A CROWN LOST, AND A GRAVE WON.
The Queen’s agitation--Her illness--Her sufferings--Desires
her diary may be destroyed--Her death--Sketch of her life--
Her mother a foolish woman--Every sense of justice outraged by
the King--Inconsistency of the Whigs--The Queen persecuted
even after death--Disrespect shown to her remains by the
Government--Protest against a disgraceful haste to remove
her remains--Course of the funeral procession interrupted by
the people--Collision between the military and the populace
--Effort to force a way through the people ineffectual--The
procession compelled to pass through the City--The plate on
the Queen’s coffin removed--The funeral reaches Harwich--The
Queen’s remains taken to Brunswick--Funeral oration--Tombs of
the illustrious dead there.
The coronation-day killed the Queen. The agitations and sufferings of
that eventful day called into deadly action the germs of the disease
under which she ultimately succumbed. Once only, between that day and
her death, did she appear in public, at Drury Lane Theatre, and even
then she may be said to have been dying.
On August the 2nd, the first bulletin issued from Brandenburgh House,
by ‘W. G. Maten, P. Warren, and H. Holland,’ announced that her
Majesty was suffering from internal inflammation and obstruction. Her
sufferings were considerable, but they were borne with resignation;
and she even expressed a cheerful readiness to be gone from a world in
which she had endured more than she had enjoyed. Her own conviction,
from the first, was that her malady would prove fatal. No whisper of
hope appeared to deceive or to cheer her. She was determined, as it
were, that she must die, and she prepared for the worst. Her feelings
were natural to a woman of her disposition and character. She felt
that, despite all solemn protestation, notwithstanding all as solemn
assertion, she had failed in re-establishing the reputation which she
enjoyed during the early years of her residence in this country. The
abandonment of the Bill of Pains and Penalties had not rescued her from
degradation; and the people, who were ready to offer her consolation
as a woman who had been most deeply wronged and outraged, were by
no means so ready to espouse her cause further than this. She had
herself confessed to indiscretions, and when the confession applies
to constant repetition of the offence, the public judgment, even with
nothing more to warrant its exercise, will never be slow to hold her
who acknowledges so much as being guilty of more. In her position, with
a reputation so soiled, and torn, and trodden upon; which could not
be made bright by any declaration (poor indeed) that she was not so
debased as she was declared to be by her adversaries; for a woman so
placed, to die is the sole joy left her, if she has made the peace with
God which can never again exist between her and man. Her few friends
were accustomed to say that in after years her good fame would be
substantiated. After years--alas! Of what use to the drowned sailor
is the favourable wind _after_ shipwreck? Assuredly, her own character
perished more by her own suicidal acts than by the assaults made upon
it by those who were interested in damning it; just as ‘Tom Paine’
himself has said that a writer may destroy his own reputation, which
cannot be affected by the pens of other writers.
To die then was now in the very fitness of things, and death made but
brief work with his new victim. Between the second and the seventh of
August the suffering never ceased sufficiently to warrant serious hope
of amelioration. During the intervening time she continued to express
her willingness to depart. She signed her will, gave with calmness all
necessary orders which she wished to be observed, spoke charitably of
all, and little of herself. Among her last acts was one of sacrifice,
and perhaps posterity will regret it. She ordered the diary, which she
had long kept, and in which she had entered the characters of the most
prominent persons with whom she had come in contact, to be burned. This
is said to have been done in her presence; but so many things only seem
to be done in a dying presence that our successors may not despair,
hereafter, of becoming more intimate with Caroline, her thoughts and
feelings, than she ever permitted her contemporaries to be. The great
chance against posterity being allowed to read the scandalous chronicle
or the justifying confessions of Caroline lies in the fact that the
series of journals were burned by a foreign female servant, who knew
nothing of their value. Such, at least, was the accredited report.
After nearly five days of intense suffering, the Queen sank into a
stupor from which she never awoke. At half-past ten o’clock on the
morning of the seventh of August, 1821, ‘after an entire absence of
sense and faculty for more than two hours,’ Caroline Amelia Elizabeth
of Brunswick, Queen Consort of George IV., expired almost without a
struggle. In her supreme hour only her faithful friends, Lord and Lady
Hood and Lady Anne Hamilton, were with her. Her legal and medical
advisers, with Alderman Wood and one of his sons, were also near her
person. She had completed fifty-three years and three months; of these
she passed by far the happier and the more innocent half--happier
because the more innocent--in Brunswick. Of the following nineteen
years spent in England, eighteen of them were passed in separation
from, and most of them in quarrelling with, her husband. For the first
nine or ten years of this period she lived without offence and free
from suspicion; during the remainder she was struggling to re-establish
a fame which had been wrongfully assailed; but this was accompanied by
such eccentricity and indiscretion that she seemed almost to justify
the suspicion under which she had suffered. Then came the half-dozen
years of her residence abroad, when she too often shaped her conduct
as though she had alacrity in furnishing matter condemnatory against
herself to the spies by whom she was surrounded. To say that they
exaggerated her offences does not, unfortunately, prove her guiltless
of great crime. Her return to England was a bold step, but it was one
she was compelled to take. It failed, however, in its great purpose.
She did not triumph. Justice, indeed, was not rendered her, for she
was condemned before she was tried; and though the trial was not
carried to its intended conclusion, he who would now stand forth as the
champion of Caroline of Brunswick would be necessarily accounted of as
possessing more generosity than judgment.
Nevertheless, for this poor woman there is something to be said.
