THE RECONCILIATION.
1718–1720.
The life of the Princess of Wales at this time was apparently an
endless round of pleasure. Her days were full of interest and movement,
and in the eyes of the world she seemed perfectly happy. But she had
her secret sorrow, and a good deal of her gaiety was forced to please
her husband. He came first with her, but she was a devoted mother,
and there is abundant evidence to show that Caroline felt acutely the
separation from her children. The King would not allow them to visit
their parents, nor would he suffer the Prince to come and see them,
and upon the occasions when the Princess was admitted to St. James’s
or Kensington, to visit her children, he at first refused to receive
her. She went whenever she could spare an hour from her exacting duties
at Leicester House, but she had always to obtain leave from the King.
In spite of this separation the little princesses kept their love for
their parents, and always greeted their mother with demonstrations of
joy when she came, and cried bitterly when she went away. “The other
day,” writes the Duchess of Orleans, “the poor little things gathered
a basket of cherries and sent it to their father, with a message that
though they were not allowed to go to him, their hearts, souls and
thoughts were with their dear parents always.”[100] Every effort was
made by the Prince and Princess to obtain their children, and the law
was set in motion, but after tedious delays and protracted arguments,
the Lord Chief Justice, Parker, gave it as his opinion that the King
had the sole right to educate and govern his grandchildren, and their
parents had no rights except such as were granted to them by the
King. This monstrous opinion was upheld by nine other judges. It was
strongly opposed by the Lord Chancellor, Cowper, who soon afterwards
found it advisable to resign the Chancellorship. The King appointed the
complaisant Parker in his room, and further rewarded him by creating
him Earl of Macclesfield.
The King’s hatred of his son grew greater as time went on; everything
that took place at Leicester House and Richmond Lodge was reported
to him by spies in the Prince’s household, and the brilliancy and
popularity of the Prince’s court were regarded as signs of impenitent
rebellion. George the First had the reputation of being an easy-natured
man, slowly moved to wrath, and not vengeful to his Jacobite opponents.
But his domestic hatreds were extraordinarily intense. He pursued his
unfortunate wife with pitiless vindictiveness, and his hatred of her
son was only one degree less bitter. To such an extent did it go, that
he drew up a rough draft of an Act of Parliament whereby the Prince,
on succeeding to the throne of England, should be forced to relinquish
Hanover. This project, which would have been the best possible thing
for England, perished still-born, for even the time-serving Parker told
the King it was impracticable. George then went so far as to receive
without rebuke a proposal which Lord Berkeley had the audacity to make,
namely, that the Prince should be spirited off quietly to America.
Though the King did not dare act upon it, this plan was put on paper,
and after George the First’s death, Caroline, in searching a cabinet,
came across the document.
Though the nation as a whole cared little about the disputes of the
Royal Family, this unnatural strife between father and son was well
known, and formed a common subject of conversation. As time went on
and the quarrel showed no signs of healing, it began to tell seriously
against the dynasty. In Parliament the subject was never touched upon,
but there was always a dread that it might crop up during debate. On
one occasion, when the Prince of Wales was present in the House of
Lords, Lord North rose to take notice, he said, “of the great ferment
that is in the nation”--and then paused. The Prince looked very
uncomfortable, and the whole House was in a flutter, but Lord North
went on to add, “on account of the great scarcity of silver,” a matter
to which Sir Isaac Newton, as Master of the Mint, was giving serious
attention.
