He knew that those who would with love command, HOUSE OF BRUNSWICK. JONSON. THE House of Brunswick possesses such well-founded claims to antiquity and importance, that it has engaged a more than ordinary share of the attention of genealogists and historians. The celebrated Leibnitz, who passed the last forty years of his life at the Court of the Duke of Hanover, became the architect of a monument which his family were ambitious of raising to the glory of their name. His labours were published in several volumes, and laid the foundation of Ecard's Origines Guelfica, in five volumes, folio.Muratori has illustrated the Italian branch in his Antichita Estense; and our learned historian, Gibbon, has drawn from these sources A Dissertation on the Antiquities of the House of Brunswick, published in his posthumous works, but which unhappily he did not live to finish "An English subject," says Gibbon, "may be prompted by a just and liberal curiosity to investigate the origin and story of the House of Brunswick; which, after an alliance with the daughters of our kings, has been called by the voice of a free people to the legal inheritance of the crown. From George the First, and his father, the Elector of Hanover, we ascend in a clear and regular series to the first Duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg, who received his investiture from Frederic the Second, about the middle of the thirteenth century. If these ample possessions had been the gift of the emperor to some adventurous soldier, to some faithful client, we might be content with the antiquity and lustre of a noble race, which had been enrolled nearly six hundred years among the princes of Germany. But our ideas are raised, and our prospect is opened, by the discovery that the first Duke of Brunswick was rather degraded than adorned by his new title, since it imposed the duties of feudal service on the free and patrimonial estate, which alone had been saved in the shipwreck of the more splendid fortunes of his house. His ancestors had been invested with the powerful Duchies of Bavaria and Saxony, which extended far beyond their limits in modern geography; from the Baltic sea, to the confines of Rome, they were obeyed, or respected, or feared; and in the quarrels of the Guelphs and the Cibellines, the former appellation was derived from the name of their progenitors in the female line. But the genuine masculine descent of the Princes of Brunswick, must be explored beyond the Alps; the venerable tree which has since overshadowed Germany and Britain, was planted in the Italian soil. As far as our sight can reach, we discern the first founders of the race in the Marquesses of Este, of Liguria, and perhaps of Tuscany. In the eleventh century, the primitive stem was divided into two branches; the elder migrated to the banks of the Danube and the Elbe; the younger more humbly adhered to the neighbourhood of the Adriatic. Dukes of Brunswick and the Kings of Great Britain, are the descendants of the first; the Dukes of Ferrarà and Modena, were the offsprings of the second." The William Duke of Brunswick Lunenburg, fourth son of Ernest, called the Confessor, on account of his having introduced the Augsburg Confession into his dominions, had fifteen children, seven of whom were sons, and were rendered more remarkable in history by their amity, than they could well have been by an extended and splendid lineage. These princes, whose names were Ernest, Christian, Augustus, Frederick, Magnus, George, and John, being resolved, on the death of their father, in 1593, to keep up the dignity of their house, made an agreement among themselves not to divide their paternal inheritance. Accordingly, they determined that only one of the number should marry; and that the elder brother should have the sole regency over the Lunenburg estates, and be succeeded by the eldest survivor. They kept to this brotherly compact with great exactness; and this circumstance appeared so extraordinary, that when the Grand Signior, Achmet the First, was made acquainted with it, he expressed great surprise, and said, "it is worth a man's while to undertake a journey, on purpose to be an eye-witness of such wonderful unanimity." The seven brothers, according to the agreement, drew lots who should marry; and the fortunate chance fell upon George, the sixth brother, who in consequence formed an union with Anne Leonora, daughter of Louis Landgrave, of Hesse-Darmstadt, by whom he had five children. George thus secured the government to his family; but he died in 1642, without enjoying the regency himself. The Duchess of Blackenburg, who was great greatgrandmother of the late Duke of Brunswick, and who died at a very advanced age, had the singular happiness to reckon among her posterity sixty-two princes and princesses, fifty-three of whom she saw at one time alive. Among these sixty-two, there were three emperors, two empresses, two kings, and two queens; a circumstance rare in a sovereign house, and not equalled in all the annals of history. BRITISH DESCENT. The connexion of the House of Brunswick with the royal family of England, and the Act of Settlement by which the succession was settled, are circumstances well known to every reader; but few are conscious that the King of England is heir in direct succession (the Catholic line of course excluded) to the British, Cambro-British, English, and Scottish Kings. Mr. Yorke, in his "Royal Tribes," has given the pedigree, and from his curious work we extract the following account of the British descent of George III. 1. Cadwaldr, last King of the Britons. 2. Idwal Iwrch, his son. 3. Rhodri Molwnog, son of Idwal. 4. Cynan Tyndæthwy, son of Rhodri. 5. Esyllt, daughter and heiress of Cynan, married to Merfyn Frych. 6. Rhodri Mawr, their son. 7. Anarawd, son of Rhodri. 12. Cynan, son of Iago. 16. Slewelyn, son of Iorwerth. 17. Dafydd, son of Slewelyn. All the above were Princes of Wales. 18. Guladys, Ddu, sister and heiress of Dalfydd, married to Ralph Mortimer. 19. Roger, their son. 20. Edmund Mortimer, son of Roger. 21. Roger, son of Edmund, first Earl of Marche. 22. Edmund, son of Roger, married Philippa, daughter and heiress of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III. 23. Roger, their son. 24. Anne, daughter and heiress of Roger, married to Richard of Conisburg, Earl of Cambridge. |