She was ill-educated; religiously educated, not at all; and never
had religious principles as expounded by any particular church. Her
mother was a foolish, frivolous woman, and her father, whom she
ardently loved, a brave, handsome, vicious man, who made his wife and
daughters sit down in company with his mistresses. With such an example
before her, what could be expected from an ardent, spirited, idle,
and careless girl? Much--if she had been blessed with a husband of
principle, a man who would have tempered the ardour to useful ends,
guided the spirit to profitable purpose, and taught the careless girl
to learn and love the cares, or duties, rather, which belonged to her
position. But by whom, and what, was that Princess encountered in
England, whither she had come to marry a Prince who had condescended
to have her inflicted on him, and bringing with her the memories of
pleasant communings with more courteous wooers in Brunswick? She met
a husband who consigned her to companionship with women more infamous
than ever she herself became, and whose interest and business it was to
render the wife disgusting to the husband. They speedily accomplished
the end they had in view, and when they had driven the wife from the
palace they endeavoured to prove her to be guilty of vices which she
had not then, in common with themselves and her husband. If he ever
justly complained of wrong, he at least took infinite pains to merit
all that was inflicted on him. He outraged every sense of justice when,
steeped to the very lips in uncleanness, he demanded that his consort
should be rendered for ever infamous, for the alleged commission of
acts for which he claimed impunity on his own account. She was not,
perhaps, betrayed by the Whigs, but these rather took up her cause
for the reason that it served them politically than put credence in
its righteousness. They were, however, the voluntary champions of
her virtue. Lord Holland was among the first of them, and yet in
his contemporary Diary he says of her, ‘She was at best a strange
woman, and a very sorry and uninteresting heroine. She had, they say,
some talent, some pleasantry, some good-humour, and great spirit
and courage. But she was utterly destitute of all female delicacy,
and exhibited, in the whole course of the transactions relating to
herself, very little feeling for anybody, and very little regard for
honour and truth, or even for the interests of those who were devoted
to her, whether the people in the aggregate, or the individuals who
enthusiastically espoused her cause. She avowed her dislike for many,
_scarcely concealed her contempt for all_’ (no wonder); ‘in short, to
speak plainly, if not mad, she was a very worthless woman.’ So wrote
one who had asserted directly the contrary.
But it was the lot of this unhappy Queen to be persecuted even after
death. Her will, in which she bequeathed the little she had to leave to
William Austin, the protégé, who did not long survive her, contained
a clause to this effect: ‘I desire and direct that my body be not
opened, and that three days after my death it be carried to Brunswick
for interment, and that the inscription on my coffin be, “Here lies
Caroline of Brunswick, the injured Queen of England.”’
The government, acting under alleged orders from the King, but
influenced, no doubt, by a wish not to mar the festivities attendant
upon the visit of George IV. to Ireland, by allowing the Queen’s body
to remain longer than needful in England, announced their intention
to pay every sort of respect to the orders and wishes of her late
Majesty, and to despatch the body to Harwich at once, for embarkation.
The personal friends of Caroline protested against this unseemly
readiness, on the part of the ministers, to obey the wishes of one
who, when alive, never had a wish that was not thwarted. Lady Hood
addressed a letter to Lord Liverpool, not so much, indeed, as she said
to _him_, as to his heart. The letter pleaded for delay, on the ground
of the Queen’s ladies being unprepared; and it expressly protested
against the intended military escort, as being an honour never allowed
to the Queen when living, and one not certainly desired by her, who
was sufficiently guarded by the people’s love. Reply was made that
the arrangements already resolved upon were irrevocable, and that,
if the ladies were not provided with the necessary mourning, there
would be nothing disrespectful in waiting behind till they had been
furnished with what was necessary, and then joining in the procession
anywhere on its route. There was a singular want of courtesy in all the
communications made by the ministry to the friends of the Queen. The
latter could not even learn by what route the body would be conveyed
to Harwich. The most direct road was through the City of London, and
the mayor and corporation had announced their intention to attend on
the royal remains on the passage through the City. The government
curtly intimated that the funeral _cortège_ would not be allowed to
pass through the City at all. From the same source it was subsequently
learned that the coffin would be carried by the circuitous route of
the New Road to Romford, and then by the direct road to Harwich. The
popular disgust was justifiably great. Lord Liverpool asserted that
he and his colleagues were influenced only by feelings which prompted
them to show full respect to the wishes of the deceased Queen. How very
little the noble lord was really influenced by the feelings in question
may be seen in Dean Pellew’s Life of Lord Sidmouth. In that work there
is a letter from Lord Liverpool, in which the writer says that he would
have despatched the body the whole way by water to Harwich, had he not
been afraid of the passage at London Bridge! In other words, he would
have paid it as much disrespect as was in his power, only that he
feared a popular demonstration of unwelcome character at the bridge.
On the 14th of August, the government authorised the persons employed
by them to remove the body from Hammersmith. There had been very scant
ceremony displayed in a ‘lying in state,’ and the preparations now
were but of a meagre description. A few tawdry escutcheons, a tinsel
coronet, heralds in private dresses, and a military escort, looking
mournful rather because of the rain, which fell in torrents, than for
any other reason.
When Sir George Naylor, in his official tabard, and Mr. Bailey, the
undertaker, authorised by government to carry out the prescribed
arrangements, entered the room where the body lay, in order to remove
it, they were met by Dr. Lushington, who stood at the head of a small
group of her Majesty’s friends, and protested against the intended
removal, on account of over-haste, and also against the attendance
of the soldiery. ‘I enter my solemn protest,’ said the doctor, ‘in
right of the legal power which is vested in me by her late Majesty, as
executor. I command that the body be not removed till the arrangements
suitable to the rank and dignity of the deceased are made.’ Mr.
