THE ROYAL QUARREL.
1716–1718.
George the First landed at Margate at the end of November. It was the
King’s intention to open Parliament immediately, and to settle scores
with the Prince of Wales, who now retired into comparatively private
life. But his mind was diverted for the moment by the discovery of a
fresh Jacobite plot for the invasion of Scotland by twelve thousand
Swedish soldiers. The affair was planned by Gortz, the Swedish Prime
Minister, and the headquarters of the plot were found to be at the
Swedish legation in London. Gyllenborg, the Swedish envoy, was
arrested, and his papers seized, despite his protest that the law of
nations was being violated. The King of Sweden, Charles the Twelfth,
was communicated with, but as he would neither avow nor disavow Gortz,
the envoy was kept in durance for a while, and then sent across the
Channel, and set at liberty in Holland.
The King opened Parliament on February 20th, 1717, and a schism
in the Ministry soon became apparent. Townshend voted against the
supplies required for the Swedish difficulty, and Walpole, who was
very lukewarm in the matter, also headed a revolt against Sunderland
and Stanhope, who, he considered, had betrayed Townshend and English
interests. For this Townshend was dismissed from the Lord Lieutenancy
of Ireland and all his offices. The next morning Walpole resigned his
places as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer,
though the King expressed great regret at parting with him. Horace
Walpole (the elder) gives the following account of the scene: “When
my brother waited upon the King to give up the seal as Chancellor of
the Exchequer, his Majesty seemed extremely surprised, and absolutely
refused to accept it, expressing himself in the kindest and strongest
terms, that he had no thoughts of parting with him; and, in a manner
begging him not to leave his service, returned the seal, which my
brother had laid upon the table in the closet, into his hat, as well
as I remember, ten times. His Majesty took it at last, not without
expressing great concern, as well as resentment, at my brother’s
perseverance. To conclude this remarkable event, I was in the room next
to the closet waiting for my brother, and when he came out, the heat,
flame and agitation, with the water standing in his eyes, appeared
so strongly in his face, and, indeed, all over him, that he affected
everybody in the room; and ’tis said that they that went into the
closet immediately, found the King no less disordered.”[80]
The Ministry was then reconstituted. Stanhope remained Prime Minister,
and was shortly raised to the peerage. Sunderland and Addison were
made Secretaries of State, and James Craggs achieved his ambition by
becoming Secretary for War.
The dismissal of Townshend was very unpopular with the nation at large.
It was felt that he had stood up for England’s interests, and his fall
was regarded as proof that the Hanoverians had gained the upper hand.
Stanhope’s Ministry was at first nicknamed the “German Ministry”. The
Prince and Princess of Wales, who had sided with Townshend, shared
his popularity, and in consequence became more disliked by the King.
The new Ministry redeemed itself to some extent by what was known as
the Act of Grace, which set free many Jacobites, who, until now, had
been languishing in prison. They also reduced the army by ten thousand
men. On the other hand, they pressed forward laws against the Roman
Catholics, laws so severe that it was said, if all Roman Catholics were
not Jacobites, the Government did their best to make them so. They
also suppressed Convocation, nominally on account of the Hoadley, or
Bangorian, controversy, really because the clergy showed themselves
opposed to the Whig ascendency. Convocation, thus silenced, did not
meet again until the reign of Queen Victoria. This severity towards
Roman Catholics and the Church of England was contrasted by indulgence
towards Protestant Dissenters, and the Schism Act was repealed. The
King and the Prince and Princess of Wales strongly favoured its
repeal--it was the only domestic legislation in which the King showed
any interest throughout his reign.
The trial of Harley, Lord Oxford, who had now been two years in the
Tower, took place at the end of June, in Westminster Hall. Oxford was
conducted from the Tower and placed at the bar with the axe before him.
