300 The History of Longleat. 
to see the corpse “of that obstinate creature, Vratz,” the King 
having permitted that his body should be transported to his own 
country, he being of good family, and one of the first embalmed by 
a particular art invented by one William Russell. The flesh was 
florid as if the person was sleeping. He had been dead now nearly 
fifteen days, and lay exposed in a very rich coffin lined with lead, 
too magnificent (says Evelyn) for so horrid a murderer. 
In this affair, therefore, the most guilty was acquitted, the next 
most guilty (Vratz) was honourably interred, and the least offenders 
were hanged in chains; something like the New England law in 
Hudibras, where an useless innocent weaver is executed instead’ of 
an useful guilty cobbler. The Count had the worst cause, but the 
most money. His subsequent history was for a long time con- 
founded with that of his brother Philip Christopher, who, on sus- 
picion of being the lover of Sophia of Zell (afterwards Queen of 
George I.), was assassinated in 1694 in the palace at Hanover, and 
whose remains were found under the floor of the passage in which 
he had been despatched. But of Charles John Konigsmark, the 
murderer of Mr. Thynne, the end was this :—He entered the Ve- 
netian service, was sent into Greece as second in command of an 
expedition, and fell at the siege of Argos, August 29th, 1686, four 
years anda half after the murder. His position in society had suffered 
by that act, and he probably courted danger to redeem it; for at 
the time of the murder he had acknowledged that “it was a stain 
upon his blood, yet such as a good action in the wars, or a lodg- 
ment on the counterscarp, would easily wash out.” 
And now, what became of the fair Helen of this quarrel, the 
Lady Percy? In less than four months after Mr. Thynne’s death 
she married a third husband, Charles Seymour, 7th Duke of Somerset. 
She rose to great political importance at Court, and was the greatest 
favourite Queen Anne had. The Tories hated her. Dean Swift 
regarded her as his worst enemy, and in one of his fits of unscru- 
pulous rage, was rash enough to circulate in the highest society 
some verses in which he more than insinuated that in her youth, 
she had been a party to the murder of Mr. Thynne. This he ven- 
tured to do in some severe lines called “The Windsor Prophecy,” 
a 