Caroline was sensible of the harm this disunion was doing the dynasty,
and tried to keep up appearances as far as she could. When the first
soreness was over, she attended occasionally the King’s drawing-rooms
(the Prince, of course, never went), and by addressing him in public
forced him to make some sort of answer to her remarks. At first it was
thought that the Princess’s appearance at the King’s drawing-rooms
foreshadowed a reconciliation. The subsidised organs in the press
hailed it as imminent. One scribe wrote: “It is with extreme joy that
I must now congratulate my country upon the near prospect there is
of a reconciliation between his Majesty and his Royal Highness. The
Princess of Wales’s appearance at court can forebode no less. A woman
of her consummate conduct and goodness, and so interested in the issue,
is such a mediator as one could wish in such a cause. And when it is
known that she has been in long conference with the King, there can be
no doubt but she has first won upon the Prince to make that submission
without which ’tis absurd to think of healing the breach.”[101] A
petition was also drawn up praying the Princess to act as mediator,
which ran as follows:--
“To her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales.
“The petition of several loyal subjects, Englishmen and
Protestants,
“Humbly sheweth,
“Whereas the difference between his Majesty and the Prince is
of such a nature, as not easily to be decided by any subjects;
neither can a Ministry presume to intercede with all the freedom
requisite to the determination of it: That by this means it still
continues to the unspeakable detriment of the public, the deep
sorrow of the well affected to your Royal Highness’s family;
and the fresh hope and merriment of the disloyal, who were
otherwise reduced to the saddest despair. That in such a dismal
conjecture we can apply to none so proper as your Royal Highness
to assuage these jealousies and reduce both parties to a reunion.
Your petitioners therefore beg and entreat your Royal Highness
to put in practice that persuasive eloquence by which you are
distinguished, and to employ all your interest for this purpose;
before the breach be made too wide to admit of a cure, and we
involved in irretrievable confusion.
“And your Royal Highness’s petitioners
will ever pray, etc.”
The Princess was both unable and unwilling to mediate in the way
suggested, for her sympathies were wholly with her husband. The
situation was still exceedingly strained; the King only received
the Princess formally and under protest. Caroline probably went to
the King’s Court in the hope of softening his heart, and of being
allowed to have her children. She was also anxious that her son Prince
Frederick, Duke of Gloucester, should be brought over from Hanover, for
he was growing up a stranger to her, and the accounts which reached
her of his manners and morals were far from reassuring. The malcontent
Whigs also considered this a grievance, on the ground that the young
Prince should early become acquainted with the country over which
he would one day reign. But the King was obdurate. He held that his
prerogative gave him absolute power over all the royal children without
reference to their parents, and quoted as a precedent Charles the
Second’s authority over the daughters of the Duke of York.
Caroline was deeply wounded by this refusal, and shed many bitter
tears. But it made no difference to her policy of keeping up
appearances at all cost. Outside her immediate circle she ignored the
fact that there was a difference in the Royal Family, and was careful
always to speak of the King in public with great respect. She paid
several visits to seats of the principal nobility and gentry near
London--we read of her supping with General Harvey at Mitcham, dining
with Lord Uxbridge at Drayton, and so forth--and tried in all ways to
maintain the credit of the dynasty with the people. When, therefore,
a low fellow insulted her and spat in her face one day as she was
crossing Leicester Fields in her chair, he was nearly torn to pieces by
the crowd, who resented this gross insult upon a woman, and the only
popular member of the Royal Family. The man was handed over to the
authorities for punishment, who certainly did not spare the rod if we
may judge from the following account:--
“On Thursday morning last, Moore the chairman, who insulted the
Princess, was whipped, pursuant to his sentence, from Somerset House to
the end of the Hay market. ’Twas observed that during the performance
of this corporal exercise (in which the executioner followed his
work pretty close), he wore about his neck, tied to a piece of red
string, a small red cross; though he needed not to have hung out that
infallible sign of his being one of the Pope’s children, since none but
an inveterate Papist would have affronted so excellent a Protestant
Princess, whom her very worst enemies cannot charge with a fault. The
respect her Royal Highness has among all parties was remarkable in the
