The Historical Gallery of Criminal Portraitures, Foreign and Domestic (Volume 2); Containing a Selection of the Most Impressive Cases of Guilt and Misfortune to Be Found in Modern History (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 5 Criminal Portraitures. not yet withdrawn. When the consort of George I"V. was arraigned at the bar of the House of Lords, even lier own lawyers seemed in doubt whether Dorothea Christina had beeu divorced or not! Her name is scarcely mentioned in our best histories?her wrongs slightly glanced at. There is no regular history of her life. All that can be done is to throw together a number of narratives, each interesting in itself, and leave untouched the spirit that the writer meant to infuse; by which process the reflecting and tasteful reader will derive more instruction and amusement, than if the various fragments were amalgamated iuto one recital. Like a late unhappy queen, Dorothea Christina had a powerful enemy in her husband's mother. The partiality of Whig historians gave a lustre to Sophia, Electress of Hanover, the mother of George the First, which her real character did not deserve: and the same bias led them altogether to omit the name of his oppressed consort, of whom, as a profligate husband, he had been the destruction, and, as a despot, consigned to a prison, without any other or better reason than his will and his power. Over the savage injuries inflicted on this greatly injured woman, the iron hand of the tyrant drew a vail, which, for a time, partially covered and concealed the victim of lust and cruelty, and the injustice by which she had been oppressed. But still the fate of that high- minded, beautiful, and accomplished princess, deserted as she was, by all her relations, and by all her former associates, excited a powerful sympathy amongst the liberal and cultivated of polished society, in every nation of Europe. For a time, indeed, her savage and brutal husband (George the First) appears to have had the field to himself; and he filled every court, ...