John J. Murray

The Görtz-Gyllenborg Arrests-A Problem in Diplomatic Immunity

E IIAGUE OIl Friday moming, February 19, 1717 seethed with I rumor and excitement. At the Binnenhof, the nerve center of the government of the United Provinces-now the United Netherlands---the council of the provincial states of Holland was sitting in an extraordinary session. A short distance away Baron Georg von Gortz, the first minister of the Swedish king, Charles XII, and the ministerial secretary, Andreas Ernst Stambke, were feverishly disposing of their effects and hurriedly packing. The cause of all the activity was that the post, just arrived via the packets from Harwich, told in detail of the arrest by the British government ten days earlier of Count Karl Gyllenborg and the confiscation of his papers. The seizure of Gyllenborg, who at that tinme was the Swedish minister to London, was the overture to a drama that was to run through the courts of London, The Hague, Paris, and Stockholm. Upon hearing the news from England, William Leathes, the British minister to the United Provinces, requested that the States General apprehend Girtz, Stambke, and Gustavus Gyllenborg, brother to the arrested minister in England and secretary to Gortz.1 The three were to be taken and placed under close guard because, like Karl Gyllenborg, they had been plotting the overthrow of George I, king of England, and the replacing of that sovereign -also Elector of Hanover-by the Stuart pretender to the British throne. According to Leathes, the United Provinces as Britains ally and as a guarantor of the Protestant (Hanoverian) Succession in England were duty bound to place the Swedes in custody so that they could not continue their nefarious schemes against George 1.2 Anthonie Heinsius, the Grand Pensionary of Holland, helped guide the States of that province to a decision to comply with the British request. One factor which must have disturbed the aged Dutch statesman was that George I as Elector of Hanover was at war with Sweden, although as Britains king he