The whole body of the peerage were present, the House of Commons, the
King, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the ambassadors. Public
excitement had cooled down since Oxford was committed to the Tower, and
Walpole, his greatest enemy, was no longer in office. After a dispute
about the procedure, and a quarrel between Lords and Commons, the trial
was adjourned, and when it was resumed, as no prosecutors put in an
appearance, Oxford was set at liberty. He took no part in politics
after his release, but retired into private life, and died some years
later, almost forgotten.
The relations between the King and the Prince of Wales had gradually
become more and more strained. They rarely addressed one another in
public, seldom met in private, and the Prince’s friends were regarded
by the King as his enemies. This ill-feeling, which had been simmering
for nearly a year, culminated in an open quarrel on an occasion which
should rather have conduced to domestic harmony. In November (1717)
the Princess gave birth to a son, and as this was the first prince of
Hanoverian blood born on British soil, the event was regarded with
great satisfaction. To quote the official notice:[81] “On Saturday,
the 2nd instant, a little before six o’clock in the evening, her
Royal Highness the Princess of Wales was safely delivered of a Prince
in the Royal Palace of St. James’s; there being then present in the
room his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, the Lord Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Duchesses of St. Albans, Montagu and Shrewsbury, the
Countess of Dorset, the Lady Inchinbroke, the Lady Cowper, being the
ladies of her Royal Highness’s bedchamber; the Duchess of Monmouth,
the Countess of Grantham, the Countess of Picbourg (the Governess of
their Highnesses the young Princesses), all the women of her Royal
Highness’s bedchamber, and Sir David Hamilton and Dr. Steigerdahl,
physicians to her Royal Highness. Their Royal Highnesses despatched the
Lord Hervey to Hampton Court to acquaint his Majesty with it, and to
make their compliments, and his Majesty was pleased to send immediately
the same evening the Duke of Portland with his compliments to their
Royal Highnesses. Her Royal Highness’s safe delivery being soon made
public by the firing of the cannon in St. James’s Park and at the
Tower, a universal joy was seen that evening among all sorts of people
throughout London and Westminster, of which the greatest demonstrations
were shown by ringing of bells, illuminations and bonfires.”
The christening of this infant gave rise to an open rupture. The
Prince, anxious to invest the occasion with every dignity, asked the
King and his uncle the Duke of York to stand as godfathers. The King
consented, but, at the eleventh hour, commanded the Duke of Newcastle
to stand in the place of the Duke of York. The Duke of Newcastle
was a mean-spirited and ill-favoured nobleman, whose eccentricities
rendered him the laughing-stock of the Court, and he had made himself
especially obnoxious to the Prince and Princess of Wales. All this
the King knew full well, and to appoint him godfather to the Prince’s
child was a studied insult. The Prince of Wales was furious, but his
royal sire refused to give way, and the christening took place, as
arranged, in the bedroom of the Princess of Wales at St. James’s. The
Princess remained in bed, not so much because she was unable to get up,
as because it was the custom. The Prince of Wales and the Princess’s
ladies-in-waiting were grouped on one side of the bed, the King, the
Duke of Newcastle and the godmother on the other. The Archbishop of
Canterbury, standing at the foot of the bed, baptised the infant, and
gave him the names of George William. There was an air of suppressed
excitement in the royal bedchamber throughout the ceremony, the
Prince with difficulty restraining his indignation. No sooner was the
service over and the King retired from the room, which he did before
the concluding prayers, than the Prince ran round the bed, and going
up to the duke shook his fist in his face, and shouted in great rage:
“You are von rascal, but I shall find you”. There was a great scene;
the Archbishop, who had scarcely closed his book, remonstrated, the
Princess half rose from her bed, the ladies huddled together in a
fright and the pages tittered. The duke, who considered himself grossly
insulted, went at once to report what had happened to the King; the
Prince, meanwhile, regardless of his wife’s condition, stamped and
strutted about the room, swearing that he would be revenged for the
indignity put upon him.