general cry there was all the way he pass’d of ‘Whip him,’ ‘Whip him’;
and by the great numbers of people that caressed and applauded the
executioner after his work was over, who made him cry, ‘God bless King
George’ before he had done with him.”[102]
The King’s court became duller and duller after the departure of
the Prince and Princess of Wales. Official personages were bound to
attend, but the general circle of the nobility absented themselves,
and all the youth, wit and beauty of the town migrated to Leicester
House or Richmond. Sometimes not more than six ladies attended the
royal drawing-rooms at St. James’s. The first year of the breach the
King spent the summer at Hampton Court, accompanied by his mistresses
Schulemburg and Keilmansegge, who had now, thanks to the complaisance
of Stanhope and his “German Ministry,” been transformed into English
peeresses, under the titles of Duchess of Kendal and Countess of
Darlington respectively. No doubt they took their “nieces” with them,
as they called their illegitimate daughters by the King. The Duchess
of Kendal’s “niece,” Melusina, was now grown up, and some years later
married Lord Chesterfield. Lady Darlington’s “niece,” Charlotte, was
younger, and she, too, in time made an equally good match, marrying
Lord Howe.[103] These ladies have left no trace of their occupation
of Hampton Court, unless it be the “Frog Walk,” which is said to be
a corruption of _Frau_ or _Frow_ walk, so called because the German
mistresses used to pace up and down it with George the First. But
they made their reign infamous by driving the eminent architect, Sir
Christopher Wren, from the office of Surveyor-General, at the age of
eighty-six, and after a lifetime spent in the public service. The King
was instigated to this shameful act by the Duchess of Kendal. Wren had
refused to allow her to mutilate Hampton Court with her execrable
taste, and in revenge she sold his place to one William Benson.
[Illustration: MARY, COUNTESS COWPER.
_From the Original Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller._]
Under the unlovely auspices of the dull old King and his duller
mistresses, Hampton Court was a very different place to what it had
been during the summer of the Prince of Wales’s regency. “Our gallantry
and gaiety,” writes Pope to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, “have been great
sufferers by the rupture of the two Courts, here: scarce any ball,
assembly, basset-table or any place where two or three are gathered
together. No lone house in Wales, with a rookery, is more contemplative
than Hampton Court. I walked there the other day by the moon, and met
no creature of quality but the King, who was giving audience all alone
to the birds under the garden wall.”[104] The King tried to remedy this
state of affairs by commanding the Drury Lane Company to come down to
Hampton Court and give performances there. The magnificent Great Hall
was fitted up as a theatre, and seven plays were performed, of which
the favourite was _King Henry the Eighth_. Steele wrote a prologue,
and Colley Cibber tells us that the King greatly enjoyed these plays,
“as the actors could see from the frequent satisfaction in his looks
at particular scenes and passages”.[105] In that case the King must
have read translations beforehand, as he knew no English--certainly not
Shakespeare’s English. The expenses of each representation amounted to
only £50, but the King was so delighted that he gave the company
£200 in addition, which the grovelling Cibber declares was “more than
our utmost merit ought to have hoped for”.[106] Basking as he did in
the sunshine of the royal favour, Colley Cibber was a stout upholder
of the House of Hanover, and a contemner of the House of Stuart. In
his comedy _The Non-Juror_, he roundly abused the Jacobites, and his
dedication of it to the King will remain as one of the most fulsome
dedications of a fulsome age. It began: “In a time when all communities
congratulate your Majesty on the glories of your reign, which are
continually arising from the prosperities of your people, be graciously
pleased, dread Sire, to permit the loyal subjects of your theatre to
take this occasion of humbly presenting their acknowledgements for your
royal favour and protection”.
Apparently George liked this gross flattery, for he often went to see
Cibber’s plays at Drury Lane. The King hated ceremony, so he dispensed
with his coach when he went to the theatre, and set out from St.
James’s Palace in a sedan-chair, with his guards and the beef-eaters
marching alongside, and two other sedan-chairs carried behind him,
which contained the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Darlington respectively.
The King would not occupy the royal box, but would choose another in
some less prominent position, and would sit far back, behind his two
mistresses, taking a pinch of snuff now and then, and laughing at their
jokes. None of the English officers of the household were admitted to
this box, and the King entered and left the theatre by a private door.
