[Footnote 15: Henry the Wonderful was the founder of the
branch of Gruben hagen, extinct in the year 1596, (Rimius,
p. 287.) He resided in the castle of Wolfenbuttel, and
possessed no more than a sixth part of the allodial estates
of Brunswick and Luneburgh, which the Guelph family had
saved from the confiscation of their great fiefs. The
frequent partitions among brothers had almost ruined the
princely houses of Germany, till that just, but pernicious,
law was slowly superseded by the right of primogeniture.
The principality of Grubenhagen, one of the last remains of
the Hercynian forest, is a woody, mountainous, and barren
tract, (Busching's Geography, vol. vi. p. 270 - 286, English
translation.)]