Bailey declared that, with the authority he held, the body must be
removed. ‘Touch it not, at your peril,’ exclaimed Dr. Lushington.
Mr. Bailey asked if he intended to use or to recommend violence. The
legal executor answered that he would neither assist in nor recommend
violence. Whereupon the government officer declared that he should
discharge his duty firmly and, he hoped, properly.
But he had to encounter a second duel of words with the other executor,
Mr. Wilde, who protested as Dr. Lushington had done, and to as little
purpose. Mr. Bailey said that his orders were imperative, and he would
take upon himself the responsibility and peril of removing the body.
The procession then set out, and never had Queen a funeral of such
strange ceremony and circumstance. The mourners comprised those friends
and legal advisers who have been so often named: some of them were not
in the mourning coaches, but in their own private carriages. It was
a strictly government funeral (the King, it was said, paid all the
expenses); but there was a multitude who descended into the streets
on that day. There were many among them who deemed that the funeral
charges would, after all, be defrayed out of the public pocket.
They were accordingly determined that their own programme should be
followed, and that the body of the Queen should be carried through
the City of London. The ministers, unwisely, were as obstinately bent
in dragging the dead Queen through the outskirts, and getting her to
Harwich in as unceremonious a manner as possible. They professed great
respect, but it is certain that they meant none, and it was because the
people were convinced of this that they occupied the highways on that
stormy morning, resolute to bear the inanimate Caroline, as it were,
and as she had desired, on the popular shoulders, through the very
centre of the great metropolis.
It was between seven and eight o’clock when the funeral procession,
escorted by or rather partly made up of, cavalry, passed through
Hammersmith. It met with no obstruction until it reached Kensington
Church. At this point the first attempt to turn out of the direct road
leading to the City, by conducting the _cortège_ up Church Street into
the Bayswater Road, was met by a hoarse cry of execration on the part
of the people. They went further than protest. In a brief space of time
the road was dug up, rendered impassable, and obstructed by a barricade
that would have won the approval of a Parisian professor of tumults.
The military escort kept their places and their tempers; but the Life
Guards, with the chief magistrate of Bow Street, Sir Richard Baker,
speedily appeared. They saw the uselessness of attempting to force a
passage; and when the order was given to proceed in the direct route
to London, there broke forth a thundering shout of victory about the
hearse of the unconscious Queen, as though expressly raised to give her
assurance that the people had compelled respect to her will.
In the Park the multitude had spent many of the morning hours in
rushing from the south to the north side, from the north to the south;
and again and again repeating the same movement, according as report
reached them that the funeral would pass by one or the other line.
The issue of the struggle at Kensington having been announced in the
Park, the great body of the people there had now moved once more to the
south side, and were pouring into the Knightsbridge Road. Meanwhile,
orders had been received from ministers, by Sir Richard Baker and
the commander of the Life Guards, to lead the procession through the
Kensington Gate of Hyde Park into the Edgeware Road. But at the gate
the scene which had been enacted at Church Street was replayed with
some additions. The people forcibly held the gates closed, placed every
impediment in the way which they could collect, and were so fiercely
demonstrative with their cry of ‘The City! the City!’ that magistrate
and military again yielded to the popular will, and the body, which had
halted amid the tumult, was once again carried forward amid shouts of
triumph.
The delay had afforded time to Sir Richard Baker to apply to ministers
for fresh instructions. These were forwarded to him in a peremptory
order to see that the procession was conducted into the Edgeware Road,
either by the east side of the Park or through Park Lane. At both
points the suspicious and exasperated populace were ready for the
expected contest. It was here that the matter assumed a more serious
aspect than it had yet worn. The soldiery began to grow chafed at an
opposition which, in its turn, began to be emphasised by the employment
of missiles. The attempt to pass up the Park was made in vain; that to
force Park Lane was equally ineffectual. But while the struggle was
raging at the latter point the line of procession was broken, and that
part of it near the gate turned into the Park, carrying the hearse with
it. The military at Park Lane turned back, followed the successful Mr.
Bailey and his followers, and closing the gates upon the public, the
body of the Queen was borne, at an unseemly pace, onwards to Cumberland
Gate. But the increasingly-excited people were light of foot, and
when the head of the funeral line reached Cumberland Gate, with the
intention to proceed, not down Oxford Street to the City, but up the
Edgeware and, subsequently, the New Road, there was a compact mass
resolved to give no passage, and determined to carry the royal corpse
through the metropolis. It was here that Sir Robert Wilson endeavoured
to mediate between the multitude and the military. The commander of the
latter had no discretionary power, and could only obey his orders. His
men, hitherto, had exhibited great forbearance, but their patience was
overcome when they found themselves fairly attacked by the populace
at this point. Neither mob nor soldiers were really culpable. The
blame rested entirely with the ministry, whose folly and obstinacy had
provoked the conflict, and made victims on both sides. The military (by
which is to be understood the Life Guards, and not the ‘Blues,’ who
formed part of the procession, and were quiescent throughout the day)
at last fired a volley, by which several persons were severely injured,
and two men, Francis and Honey, were slain. Not a few of the military
were seriously wounded by the missiles flung at them in return, but the
hitherto victors were vanquished. They gave way, and across the blood
that had been spilt, and among the wounded lying around, the people’s
Queen, as they called her, was once more carried on the way which the
respectful feelings of the ministry taught them it was best for her to
go.