The King too was greatly enraged, regarding the attack upon the duke
as an insult offered to himself, and Schulemburg and Kielmansegge
were greatly shocked by this filial disrespect. The duke believed, or
pretended to believe, that the Prince had said: “I will _fight_ you,”
and so had practically challenged him to a duel. The long smouldering
resentment of the King burst into a flame; he had more self-control
than his son, he did not stamp about and make scenes, but his anger was
more deadly. When he had relieved his feelings by a few round oaths, he
gave orders that the Prince was to be put under arrest. The Princess
declared that if her husband were arrested she would be arrested too,
and so he remained the night in his wife’s chamber under guard. “What
was my astonishment,” says Mrs. Howard, “when going to the Princess’s
apartment next morning the yeomen in the guard chamber pointed their
halberds at my breast, and told me I must not pass. I urged that it was
my duty to attend the Princess, but they said, ‘No matter, I must not
pass that way’.”
The news of the disturbance ran through the Court, and soon was
noised abroad over the town. The frequenters of the coffee-houses and
mug-houses talked of nothing else, and the Jacobites, who saw in this
quarrel another proof of the unfitness of the House of Hanover to reign
over them, were greatly elated. The Prime Minister went to the King and
represented that something must be done, as the present situation was
clearly impossible; the heir to the throne could not be kept shut up in
his room as if he were a recalcitrant schoolboy, and the absurdity of
the situation was increased by the fact that the Princess was locked
up with him. The King was for sending them both to the Tower, but more
moderate counsels prevailing, he ordered them to quit St. James’s
Palace forthwith. No time was given them to pack up their effects, and
so getting together what they most needed, the Prince and Princess
left the palace before the day was over, and sought temporary shelter
in Lord Grantham’s house in Albemarle Street. The Princess swooned on
arriving at Lord Grantham’s, and continued for some days in a serious
condition. It had been represented to the King that the Princess of
Wales, being hardly yet over her confinement, was not in a fit state to
be moved, and he sent her word that if she liked to separate herself
from her husband, and hold no communication with him, she might remain
with her children. But she sent back a defiant message, saying that
whither he went she would go, and that “her children were not as a
grain of sand compared to him”. The maids of honour were all in tears,
and it must have been a melancholy procession that made its way up St.
James’s Street between seven and eight o’clock that November evening.
All the ladies of the Princess’s household were greatly depressed,
except Mary Bellenden, whose high spirits were equal even to this sad
flitting, if we may believe the _Excellent New Ballad_:--
But Bellenden we needs must praise,
Who, as down stairs she jumps,
Sings “O’er the hills and far away,”
Despising doleful dumps.
The King would take no further advice from his Ministers, and
determined to do exactly what he pleased. On the evening of the next
day he commanded the Dukes of Roxburgh, Kent and Kingston to go to the
Prince and demand an explanation of his conduct. The Prince was not at
all in a mood to make an explanation, and was quite as obstinate, and
much more excited than his royal sire. He stated that he had not said
he would fight the Duke of Newcastle, but he declared, “I said I would
_find_ him and I vill find him, for he has often failed in his respect
to me, particularly on the late occasion, by insisting on standing
godfather to my son when he knew it was against my vill”. The Duke of
Roxburgh reminded the Prince that Newcastle had not thrust himself
forward, but merely acted as godfather because the King commanded him,
whereupon the choleric little George Augustus said roundly: “Dat is von
lie,” and assumed the patriotic rôle, declaring that he was an English
Prince, and all Englishmen had a right to choose the godfathers for
their children, and he should insist on his rights as an Englishman,
and allow no one to abuse him or ill-treat him, not even the King
himself, and much more to the same effect. So the three dukes went back
empty-handed. Roxburgh, who considered himself insulted by being given
the lie by the Prince, refused to have anything more to do with the
matter.
The Prince’s fits of anger, however, were apt to be shortlived, and the
Princess pointed out that it would be both unwise and impolitic for
him to put himself in the wrong by taking up an unyielding position.
