An Account of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover: Sent to a Minister of State in Holland

Even after more than 300 years, John Toland's Account of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover remains highly readable and continues to be cited by historians of the period. It gives us an engaging and accessible picture of life in those German courts, and of the people who inhabited them at the turn of the 17th to 18th Century.

Toland travelled to Hanover in 1701, with Lord Macclesfield's delegation, to deliver the Act of Settlement to the Electress Sophia, which named her Protestant descendants as heirs to the British throne. Toland was well received by Sophia, who also introduced him to the court philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. The following year, he visited the court of Berlin, where he was received by the Electress's daughter, the Queen in Prussia, Sophia Charlotte.

His impressions and observations of those visits are recorded in this Account and faithfully preserved in this new edition, which has previously been available only in facsimile reproductions. The text has been reset using a modern typeface but with original spelling, emphasis and formats preserved.