Once, when going to the theatre in his chair, the King was shot at by a
youth named James Shepherd, but the bullet was very wide of the mark.
The lad was condemned to be hanged. On account of his youth, Caroline
interceded for him, but without success. He died declaring James to
be his only King. Concerning this incident, the Duchess of Orleans
writes: “The Princess of Wales has told me about the young man that the
King has caused to be killed. The lad was only eighteen years of age,
but the King is not in the least ashamed of what he has done; on the
contrary, he seems to think that he has done a noble action. I fear the
King will come to a bad end. His quarrel with the Prince of Wales gets
worse every day. I always thought him harsh when he was in Germany, but
English air has hardened him still more.”[107]
Domestic differences had prevented the King from seeing Hanover for
nearly two years; but in May, 1719, his impatience could no longer
be restrained, and, despite the remonstrances of his Ministers, he
determined to pass the summer in his German dominions. He so far
relented towards the Princess of Wales as to send her word that she
might spend the summer at Hampton Court with her children. The Princess
returned a spirited reply to the effect that unless her husband could
go with her she would not go. On this occasion a Council of Regency was
established, in which no mention whatever was made of the Prince. The
Prince and Princess of Wales were not even allowed to hold levées and
drawing-rooms during the King’s absence; and his Majesty, by a notice
in the _Gazette_, decreed that these functions should be held by the
three young princesses, his grandchildren. The Prince and Princess
showed their indignation by leaving town at once for Richmond.
The King then set out for Hanover, taking with him Stanhope as Minister
in attendance, and accompanied by the Duchess of Kendal. It was perhaps
on this journey to Hanover that the following incident took place,
which deserves to be quoted, as offering one of the few incidents
George the First gave of good taste: “On one of his journeys to
Hanover his coach broke down. At a distance in view was a château of a
considerable German nobleman. The King sent to borrow assistance; the
possessor came, conveyed the King to his house, and begged the honour
of his Majesty accepting a dinner while his carriage was repairing; and
in the interim asked leave to amuse his Majesty with a collection of
pictures which he had formed in several tours to Italy. But what did
the King see in one of the rooms but an unknown portrait of a person
in the robes, and with the regalia, of a sovereign of Great Britain.
George asked him whom it represented. The nobleman replied, with much
diffident but decent respect, that in various journeys to Rome he had
been acquainted with the Chevalier de St. George, who had done him
the honour of sending him that picture. ‘Upon my word,’ said the King
instantly, ‘’tis very like to the family’.”[108]
The hopes of James and his little Court at Rome now began to revive.
The prolonged strife between George the First and his son helped to
play the game of the Jacobites; and their agents throughout Europe
did not hesitate to exaggerate the facts of the unseemly quarrel, and
to declare that England was weary of the Hanoverian family (which it
was) and eager for a Stuart restoration (which it was not). Mar had
been urging Charles the Twelfth of Sweden to send an expedition to
Scotland, and Charles was inclined to listen, when his sudden death
put an end to James’s hopes. But Spain espoused his cause. Spain was
then governed by Cardinal Alberoni. By birth the son of a working
gardener, he had begun life as a village priest, and had gradually,
by virtue of his many abilities and extraordinary knowledge of men,
raised himself from poverty and obscurity to the proud position of a
cardinal of the Church and first minister of Spain. Philip, the King,
was old and feeble, and entirely ruled by his Queen, and the Queen was
governed by Alberoni. The trust was not ill-placed, for the Cardinal’s
administrative abilities were great. Under his direction trade revived,
public credit was increased, a new navy was fitted out, and the army
was reorganised. “Let your Majesty remain but five years at peace,”
said he to the Spanish King, “and I will make you the most powerful
monarch in Europe.” Unfortunately for his plans Alberoni was of a
restless, intriguing disposition. He disliked the trend of England’s
foreign policy, and therefore entered into correspondence with James
at Rome, and employed agents to foment dissensions in England. The
English Government met this with vigorous measures, and a new treaty
was concluded with France and the Emperor, which, after the accession
of the Dutch, was known as the Quadruple Alliance. Stanhope went to
Madrid to see if he could smooth matters with Alberoni, but he did not
succeed. The Spanish troops had landed in Sicily, and to prevent the
loss of the island, Admiral Byng was despatched to the scene of action
with twenty ships of the line. On July 31st, 1718, a naval fight took
place between the English and the Spaniards, which resulted in the
defeat of the latter. In revenge Alberoni fitted out an armament of
five ships to support James. This little fleet was to land on the coast
of Scotland, but in the Bay of Biscay it was overtaken by a tempest,
and only two of the frigates reached Scotland, having on board the
Earls Marischal and Seaforth and the Marquis of Tullibardine, with
some arms and three hundred Spanish soldiers. They were joined by a
few Highlanders, but, after an insignificant skirmish with the King’s
troops, were dispersed.
