Quarrel between George the First and his Son-Earl of
Sunderland-Lord Stanhope-South Sea Scheme-Death of Craggs-Royal
Reconcilement-Peerage Bill defeated-Project for seizing the
Prince of Wales and conveying him to America-Duke of
Newcastle-Royal Christening-Open Rupture-Prince and Princess of
Wales ordered to leave the Palace.
One of the most remarkable occurrences in the reign of George I.
was the open quarrel between him and his son the Prince of Wales.
Whence the dissension originated; whether the prince's attachment
to his mother embittered his mind against his father, or whether
hatred of' his father occasioned his devotion to her, I do not
pretend to know. I do suspect front circumstances, that the
hereditary enmity in the House of Brunswick between the parents
and their eldest sons dated earlier than the divisions between
the first two Georges. The Princess Sophia was a woman of parts
and great vivacity: in the earlier part of her life she had
professed much zeal for the deposed House of Stuart, as appeared
by a letter of hers in print, addressed to the Chevalier de St.
George. It is natural enough for all princes,-who have no
prospect of being benefited by the deposition of a crowned head,
to choose to think royalty an indelible character. The Queen of
Prussia, daughter of George I. lived and died an avowed Jacobite.
The Princess Sophia, youngest child of the Queen of Bohemia, was
consequently the most remote from any pretensions to the British
crown; (83) but no sooner had King William procured a settlement
of it after Queen Anne on her Electoral Highness, than nobody
became a stancher Whig than the Princess Sophia, nor could be
more impatient to mount the throne of the expelled Stuarts. It
is certain, that during the reign of Anne, the Elector George was
inclined to the Tories, though-after his mother's death and his
own accession he gave himself to the opposite party. But if be
and his mother espoused different factions, Sophia found a ready
partisan in her grandson, the Electoral prince; (84) and it is
true, that the demand made by the Prince of his writ of summons
to the House of Lords as Duke of Cambridge, which no wonder was
so offensive to Queen Anne, was made in concert with his
grandmother, without the privity of the Elector his father. Were
it certain, as was believed, that Bolingbroke and the Jacobites
prevailed on the Queen *85) to consent to her brother coming
secretly to England, and to seeing him in her closet; she might
have been induced to that step, when provoked by an attempt to
force a distant and foreign heir upon her while still alive. The
Queen and her heiress being dead, the new King and his son came
over in apparent harmony; and on his Majesty's first visit to his
electoral dominions, the Prince of Wales was even left Regent;
but never being trusted afterwards with that dignity on like
occasions, it is probable that the son discovered too much
fondness for acting the king, or that the father conceived a
jealousy of his son having done so. Sure it is, that on the
King's return great divisions arose in the court; and the Whigs
were divided-some devoting themselves to the wearer of the crown,
and others to the expectant. I shall not enter into the detail
of those squabbles, of which I am but superficially informed.
The predominant ministers were the Earls of Sunderland and
Stanhope. The brothers-in-law, the Viscount Townshend and Mr.
Robert Walpole, adhered to the Prince. Lord Sunderland is said
to have too much resembled as a politician the earl his father,
who was so principal an actor in the reign of James II. and in
bringing about the Revolution. Between the earl in question and
the Prince of Wales grew mortal antipathy; of which -,in anecdote
told me by my father himself will leave no doubt. When a
reconciliation had been patched up between the two courts, and my
father became first lord of the treasury a second time, Lord
Sunderland in a t`ete-`a-t`ete with him said, "Well, Mr. Walpole,
we have settled matters for the present; but we must think whom
we shall have next" (meaning in case of the King's demise).
Walpole said, "Your lordship may think as you please, but my part
is taken;" meaning to support the established settlement.