The defeat and the victory seemed respectively accepted by the
different parties. The individuals having the body in charge, and the
escort, pushed hurriedly forward with the hearse towards the New Road.
But several of the mourners here left a procession to form part of
which was attended with peril to life. The multitude looked moodily
on; but suddenly, as if by common impulse, perhaps at suggestion of
some shout, they, too, rushed forward, determined to make one more
attempt at achieving a victory for themselves and the unconscious Queen.
They who were conducting the body along the New Road towards Romford
did not dream of further opposition, and their astonishment was great
when, on arriving at Tottenham Court Road, they found all progress,
east or northward, completely obstructed, and no way open for them but
southward, towards the City. In this direction they were compelled
to turn, hailed by the popular exultation, and met with shouts of
execration and menace, as they sought, but vainly, at each outlet down
the east side of Tottenham Court Road, to find a passage back into the
suburban line. In the same way the procession was forced down Drury
Lane, into the Strand. Sir Richard Baker did not yield to anything
but compulsion, yet he lost his office, as Sir Robert Wilson did his
commission, for endeavouring to do his duty under most trying and
difficult circumstances. Once in the Strand, the people felt that their
victory had been fairly and irrevocably achieved. When the royal body
was carried under Temple Bar, its advent there was hailed with such a
wild ‘hurrah’ as had never met the ears of living sovereign. For seven
hours that body had been dragged through wind, and rain, and mud--the
King’s will drawing it in one direction, the people in another. How
much or how little the latter were influenced by earnest attachment to
her for whom, dead, they made their demonstration, even to the shedding
of blood, it is not easy to say. There is less difficulty in coming
to the decision that they who professed to be carrying out the King’s
commands served him ill, and even perilled his crown on that day. The
King himself, however, is known to have been exceedingly wroth against
the government for not having employed more stringent measures in order
to fulfil his commands. The triumph of a dead wife embittered more than
one joyous banquet in the Irish capital.
The civil authorities of the City, hurriedly collected for the
occasion, accompanied the royal remains as far as the eastern limit
of the City’s ‘liberty,’ Whitechapel. Thence to Romford the funeral
train proceeded at a very varied pace, sometimes as slowly as became
the solemnity of a funeral, at others the pace would have been counted
lively enough for a wedding. At Romford, the mourners who had rejoined
the _cortège_ passed the night, but the royal corpse was carried on to
Colchester, where it rested for the night, in St. Peter’s Church.
It was during this night that the silver plate announcing the occupant
of the coffin as ‘the injured,’ or, according to some, ‘the murdered,
Queen of England,’ was affixed to the lid. Whenever this was done
the plate was not allowed to remain. It was removed and replaced by
another, inscribed simply with the deceased’s name and titles and
dates, in the usual form. They who have visited the vaults beneath the
Church of St. Blaize, the patron of Brunswick, may remember that the
marks of the nails which fastened the original plate are still visible.
The journey to Harwich was unmarked by any particular incident, save
that everywhere along the route the feeling of curiosity to see the
remains of Caroline pass to their last resting-place was accompanied by
manifest evidences of respect. Off Harwich were awaiting the _Glasgow_
frigate, two sloops of war, three brigs, and the _Pioneer_ schooner.
The coffin was conveyed to the latter, after being unceremoniously
swung into a barge, and from the schooner it was transferred to the
_Glasgow_. The little group of mourners followed. They consisted of
Lord and Lady Hood, Lady Anne Hamilton, Mr. Austin, Dr. and Mrs.
Lushington, and Count Vassali. Her Majesty’s remains were now in charge
of Captain Doyle, who, when a midshipman, more than a quarter of a
century before, had handed the rope to the royal bride, whereby to
help her on board the _Jupiter_. The squadron set sail, under a salute
from Languard fort, and at two o’clock p.m., on Sunday, the 19th, it
anchored in the harbour of Cuxhaven.
The _Gannet_ sloop of war conveyed the body up the Elbe to the mouth of
the Schwinde, and up the latter it was carried, with a guard of marines
and the mourners, by the boats belonging to the _Wye_ sloop, as far as
Stade. From this place to Brunswick the body of the unhappy Caroline
was borne, by slow journeys, and amid profuse respectful demonstrations
on the part of the people. One of its resting-places by the way was at
Zell, in the church of which place the body lay for a night upon the
tomb of the unfortunate sister of George III., Caroline Matilda Queen
of Denmark.
At midnight on Friday, August 24, the last rites were performed over
the deceased consort of George IV. The body had been removed from the
hearse to a funeral car, which was drawn by some hundred Brunswickers
to the cathedral gates. No extraordinary service was allowed to
be celebrated at the side of the vault. The Duke of Brunswick was
then a minor and an absentee, and the government of the country was
administered by the King of England. But though the service was of the
most ordinary character, the sexagenarian pastor, Woolf, pronounced an
oration above the remains of the Queen. He thanked God for adorning
her with high advantages of mind and body, for bestowing upon her a
heart full of clemency and benignity, and for placing her where she
could, and was resolved to, accomplish much good. But ‘unsearchable, O
Eternal, are thy ways!’ was the perplexed pastor’s cry as he adverted
to her subsequent career--for terminating which the wisdom of the
Almighty was again to be revered.
Among the range of coffins in the vault beneath the cathedral of St.