Meantime James had arrived at Madrid, in response to a special
invitation from Alberoni, where he was received with royal honours as
King of England, and magnificently lodged in a palace set apart for
him and his suite. But when the news of the complete failure of the
expedition reached Madrid some months later, Alberoni realised that
James was a very expensive guest, and his presence at Madrid was a
hindrance to the peace with England that he already wished to make.
James, too, was anxious to leave, and a pretext was afforded by the
escape of the Princess Clementina, whom he had wedded by proxy. She
had at last escaped from Innsbrück, where she had been detained nearly
three years. She stole away by night in the disguise of a Scottish
maid-servant, and after a long and perilous journey on horseback
arrived safe in Venetian territory. On the receipt of this news James
took his leave of the Court of Spain, and returned to Rome, where his
long-deferred marriage was duly solemnised and consummated.
While these events were taking place, King George had remained at
Hanover, heedless of the discontent in England. He returned to London
in November, 1719, and a few days later opened Parliament in person.
Caroline, true to her policy of keeping up appearances, waited upon
the King to congratulate him upon his safe return, and he gave her
audience, but controversial matters were not touched upon, and though
rumours of reconciliation arose from the interview they were rumours
merely. On the contrary, the principal Government measure was aimed
indirectly at the Prince of Wales. Stanhope brought forward the Peerage
Bill, to limit the royal prerogative in the creation of new peerages.
The Prince of Wales had made use of some rash and unguarded expressions
as to what he would do when he came to the throne, and the King was
induced by jealousy of his son to consent to this limitation of his
royal prerogative. The measure was strongly opposed in both Houses, but
the head and front of the opposition was Walpole, who had identified
himself with the opposition court of Leicester House. He made an
eloquent speech in the House of Commons against the measure, with the
result that it was defeated by a large majority. The Government did not
resign, but they saw the advisability of conciliating Walpole and the
malcontent Whigs, and a political reconciliation took place. Walpole
and Townshend accepted minor offices in the Government.
Walpole’s accession to the Ministry took the heart out of the Whig
opposition, with which the Prince of Wales had more or less identified
himself. Having failed to upset the Government, Walpole cast in his lot
with them. He set to work with such goodwill that, though for a time he
held a subordinate office, he soon became the most powerful member of
the Government; he was already the man with the greatest authority in
the House of Commons. From this time may be dated Walpole’s alliance
with Caroline, and he henceforth played a prominent part in her life.