Acting on her advice, therefore, within the next day or two he wrote
a letter to the King, in which he said he hoped that: “Your Majesty
will have the goodness not to look upon what I said, to the duke in
particular, as a want of respect to your Majesty. However, if I have
been so unhappy as to offend your Majesty contrary to my intention, I
ask your pardon, and beg your Majesty will be persuaded that I am, with
the greatest respect, your Majesty’s most humble and most dutiful son
and servant.” But the King took no account of this letter. He said that
professions were one thing and performance was another, and he had had
enough of the Prince and Princess’s professions in the past “to make
him vomit”. If the Prince were sincere in his desire for pardon, he
must show his sincerity by signing a paper which he had drawn up. This
paper ordained, among other conditions, that the Prince should give up
to the King the guardianship of his children, and that he should cease
to hold any communication “with, or have in his service, any person or
persons distasteful to the King”. This the Prince, and the Princess
with him, absolutely refused to sign, and made up their minds for the
worst. On the Sunday following, a notice having been sent them that
they would not be admitted to the Chapel Royal, they with all their
suite attended divine service in St. James’s parish church and received
the Holy Communion.
The King, enraged at their disobedience, now resolved to make his son
feel the full weight of his royal displeasure. He could not take away
without the consent of Parliament, the Prince’s allowance of £100,000
a year (though he endeavoured to do so), and he could not prevent him
from succeeding to the throne; but he did everything that he could to
humiliate his son, and to wound the Princess. They were deprived of
their guard of honour and all official marks of distinction. A formal
notification was made by the King’s order to the foreign ambassadors
and envoys that if they visited the Prince they would not be received
at St. James’s. All peers and peeresses, privy councillors and their
wives, and official persons received similar notices. Orders were sent
to all persons who had employment both under the King and the Prince
to quit the service of one or the other, and the ladies whose husbands
were in the King’s service were likewise to quit the Princess’s.[82]
This applied to Mrs. Howard, whose husband had a little appointment
under the King, but she refused to leave her mistress, and so separated
from her husband. But all were not so decided as Mrs. Howard, and
this order gave great alarm to the time-servers, who had now to make
up their minds whether to be well with the father or the son. “Our
courtiers,” writes a scribe, “are reduced to so hard a dilemma that we
may apply to them what the Spanish historian says of those in his day,
when the quarrel happened between Philip II. of Spain and his son, Don
Carlos. ‘Our courtiers,’ says he, ‘looked so amazed, so thunderstruck,
and knew so little how to behave themselves, that they betrayed the
mercenary principles upon which they acted by the confusion they were
in. Those who were for the Prince durst not speak their minds because
the father was King. Those who were for the King were equally backward
because the son would be King; these because the King might resent;
those because the Prince might remember.’”[83]
But the cruellest blow was depriving the Prince and Princess of their
children. The three young Princesses, Anne, Amelia and Caroline,
were kept at St. James’s Palace. Even the infant prince, to whom the
Princess had just given birth, was taken, literally, from his mother’s
arms. The King was very bitter against the Princess, whom he denounced
as “_Cette diablesse Madame la Princesse_,” and at first refused her
permission to see her children. In the case of the unfortunate infant,
who had unwittingly been the cause of all this trouble, the restriction
was fatal, for, deprived of his mother’s breast, he pined away. When
the doctors found that the child was in a precarious condition, they
informed the King, and recommended that his mother should be sent for,
but as the King was obdurate, they applied to the Ministers, who, moved
by the tears and anguish of the Princess, and conscious of the effect
it would have on public opinion if the child died without its mother’s
care, insisted that she should be admitted, and the King had to give
way. The Princess was allowed to come to St. James’s Palace to see her
child, but the King found her presence under the same roof as himself
so unpleasant that he sent the infant to Kensington, notwithstanding
its dangerous condition. This move was fatal. The child immediately
became worse, and when on the morrow it was seen that he was dying, the
Prince and Princess both set off to Kensington Palace, and remained
with the young prince until he died that same evening about eight
o’clock. “His illness,” says the _Gazette_, “began with an oppression
upon his breast, accompanied with a cough, which increasing, a fever
succeeded with convulsions, which put an end to this precious life.”