Blaize, at Brunswick, Caroline rests between two which contain two
heroic but far from faultless men--her father, who fell at Jena, and
her brother, who, at the head of his Black Brunswickers, also fell in
avenging him at Waterloo. Speaking of the latter, ‘two small black
flags,’ says Russell, ‘the one an offering from the matrons, the other
from the maidens of Brunswick, are suspended above his coffin, and its
gaudy gold and crimson are still mixed with the brown and withering
leaves of the garlands which the love of his people scattered on his
bier, when at midnight he was laid among so many of his race who had
fought and fell like himself.’ Between the coffins of these two lies
that of Caroline of Brunswick, between father and brother slain.
Her mother died in exile, yet in her own land; and the grave of her
murdered sister Charlotte, the first wife of the Prince of Wurtemburg,
would be sought for in vain. Surely here was a household sternly dealt
with.
On the Sunday following the funeral the venerable pastor, Woolf,
preached a sermon appropriate to the event, and which ended in a
panegyric on the character of the Queen. The old man, with singular
tenacity, clung to the assertion, that in early life ‘her quick
understanding eagerly received every ray of divine truth, and her warm
heart and lively feelings were excited and elevated by piety.’ He
declared that her sense of religion increased to a confirmed faith,
and that pious occupations were dear to her heart. ‘I knew her,’ said
the aged advocate, ‘as an enlightened Christian, before she left the
country of her birth. She first received from my hands, with pious
emotion, the holy Supper of our Lord, and the solemnity of her manner
was like her precious devotions, an unsuspected proof of her sincere
faith and pious feeling.’ The panegyric would have been, like most
articles of the kind, far above the merit of the subject, were it not
for the strong qualifying sentence in which the preacher acknowledged
that ‘the sense of religion, it was true, did not always preserve her
from infirmities and errors;’ but, as he asked after the admission,
‘Where is the mortal, where has there been a saint, who has been always
perfect? And,’ said he, aptly and truly enough, whether addressed to
the friends or the foes of the poor, ill-used, and erring Caroline
of Brunswick--‘And he who erred less may conscientiously ask himself
whether he owes that to himself or to his more fortunate situation and
the undeserved grace of God?’ It is a query which we are all bound to
make when viewing a brother or a sister of the human family who is
reputed guilty of offence towards God or man. The latter is ever ready
to condemn his neighbour, but never ready to pass sentence on himself.
Happy for all that with God there is not only judgment but mercy.
There has been some discussion as to whether Caroline of Brunswick was
legally married to the Prince of Wales. There is no doubt, however,
to be entertained on the matter. Her husband had, unquestionably,
previously married a Roman Catholic lady, and that lady was living when
the Prince married Caroline of Brunswick.
By the well-known statute of William and Mary, marrying a Roman
Catholic entails exclusion from, and incapability ever to inherit, the
crown of this realm.
The Prince clearly forfeited his right to the Crown by his marriage
with a Papist.
But he married the lady (with the King’s connivance, he said) without
the King’s consent; and, wanting that consent, the marriage (according
to the 12th of George III.) was null and void.
This would set aside the marriage, but it would not release the Prince
from the consequence of having entered into such a marriage. Horne
Tooke was not justified in sneering at the 12th of George III., nor in
writing ‘legally, really, worthily, and happily for the country, Mrs.
Fitzherbert is Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales.’
The Roman See, it is said, satisfied Mrs. Fitzherbert’s scruples by
considering the marriage legal. That See never considered any other
marriage between such (religious) parties, so celebrated, legal. Had
there been issue of such an union, grave peril might have arisen. There
was, indeed, a claimant to such honour, but he disappeared. He lacked
the power of lying since manifested by Orton and some of the Orton
gang. The monument to Mrs. Fitzherbert’s memory at Brighton asserts
the legality of her marriage with the Prince by the three rings on her
finger. That she was as much respected as if her last marriage was as
legal as the preceding two there is no shadow of doubt. As little doubt
is there that the Prince of Wales was never legally married except to
his wayward and unhappy cousin--Caroline of Brunswick.
_ADELAIDE OF SAXE-MEINENGEN_,
WIFE OF WILLIAM IV.
The pocket Duchy--Old customs--Early training--The Father
of the Princess Adelaide--Social life at the ducal court--
Training of the Princess Adelaide--Marriage Preliminaries--
English parliament--The Duke of Clarence--Arrival in London
of the Princess--Quaint royal weddings--At home and abroad
--Duke and Duchess of Clarence at Bushey--‘State and Dirt’ at
St. James’s--William IV. and Queen Adelaide--Course of life
of the new Queen Consort--King’s gallantry to an old love--
Royal simplicity--The Sovereigns and the Sovereign people--
Court anecdotes--Drawing-rooms--Princess Victoria--The
coronation--Incidents of the day--Coronation finery of George
IV.--Princess Victoria not present--Revolutionary period--
Reform question--Unpopularity of the Queen--Attacks against
her on the part of the press--Violence of party-spirit--
Friends and foes--Bearing of the King and Queen--Duchess
of Angoulême--King a republican--His indiscretion--Want
of temper--Continental press adverse to the Queen--King’s
declining health--Conduct of Queen Adelaide--King William’s
death--Declining health of the Queen--Her travels in search
of health--Her last illness--Her will--Death--And funeral.
The little Duchy of Saxe-Meinengen was once a portion of the
inheritance of the princely Franconian house of Henneberg. The failure
of the male line transferred it in 1583 to the family of reigning Saxon
princes. In 1680 it fell to the third son of the Saxon Duke, Ernest the
Pious. The name of this son was Bernard. This Duke is looked upon as
the founder of the House of Meinengen. He was much devoted to the study
of Alchemy, and was of a pious turn, like his father, as far as may be
judged by the volumes of manuscript notes he left behind him--which
he had made on the sermons of his various court-preachers.