Robert Walpole, the third son of a Norfolk squire, Walpole of Houghton,
was born in 1676. His family had belonged to the landed gentry of
England since the days of William the Conqueror, but they had never
distinguished themselves in any way. Walpole was educated at Eton,
where he had as his school-fellow his future rival, Bolingbroke,
and thence proceeded to King’s College, Cambridge. On quitting the
university he went back to Houghton with a view to becoming a country
squire as his father was. The future statesman spent his days at cattle
fairs and agricultural shows, with fox-hunting and hard drinking thrown
in by way of recreation. Old Squire Walpole was of a very hospitable
turn of mind, and kept open house to his neighbours, who often
assembled around his jovial board. “Come, Robert,” he used to say, “you
shall drink twice to my once; I cannot permit my son, in his sober
senses, to be a witness of the intoxication of his father.” Walpole was
married at the age of twenty-five to the beautiful and accomplished
Catherine Shorter, a daughter of John Shorter, of Bybrook, Kent. His
domestic life was not a model one, both husband and wife arranging
to go much as they pleased. Walpole, like his enemy Bolingbroke, was
profligate and fond of wine and women, and his young wife also had her
intrigues. She had one particularly with Lord Hervey, and her second
son (Horace Walpole the younger) was said to be really the son of Lord
Hervey. He closely resembled the Herveys in his tastes, appearance
and manner; especially in his effeminacy, which was characteristic of
the men of the Hervey family. He was quite unlike his reputed father,
Walpole, who was a burly county squire, with a loud voice, heavy
features and no refinement of manner or speech. Walpole’s wife also (so
Lady Cowper says) had an intrigue with the Prince of Wales, and Walpole
was cognisant of it, if he did not even lend himself to it, with a view
to obtaining the goodwill of the Prince. Both Robert Walpole and his
wife were often at Leicester House.
Soon after his marriage Walpole succeeded to the family estate, with
a rent-roll of some two thousand a year. He was elected a member for
Castle Rising, and he sat in the two last Parliaments of William the
Third. In 1702 he was returned as member for Lyme Regis, in the first
Parliament of Queen Anne, a borough which he continued to represent
for nearly forty years. He quickly made his mark in the House of
Commons, and his history from this time onward is to a great extent
the history of his country. He was a Whig by conviction and education;
he had a passion for work, and a fixed ambition which carried him step
by step to the highest offices in the State. His zeal in furthering
the Whig cause early won for him the hatred of the Tories, and at the
instigation of Bolingbroke, when the Tories came into power, Walpole
was charged with corruption and other misdemeanours, and thrown into
the Tower. It was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to
him, for it called public attention to his personality, and awoke
the admiration of his friends. So crowded was his room in the Tower
that it resembled a levée; some of the first quality of the town went
there, including the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. His confinement
in the Tower was not a long one. On the accession of George the First
Walpole’s attachment to Whig principles and the House of Hanover was
rewarded by his being given a place in the Administration of Lord
Townshend, who had married his sister. The rest has been told.
Walpole’s first step after he rejoined Stanhope’s Government was to
bring about a reconciliation between the Prince of Wales and the King,
and to this end he addressed himself to the Princess of Wales. During
the winter of 1719 Walpole had often been twice a day at Leicester
House, and he realised, what many were still ignorant of, the great and
increasing influence which the Princess exercised over her husband.
Moreover, the Princess had recently received the King’s compliments
on her birthday for the first time for two years. To the Princess,
therefore, Walpole first went with the suggestion of reconciliation,
and begged her to induce the Prince to write a submissive letter to
the King. Caroline was willing to do all she could to bring about a
reconciliation, but she stipulated for one thing above all others--that
her children should be returned to her. This Walpole promised, though
he must have known at the time that he had no power to make such
a promise. The Prince at first blustered and swore, and said that
nothing would induce him to make any overtures to the King, and he
stipulated that he should have the Regency again, the _entrée_ of the
royal palaces, his guards, and, of course, the custody of his children.
Walpole told him he would do what he could, and he so “engrossed and
monopolised the Princess to a degree of making her deaf to everything
that did not come from him”.[109] He then went to the King and told him
that the Prince was anxious to submit himself.
