved
(1766)

Halsband, Robert, ed., Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,
Essays and Poems and Simplicity, a Comedy
(1977)

——,
The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
(1965)

Hamilton,
The Diary of Sir David Hamilton 1709–1714
, ed. Philip Roberts (1976)

Harding, Nick,
Hanover and the British Empire, 1700–1837
(2007)

Hatton, Ragnhild, ‘In Search of an Elusive Ruler’. Source material for a biography of George I as elector and king in
Fürst, Bürger, Mensch
, ed. Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Grete Klingenstein, Heinrich Lutz (1975)

——,
George I, Elector and King
(1978)

Hervey, John, Lord,
Letter Books of John Hervey, First Earl of Bristol
(3 vols, 1894)

——,
Some Materials towards Memoirs of the Reign of George II
, ed. R. R. Sedgwick (3 vols, 1931)

——,
Memoirs of the Reign of George II by John, Lord Hervey
, ed. John Wilson Croker (3 vols, 1884)

Hibbert, Christopher,
London
(1980)

—,
London: the biography of a city
(1969)

Hill, Brian,
Sir Robert Walpole
(1989)

Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC),
Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont
, diary of the first Earl of Egmont (3 vols, 1920–3)

——,
Report on the Manuscripts of his Grace the Duke of Portland
(1899)

Holborn, Hajo,
History of Modern Germany 1648–1840
(1965)

Hopkinson, M. R.,
Married to Mercury
(1936)

Howard, Henrietta,
Letters to and from Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk, and her second husband, the Hon George Berkeley, from 1712 to 1767
, ed. J. W. Croker (2 vols, 1824)