The law of primogeniture was not yet in force when Duke Bernard died,
in 1706. One consequence was, that Bernard’s three sons, with Bernard’s
brother, ruled the little domain in common. In 1746 the sole surviving
brother, Antony Ulrich, the luckiest of this ducal Tontine, was monarch
of all he surveyed within a limited space. The conglomerate ducal
sovereigns were plain men, formal, much given to ceremony, and not much
embarrassed by intellect. There was one man, however, who had enough
for them all: namely, George Spanginburg, brother of the Moravian
bishop of the latter name, and who was for some time _the_ Secretary of
State at the court of Saxe-Meinengen.
Antony Ulrich reigned alone from 1746 to 1763. He was of a more
enlightened character than any of the preceding princes, had a taste
for the arts when he could procure pictures cheaply, and strong
inclination towards pretty living pictures, which led to lively rather
than pleasant controversies at court. His own marriage with Madame
Scharmann disgusted the young ladies of princely houses in Germany, and
especially exasperated the aristocracy of Meinengen. They were scarcely
pacified by the fact that the issue of the marriage was declared
incapable of succeeding to the inheritance.
The latter fell in 1763 to two young brothers, kinsfolk of Antony, and
sons of the late Duke of Gotha, who reigned for some years together.
The elder, Charles, died in 1782. From that period till 1803 the other
brother, George, reigned alone. He had no sooner become sole sovereign
than he married the Princess Louisa of Hohenlohe Langenburg. At the
end of ten years the first child of this marriage was born, namely
Adelaide, the future Queen of England.
Eight years later, in the last year of the last century, A.D. 1800, a
male heir to the pocket-duchy was born, and then was introduced into
Meinengen the law which fixed the succession in the eldest male heir
only. Saxe-Meinengen was the last country in Europe in which this law
was established.
The father of the Princess Adelaide, like his brother Charles, was a
man of no mean powers. Both were condescending enough to visit even the
burgher families of Saxe-Meinengen; and Charles had so little respect
for vice in high places that when a German prince acted contrary to the
rights of his people the offender found himself soundly lashed in paper
and pamphlet, the pseudonymous signature to which could not conceal the
person of the writer--the hasty Duke Charles. If this sometimes made
him unpopular over the frontier, he was beloved within it. How could
the people but love a sovereign Duke who, when a child was born to him,
asked citizens of good repute rather than of high rank to come and be
gossips?
In the revolutionary war Duke George fought like a hero. At home he
afforded refuge to bold but honest writers driven from more mighty
states. He beautified his city, improved the country; and, without
being of great mental cultivation himself, he loved to collect around
him scholars, philosophers, artists, authors, gentlemen. With these
he lived on the most familiar terms, and when I say that Schiller and
John Paul Richter were of the number, I afford some idea of the society
which Duke George cared chiefly to cultivate. He buried his own mother
in the common churchyard, because she was worthy, he said, of lying
among her own subjects. The majority of these were country folk, but
George esteemed the country folk, and at rustic festivals he was not
unwilling to share a jug of beer with any of them. Perhaps the rustics
loved him more truly than the sages, to whom he proved, occasionally,
something wearisome. But these were often hard to please. All, however,
felt a honest grief when, on the Christmas night of 1803, Duke George
died, after a brief illness, caused, it is said, by a neglected cold,
and by rage at an urgent demand from the Kaiser of 60,000 florins,
fine-money for knightly orders ducally declined.
The Duke left a young family, Adelaide, Ida, and his son and successor,
Bernard, then only three years of age. The mother of these fatherless
children took upon herself the office of guardian, with that of Regent
of the duchy. The duties of both were performed with rare judgment and
firmness, during a time of much trouble and peril, especially when the
French armies were overrunning and devastating Germany.
On the young ladies, gently and wisely reared in this little court,
Queen Charlotte had begun to look with the foresight of a mother who
had elderly and wayward sons to marry. When the death of the Princess
Charlotte of Wales threatened to interrupt the direct succession of
the crown, the unmatched brothers of the Regent thought of taking unto
themselves wives. Cumberland had married according to his, but to no
other person’s, liking, hardly even that of his wife. The Dukes of
Kent and Cambridge made better choice, and there then remained but
the sailor-prince to be converted into a Benedick. The Queen selected
his bride for him, and he approved or acquiesced in the selection.
He might, as far as age goes, have been her father, but that was of
small account; and when Adelaide of Saxe-Meinengen was spoken of, men
conversant with contemporary history knew her to be the good daughter
of an accomplished and an exemplary mother.
The preliminaries of the marriage were carried out amid so much
opposition that at one moment the accomplishment of the marriage
itself wore a very doubtful aspect. The difficulty was of a pecuniary
nature. The Dukes of Kent and Cambridge were content, on the occasion
of their respective marriages, to accept an addition to their income
of 6,000_l._ The Duke of Cumberland was compelled to rest content,
or otherwise, without any addition at all--save the expenses of a
wife. With the Duke of Clarence it was different. He already possessed
18,000_l._ per annum, and ministers resolved, after a private meeting
with their supporters, to request the Parliament to allow him an
increase of 10,000_l._ On the 13th of April, 1818, a message from the
Prince Regent to that effect was submitted to either House by Lord
Castlereagh and the Earl of Liverpool. In the Commons the first-named
Lord hinted at the dependence of our Princes on the liberality of
Parliament since the time when the crown had surrendered its long
uncontrolled disposal of revenues. But the House was not to be
‘suggested’ into a generosity which might be beyond justice. Tierney,
the gadfly of his period, complained of the previous meeting of the
friends of ministers, and the communication to them, before it was
made to the House, of the amount to be applied for. Methuen insisted
that before the Commons would grant a farthing they must be made
acquainted with all the sources from which the King’s sons derived
their present revenue, as well as the amount of the revenue itself.