The King at first was obdurate, and refused to see his son under any
circumstances whatever. “Can’t the Whigs come back without him,” he
grumbled to Sunderland. Then he said he would receive him, provided
he were brought back “bound hand and foot”. When conditions were
hinted, the King at once said that he would have nothing more to do
with the matter, and was only persuaded to reconsider his words by
his Ministers representing that, unless he could meet them half-way,
they would not be able to get his debts paid, which by this time had
amounted to £600,000 in excess of the ample Civil List. As the King
kept practically no court in England, most of the money must have been
spent in Hanover, or given to his Hanoverian minions and mistresses.
Ministers argued that a reconciliation would do something to restore
public credit, and the long quarrel had seriously affected the
popularity of the Royal Family. The Prince was also amenable to this
argument, as he, too, was in debt some £100,000, the result, no doubt,
of the state he had kept up at Leicester House. Walpole gave the
Prince to understand that this sum would be paid, and by way of showing
his goodwill, he put him and the Princess in the way of making a little
money in South Sea stock.
The Princess was prepared to let everything go if she could only have
her children back again, and the Bishop of Norwich went down on his
knees to Townshend and Walpole, and swore that the Princess should have
her children. She said: “Mr. Walpole, this will be no jesting matter
to me; you will hear of this, and my complaints, every day and hour,
and in every place, if I have not my children again”. Walpole suggested
that the Princess should make overtures to the Duchess of Kendal,
who had more influence than any one with the King, and even to this
crowning humiliation the Princess stooped, but all to no purpose; the
King absolutely refused to agree to any such stipulation. He had become
attached, after his fashion, to the three princesses, and he knew that
to retain them would be the surest way of wounding the feelings of his
daughter-in-law. The Prince, unlike the Princess, was not obdurate on
this point, and he was quite willing to let his daughters go for what
he considered more substantial benefits. Walpole promised to pay his
debts if he would yield this point, and gave him some more South Sea
stock; to the Princess he declared that the King was inexorable, and
that she must leave everything in his hands, and all would be well. The
Princess wept, and said that she was betrayed, and the Prince had been
bribed, but her tears and lamentations were all to no effect. It was on
this occasion she uttered the exceeding bitter cry: “I can say since
the hour I was born, I have not lived a day without suffering”.
Matters having gone thus far, the Prince wrote the required letter,
which was delivered to the King on St. George’s Day, April 23rd, 1720.
On its receipt Craggs was sent back with a message to the Prince to
say that the King would see him. The Prince at once took his chair and
went to St. James’s Palace, where the King gave him audience in his
closet. The Prince expressed his grief at having incurred his royal
sire’s displeasure, thanked him for having given him leave to wait upon
him once more, and said that he hoped all the rest of his life would be
such as the King would have no cause to complain of. The King was much
agitated and very pale, and could not speak except in broken sentences,
of which the Prince said the only intelligible words were: “_Votre
conduite, votre conduite_”. The audience was over in five minutes, and
the Prince then went to see his daughter, the Princess Anne, who was
ill of small-pox in another part of the palace. He then set out on his
way back to Leicester House, with this difference, that whereas he had
come in a private manner, he now departed with the beef-eaters and
a guard around his chair, and amid the shouts of the crowd that had
assembled outside the palace gates. In Pall Mall he met the Princess,
who was on her way to visit her daughter. She had not been told that
the King had sent for her husband, and she was much startled to see
him there, thinking he had a bad account of the Princess Anne. He
said he had seen the King, and told her the great news. They returned
together to Leicester House. “He looked grave,” said Lady Cowper of the
Prince, “and his eyes were red and swelled as one has seen him on other
occasions when he was mightily ruffled. He dismissed all the company
at first, but held a drawing-room in the afternoon.” By that time the
royal guards were established at the gates of Leicester House, and the
square was full of coaches. Inside “there was nothing but kissing and
wishing of joy”. The Prince was so delighted that he embraced Lady
Cowper five or six times, whereat the Princess burst into a laugh,
and said: “So, I think you two always kiss on great occasions”. The
Ministers came to offer their congratulations, including the younger
Craggs, who was supposed to have inflamed the King’s mind against the
Prince, and to have called the Princess an opprobrious name. He now
protested to her that he had done nothing of the kind, offering to
swear it on his oath. She replied: “Fie! Mr. Craggs; you renounce God
like a woman that’s caught in the fact”.