The child was buried privately by night in Henry the Seventh’s chapel
in Westminster Abbey, and public sympathy went out greatly to the
bereaved mother, not only in England, but in all the courts of Europe,
where the scandal excited curiosity and derision. The Duchess of
Orleans writes: “The King of England is really cruel to the Princess
of Wales. Although she has done nothing, he has taken her children
away from her. Where could they be so well and carefully brought up as
with a virtuous mother?”[84] And again: “The Princess assures me that
her husband did everything in his power to conciliate the King’s good
graces; he even begged his pardon, and owned that he had been to blame
as humbly as if he had been addressing himself to God Almighty”.[85]
And again: “The poor Princess is greatly to be pitied. There must be
something else at the bottom of all this, when everything is given a
double meaning. They say that the King is himself in love with the
Princess. I do not believe this, for I consider that the King has in no
ways a lover-like nature; he only loves himself. He is a bad man, he
never had any consideration for the mother who loved him so tenderly,
yet without her he would never have become King of England.”[86]
[Illustration: CAROLINE, PRINCESS OF WALES, AND HER INFANT SON, PRINCE
GEORGE WILLIAM.
_From an old Print._]
The excitement created by this quarrel did not abate for many months.
The Jacobites exultingly quoted the well-known text about a house
divided against itself. Any number of skits and pasquinades, some
of them exceedingly scurrilous, were circulated in connection with it.
The most popular was that called _An Excellent New Ballad_, from which
we have already quoted one verse, and may give a few more, omitting the
coarsest:--
God prosper long our noble King,
His Turks and Germans all;
A woeful christ’ning late there did
In James’s house befal.
To name a child with might and mane
Newcastle took his way,
We all may rue the child was born,
Who christ’ned was that day.
His sturdy sire, the Prince of Wales,
A vow to God did make,
That if he dared his child to name
His heart full sore should ake.
But on the day straight to the Court
This Duke came with a staff;
Oh, how the Prince did stamp and stare,
At which the Duke did laugh.
Hereat the Prince did wax full wroth
Ev’n in his father’s hall;
“I’ll be revenged on thee,” he said,
“Thou rogue and eke rascal.”
The Duke ran straightway to the King,
Complaining of his son;
And the King sent three Dukes more
To know what he had done.
The King then took his grey goose quill
And dipt it o’er in gall,
And by Master Vice-Chamberlain
He sent to him this scrawl:
“Take hence yourself, and eke your spouse,
Your maidens, and your men,
Your trunks, and all your trumpery,
Except your children.”
Then up the street they took their way,
And knocked up good Lord Grantham,
Higledy-pigledy they lay,
And all went rantum scantum.
Now sire and son had played their part;
What could befal beside?--
Why, the babe took this to heart,
Kick’d up his heels, and died.
God grant the land may profit reap
From all this silly pother,
And send these fools may ne’er agree
Till they are at Han-o-ver.
As the Prince of Wales was now forbidden to live in any of the royal
palaces, it became necessary for him to set up a house for himself and
his consort. He remained at Lord Grantham’s for a short time, and then
took Savile House in Leicester Fields, and moved his effects thither
from St. James’s. But Savile House was too small for his requirements,
so he took the house adjoining, Leicester House, from Lord Gower, at a
rent of £500 a year, established a communication between it and Savile
House, and with the Princess of Wales took up his residence there on
Lady Day, 1718.
FOOTNOTES TO BOOK II, CHAPTER VII:
[80] Coxe’s _Life of Walpole_.
[81] _London Gazette_, 4th November, 1717.
[82] Several authorities say that the King inserted a notice in the
_London Gazette_. But I can find no such notice in the _Gazette_--the
King’s orders were not published.
[83] _The Historical Register_, 1718.
[84] Letter of the Duchess of Orleans to the Raugravine Louise, 10th
February, 1718.
[85] _Ibid._, 29th February, 1718.
[86] _Ibid._, 6th March, 1718.