Finally, Holme Sumner met the proposal of an additional 10,000_l._ by a
counter-proposal of 6,000_l._ This was carried by a narrow majority of
one hundred and ninety-three to one hundred and eighty-four, and when
this sum was offered to the Duke he peremptorily declined to accept it.
Things did not progress more in tune with marriage-bells in the House
of Lords. There, when Lord Liverpool stated what his royal client would
be contented to receive, Lord King started to his legs and exclaimed,
‘That the question was not what it might please the Duke of Clarence
to take, but what it might please the people to give him!’ They
were not willing to give what he expected, and for a time it seemed
as if there would consequently be no marriage with the Princess of
Saxe-Meinengen. But only for a time.
‘The Duke of Clarence is going to be married, after all,’ was a common
phrase launched by the newspapers, and taken up by the people, in 1818.
If the phrase had but one meaning, it had a double application. In the
former sense it had reference to the disinclination of Parliament to
increase his income, without which he had expressed his determination
not to marry. It was further applied, however, to the old course of
his old loves. There were the years spent with Dora Bland, then ‘Mrs.
Jordan,’ the actress--years of an intercourse which had much of the
quiet, happy character of a modest English home--the breaking-up of
which brought such great grief to the mother in that home that even
every service subsequently rendered to her seemed to partake of the
quality of offence. It has been registered as such by those who heard
more of the wailing of the Ariadne than they knew of the groundlessness
of it, when vented in reproaches for leaving her unprovided for as well
as deserted.
Then the public remembered how this light-of-heart Duke had been a
suitor to other ladies. He was the rival of Wellesley Pole for the
favour and the fortune of the great heiress, Miss Tilney Long. That
ill-fated lady conferred on this wooer of humbler degree the office of
slaying her happiness, sapping her life, and ruining her estate. The
other lady, who declined the Duke’s offer of his hand or petition for
her own, was Miss Sophia Wykeham, of Thame Park, daughter and _sole
heiress_ of an Oxfordshire ’squire. Each lady had merits of her own,
and other attractions besides those which lay in the _beaux yeux de
sa cassette_; but perhaps each remembered the clauses of the Royal
Marriage Act; however this may have been, Miss Tilney chose between her
two suitors, while Miss Wykeham, after turning from the prayer of the
Duke, never stooped to listen to a lowlier wooer.
These were the ‘antecedents’ of the lover who, in mature age, took
rather than asked for the hand of Adelaide of Saxe-Meinengen. Of all
the actions of his life it was the one which brought him the most
happiness; and with that true woman he had better fortune than is
altogether merited by a man who, after a long bachelorship of no great
repute, settles down in middle-life to respectability and content,
under the influences of a virtuous woman, gifted with an excellent
degree of common-sense.
In the dusk of a July evening, in the year 1818, this unwooed bride
quietly arrived, with her mother, at Grillon’s Hotel, Albemarle Street.
She had but cool reception for a lady on such mission as her own.
There was no one to bid her welcome; the Regent was at Carlton House
at dinner, and the Duke of Clarence was out of town on a visit. Except
the worthy Mr. Grillon himself, no person seemed the gladder for her
coming. In the course of the evening, however, the Regent drove down to
Albemarle Street; and at a later hour the more tardy future husband was
carried up to the door in a carriage drawn by four horses with as much
rapidity as became a presumed lover of his age, in whom a certain show
of zeal was becoming.
The strangers became at once acquainted, and acquaintance is said
to have developed itself speedily into friendship. The family-party
remained together till near upon the ‘wee sma’ hours; there was
much indulgence there, we are told, of good, honest, informal
hilarity; and when the illustrious and joyous circle broke up, the
easy grace, frankness, and courtesy of the Regent, and the freedom
and light-heartedness of the Duke, are said to have left favourable
impressions on both the mother and the daughter.
Quaintest of royal weddings was that which now took place in old Kew
Palace. Indeed, there were two, for the Duke of Kent, who had gallantly
fetched his wife from abroad, where he had married her according to
Lutheran rites, was now re-married to his bride according to the forms
of the Church of England. Early in the day there was a dinner, at which
the most important personages in that day’s proceedings were present.
The old house at Kew seemed blushing in its reddest of bricks, out
of pure enjoyment. The Regent gave the bride away; and, the ceremony
concluded, the wedded couples paid a visit to the old Queen in her
private apartment. She was too ill then to do more than congratulate
her sons, and wish happiness to the married. The Duke and Duchess
of Kent thereupon departed, but the Duke and Duchess of Clarence
remained--guests at a joyous tea party at which the Regent presided,
and which was prepared _al fresco_ in the vicinity of the Pagoda.
It must have been a thousand times a merrier matter than wedding
state-dinners of the olden times, at which brides were wearied into
suffering and sulkiness. A more joyous party of noble men and women
never met in mirthful greenwood; and when the princely pair took their
leave for St. James’s, the Regent led the hilarious cheer, and sped
them on their way with a ‘hurrah!’ worthy of his bright and younger
days.
The Regent, undoubtedly, manifested a clearer sense of the fitness of
things on this occasion than either of the managers of the theatres
honoured by the presence of the newly-married couple soon after the
union.