The King received Caroline the next day when she went to visit her
daughters at St. James’s. He gave her a longer audience than he had
given his son, for they went into his closet and stayed there an
hour and ten minutes. When the Princess at length came out of the
royal closet, she told her attendants that she was transported at the
King’s “mighty kind reception”. But Walpole had another version of the
interview, to the effect that the King had been very rough with her and
had chidden her severely. He told her she might say what she pleased
to excuse herself, but he knew very well that she could have made the
Prince behave better if she had wished, and he hoped henceforth that
she would use her influence to make him conduct himself properly. These
private interviews over, it was decided to celebrate the reconciliation
in a public manner. The Ministers gave a dinner to celebrate the Whig
and the royal reconciliation at one and the same time; the King held
a drawing-room at St. James’s, to which the Prince and Princess went
with all their court. The King would not speak to the Prince nor to
any of his suite, except the Duchess of Shrewsbury, who would not be
denied. When she first addressed him he took no notice, but the second
time she said: “I am come, Sir, to make my court, and I will make it,”
in a whining tone of voice, and then he relented so far as she was
concerned. But otherwise the drawing-room could hardly be described
as harmonious. “It happened,” writes Lady Cowper, “that Lady Essex
Robartes was in the circle when our folks came in, so they all kept at
the bottom of the room, for fear of her, which made the whole thing
look like two armies in battle array, for the King’s court was all at
the top of the room, behind the King, and the Prince’s court behind
him. The Prince looked down, and behaved prodigious well. The King
cast an angry look that way every now and then, and one could not help
thinking ’twas like a little dog and a cat--whenever the dog stirs a
foot, the cat sets up her back, and is ready to fly at him.”
The reconciliation thus patched up was a hollow one, but it served
to hoodwink the public, and it depressed the Jacobites, who had been
saying everywhere that even outward harmony was impossible. Neither
side was satisfied; the King was indignant at having to receive the
Prince at all, and unwilling to make concessions. He would not grant
the Prince and Princess the use of any of the royal palaces, and
refused to let them come back to live under the same roof with him. He
gave them leave to see the three princesses when they liked, but he
refused to part with them, and the Ministers conveniently ignored the
payment of the Prince’s debts, which indeed were not settled until he
came to the throne. All that the Prince and Princess regained were the
royal guards and the honours paid officially to the Prince and Princess
of Wales, the leave to come to court when they wished, and permission
to retain the members of their household, which at one time the King
had threatened to discharge _en bloc_. But the great gain to the
Government, and to the House of Hanover, was that a formal notification
of the reconciliation was sent to foreign courts, and a domestic
quarrel, which had become a public scandal, and threatened to become a
public danger, was officially at an end.
FOOTNOTES TO BOOK II, CHAPTER IX:
[100] The Duchess of Orleans to the Raugravine Louise, St. Cloud, 30th
June, 1718.
[101] _The Criticks: Being papers upon the times_, London, 10th
February, 1718.
[102] _Weekly Journal_ or _British Gazeteer_, 18th April, 1719.
[103] Lady Chesterfield had no children, but Lady Howe became mother of
the celebrated admiral, Earl Howe.
[104] Pope to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1718.
[105] Colley Cibber’s _Apology for My Life_, ed. 1740.
[106] Colley Cibber’s _Apology for My Life_, ed. 1740.
[107] The Duchess of Orleans to the Raugravine Louise, Paris, 10th
March, 1718.
[108] Horace Walpole’s _Reminiscences_.
[109] Lady Cowper’s Diary.