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 years of the century began to be largely entrusted with the conduct of Hanoverian diplomacy in its relations to both England and Holland, he seems generally to have been on excellent terms. But from 1705 onwards, when after the reunion of Celle and Hanover Bernstorff became the leading minister of the Elector George Lewis, and Bernstorff's right hand man, the Huguenot Robethon, was charged by him with reports on the progress of the Succession question, Leibniz's communications with the Electress Dowager on the subject become essentially those of a private correspondent. They are not the less interesting on that account, or the less well informed. Thus, he knew of the fateful change of ministry in England long before it actually took place in 1710: 'I have,' he writes, &lsquo;friends of importance among both Whigs and Tories, who from time to time supply me with good information because I am known to have the entrée here with the padronanza&rsquo; (as who should say, I have the key of the house). There are some people in England who would like me to pay a visit to that country, and I find that things would be explained to me there which could not be communicated by the ordinary channel. But I avoid that in order not to excite jealousy.&quot; Leibniz, in political enquiries as in historical research, was always desirous of securing information at first hand. But, in the present instance, no such opportunity was, in point of fact, accorded to him; and he had to content himself with correspondence and interviews with English agents who came to Hanover, and with the consciousness that, so far as in him lay, he had from first to last neglected no opportunity and left no stone unturned towards the achievement of the great result.

Before it was achieved, his best friend and patroness the old Electress Sophia had taken her last walk in the gardens of Herrenhausen, and some of those who knew, or professed to know, attributed her breakdown to the agitation caused by the anger of Queen Anne at a forward step in the relations between the two Courts—the demand of a writ of summons for the Electoral Prince