Earl Stanhope was a man of strong and violent passions, and had
dedicated himself to the army; and was so far from thinking of
any other line, that when Walpole, who first suggested the idea
of appointing him secretary of state, proposed it to him, he flew
into a furious rage, and was on the point of a downright quarrel,
looking on himself' as totally unqualified for the post, and
suspecting it for a plan of mocking him. He died in one of those
tempestuous sallies, being pushed in the House of Lords on the
explosion of the South Sea scheme. That iniquitous affair, which
Walpole had early exposed, and to remedy the mischiefs of which
he alone was deemed adequate, had replaced him at the head of
affairs, and obliged Sunderland to submit to be only a coadjutor
of the administration. The younger Craggs, (86) a showy
vapouring man, had been brought forward by the ministers to
oppose Walpole; but was soon reduced to beg his assistance on one
(87) of their ways and means. Craggs caught his death by calling
at the gate of Lady March, (88) who was ill of the small-pox; and
being told so by the porter, went home directly, fell ill of the
same distemper, and died. His father, the elder Craggs, whose
very good sense Sir R. Walpole much admired, soon followed his
son, and his sudden death was imputed to grief; but having been
deeply dipped in the iniquities of the South Sea, and wishing to
prevent confiscation and save his ill-acquired wealth for his
daughters, there was no doubt of his having despatched himself.
When his death was divulged, Sir Robert Owned that the unhappy
man had in an oblique manner hinted his resolution to him.
The reconciliation of the royal family was so little cordial,
that I question whether the Prince did not resent Sir Robert
Walpole's return to the King's service. Yet had Walpole defeated
a plan of Sunderland that @would in future have exceedingly
hampered the successor, as it was calculated to do; nor do I
affect to ascribe Sir Robert's victory directly to zeal for the
Prince: personal and just views prompted his opposition, and the
commoners of England were not less indebted to him than the
Prince. Sunderland had devised a bill to restrain the crown from
ever adding above six peers to a number limited., (89) The actual
peers were far from disliking the measure; but Walpole, taking
fire, instantly communicated his dissatisfaction to all the great
commoners, who might for ever be excluded from the peerage. He
spoke, he wrote, (90) he persuaded, and the bill was rejected by
the Commons with disdain, after it had passed the House of Lords.
(91)
But the hatred of some of the junta at court had gone farther,
horribly farther. On the death of George 1. Queen Caroline found
in his cabinet a proposal of the Earl of Berkeley, (92) then, I
think, first lord of the admiralty, to seize the Prince of Wales,
and convey him to America, whence he should never be heard of
more. This detestable project copied probably from the Earl of
Falmouth's offer to Charles II. with regard to his Queen, was in
the handwriting of Charles Stanhope, elder brother of the Earl of
Harrington: (93) and so deep was the impression deservedly made
on the mind of George II. by that abominable paper, that all the
favour of Lord Harrington, when secretary of state, could never
obtain the smallest boon to his brother, though but the
subordinate transcriber. (94) George I. was too humane to listen
to such an atrocious deed. It was not very kind to the
conspirators to leave such an instrument behind him; and if
virtue and conscience will not check bold bad men from paying
court by detestable offers, the King's carelessness or
indifference in such an instance ought to warn them of the little
gratitude that such machinations can inspire or expect.
Among those who had preferred the service of the King to that of
the heir apparent, was the Duke of Newcastle;, (95) Who, having
married his sister to Lord Townshend, both his royal highness and
the viscount had expected would have adhered to that
connexion-and neither forgave his desertion.-I am aware of the
desultory manner in which I have told my story, having mentioned
the reconciliation of the King and Prince before I have given any
account of their public rupture. The chain of my thoughts led me
into the preceding details, and, if I do not flatter myself, will
have let you into the motives of my dramatis personae better than
if I had 'more exactly observed chronology.- and as I am not
writing a regular tragedy, and profess but to relate facts as I
recollect them; or (if you will allow me to imitate French
writers of tragedy) may I not plead that I have unfolded my piece
as they do, by introducing two courtiers to acquaint one another,
and by bricole the audience, with what had passed in the
penetralia before the tragedy commences?
The exordium thus duly prepared, you must suppose, ladies, that
the second act opens with a royal christening The Princess of
Wales had been delivered of a second son. The Prince had
intended his uncle, the Duke of York, Bishop of Osnaburg, should
with his Majesty be godfathers. Nothing could equal the
indignation of his Royal Highness when the King named the Duke of
Newcastle for second sponsor, and would hear of no other. The
christening took place as usual in the Princess's bedchamber.
Lady Suffolk, then in waiting as woman of the bedchamber, and of
most accurate memory painted the scene to me exactly. On one
side of the bed stood the godfathers and godmother; on the other
the Prince and the Princess's ladies. No sooner had the Bishop
closed the ceremony, than the Prince, crossing the feet of the
bed in a rage, stepped up to the Duke of Newcastle, and, holding
up his hand and fore-finger in a menacing attitude, said, "You
are a rascal, but I shall find you," meaning, in broken English,
"I shall find a time to be revenged."-"What was my astonishment,"
continued Lady Suffolk, "when going to the Princess's apartment
the 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. They said, 'No matter; I
must not pass that way.'"
In one word, the King had been so provoked at the Prince's
outrage in his presence, that it had been determined to inflict a
still greater insult on his Royal Highness. His threat to the
Duke was pretended to be understood as a challenge; and to
prevent a duel he had actually been put under arrest-as if a
Prince of Wales could stoop to fight with a subject. The arrest
was soon taken off; but at night the Prince and Princess were
ordered to leave the palace, (96) and retired to the house of her
chamberlain, the Earl of Grantham, in Albemarle Street.
(83) It is remarkable, that either the weak propensity of the
Stuarts to popery, or the visible connexion between regal and
ecclesiastic power, had such operation on many of the branches of
that family, who were at a distance from the crown of England, to
wear which it is necessary to be a Protestant, that two or three
of the daughters of the king and Queen of Bohemia, though their
parents had lost every thing in the struggle between the two
religions, turned Roman Catholics; and so did one or more of the
sons of the Princess Sophia, brothers of the Protestant
candidate, George I.
(84) Afterwards George II.
(85) I believe it was a fact, that the poor weak Queen, being
disposed even to cede the crown to her brother, consulted Bishop
Wilkins, called the Prophet, to know what would be the
consequence of such a step. He replied, "Madam, you would be in
the Tower in a month, and dead in three." This Sentence, dictated
by common sense, her Majesty took for inspiration, and dropped
all thoughts of resigning the crown.
*86) James Craggs, Jun, buried in Westminster Abbey, with an
epitaph by Pope. [Craggs died on the 16th of February, 1721.
His monument was executed by Guelphi, whom Lord Burlington
invited into the kingdom. Walpole considered it graceful and
simple, but that the artist was an indifferent sculptor. Dr.
Johnson objects to Pope's inscription, that it is partly in Latin
and partly in English. "If either language," he says, "be
preferable to the other, let that only be used; for no reason can
be given why part of the information should be given in one
tongue, and part in another, on a tomb more than in any other
place or any other occasion: such an epitaph resembles the
conversation of a foreigner, who tells part of his meaning by
words, and conveys part by signs."]
(87) I think it was the sixpenny tax on offices.
(88) Sarah Cadogan, afterwards Duchess of Richmond.
(89) Queen Anne's creation of twelve peers at once, to obtain a
majority in the House of Lords, offered an ostensible plea for
the restrictions.
(90) Sir Robert published a pamphlet against the bill, entitled,
"The Thoughts of a Member of the Lower House, in relation to a
project for restraining and limiting the powers of the Crown in
the future creation of Peers." On the other side, Addison's pen
was employed in defending the measure, in a paper called "The Old
Whig," against Steele, who attacked it in a pamphlet entitled
"The Plebeian."-E.
(91) The effect of Sir Robert's speech on the House," says Coxe,
"exceeded the sanguine expectations: it fixed those who had
before been wavering and irresolute, brought over many who had
been tempted by the speciousness of the measure to favour
introduction, and procured its rejection, by a triumphant
majority of 269 against 177." Memoirs, Vol. i.-E.
(92) James, third Earl of Berkeley. knight of the garter, etc.
In March 1718, he was appointed first lord of the admiralty, in
which post he continued all the reign of George the First. He
died at the castle of Aubigny in France in 1736.]
(93) William Stanhope, first Earl of Harrington of that family.
(94) Coxe states, that such was the indignation which the perusal
of this paper excited, that, when Sir Robert espoused Charles
Stanhope's interest, the King rejected the application with some
expressions of resentment, and declared that no consideration
should induce him to assign to him any place of trust or honour.-
E.
(95) Thomas Holles Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, lord chamberlain,
then secretary of state, and lastly, first lord of the treasury
under George II.; the same King to whom he had been so obnoxious
in the preceding reign. He was obliged by George III. to resign
his post.
(96) "Notice was also formally given that no persons who paid
their respects to the Prince and Princess of Wales would be
received at court; and they were deprived of their guard, and of
all other marks of distinction." Coxe, vol. i. p. 132.-E.