At Drury Lane was given the ‘Marriage of Figaro,’ and Covent Garden
complimented the Duke and Duchess with the ‘Provoked Husband.’
It cannot be said that the public looked with much enthusiasm on
any of the royal marriages. Such unions, with rare exceptions, are
unpleasantly free from sentiment or romance; and in the present
instances there was such a matter-of-fact air of mere ‘business’
about these contracts and ceremonies, such an absence of youth and
the impulses and the dignity of youth, that the indifferent public,
even remembering the importance of securing a lineal succession to
the throne, was slow to offer either congratulation or sympathy. The
caricaturists, on the other hand, were busy with a heavy and not very
delicate wit; and fashionable papers, uniting implied censure with
faint praise, observed that ‘the Duchesses of Kent, Clarence, and
Cambridge are very deficient in the English language. They can scarcely
speak a sentence. They possess most amiable dispositions.’ They also
possessed true womanly qualities, which won for them the esteem of
their husbands.
After a brief residence at St. James’s, and as brief a sojourn at the
Duke’s residence in Bushey Park, the Duke and Duchess of Clarence
repaired to Hanover, and remained there about a year--no incident
marking the time is worthy of observation. The issue of this marriage
scarcely survived the birth. In March 1819, a daughter was born, but to
survive only a few hours. In December 1820, another princess gladdened
the hearts of her parents, only to quench the newly-raised joy by her
death in March of the following year. The loss was the keener felt
because of the hopes that had been raised; and the grief experienced by
the Duke and Duchess was tenderly nourished, rather than relieved, by
the exquisite art of Chantrey, which, at the command of the parents,
reproduced the lost child in marble--sleeping for ever where it lay.
The household at Bushey was admirably regulated by the Duchess, who
had been taught the duties as well as the privileges of greatness. The
fixed rule was, never to allow expenditure to exceed income. It is a
golden rule which, when observed, renders men, in good truth, as rich
as Crœsus. It is a rule which, if universally observed, would render
the world prosperous and pauperism a legend. It was a rule the more
required to be honoured in this case as the Duke had large calls upon
his income. When those were provided for, old liabilities effaced, and
current expenses defrayed, the surplus was surrendered to charity.
There was no saving for the sake of increase of income--economy was
practised for justice-sake, and the Duke and Duchess were so just that
they found themselves able to be largely generous. With the increased
means placed at their disposal by the death of the Duke of York, there
was but trifling increase of expenditure. If something was added to
their comforts, _they_ benefitted who were employed to procure them;
and, if there was some little additional luxury in the rural palace
of Bushey, the neighbouring poor were never forgotten in a selfish
enjoyment of it.
In 1824, the Duke and Duchess of Clarence had apartments in St. James’s
Palace, where, however, they seem to have been as roughly accommodated,
considering their condition, as any mediæval Prince and Princess in
the days of stone walls thinly tapestried and stone floors scantily
strewn with rushes. The Duke cared little about the matter himself, but
he gallantly supported the claims of his wife. In a letter addressed
to Sir William Knighton, the King’s privy purse, in 1824, he thus
expresses himself--from St. James’s Palace:--
‘His Majesty having so graciously pleased to listen to my suggestion
respecting the alteration for the Hanoverian office at the palace,
I venture once more to trouble you on the point of the building
intended for that purpose. To the accommodation of the Duchess this
additional slip at the back of the present apartments would be most to
be wished and desired, and never can make a complete Hanoverian office
without our kitchen, which the King has so kindly allowed us to keep.
Under this perfect conviction, I venture to apply for this slip of
building which was intended for the Hanoverian office. I am confident
his Majesty is fully aware of the inconvenience and unfitness of our
present apartments here. They were arranged for me in 1809, when I was
a bachelor, and without an idea at that time of my ever being married,
since which, now fifteen years, nothing has been done to them, and
you well know the dirt and unfitness for the Duchess of our present
abode. Under these circumstances, I earnestly request, for the sake of
the amiable and excellent Duchess, you will, when the King is quite
recovered, represent the wretched state and dirt of our apartments, and
the infinite advantage this slip would produce to the convenience and
comfort of the Duchess.... God bless the King and yourself, and ever
believe me, &c.--WILLIAM.’
Though often as ungrammatical and inelegant, it was seldom the Duke
was so explicit in his correspondence as he is in the above letter.
Generally, he wrote in ambiguous phrases, very puzzling to the
uninitiated; but when his Duchess Adelaide was in question, and her
comfort was concerned, he became quite graphic on the ‘state and dirt’
in which they passed their London days, in the old, dingy, leper-house
palace of St. James’s.
With the exception of the period during which the Duke held the office
of Lord High Admiral, 1827–28--an office which may be said to have been
conferred on him by Canning, and of which he was deprived by the Duke
of Wellington--with the exception above noted, this royal couple
lived in comparative retirement till the 26th of June, 1830, on which
day the demise of George IV. summoned them to ascend the throne. During
his fatal illness, Mrs. Fitzherbert addressed a letter of sympathy to
her old lover, if not husband. She affectionately tendered any service
which might be of use to him in his extreme necessity. To this letter
no reply ever reached her; but some vestige of human affection was
nevertheless evinced by the King on his death-bed. ‘He more than once
expressed his anxiety,’ the ‘Memoirs’ tell us, ‘that a particular
picture should be hung round his neck, and deposited with him in the
grave.’ It seemed to be the opinion of the Duke of Wellington that this
portrait was one which had been taken of Mrs. Fitzherbert in early
life, and was set round with brilliants. It appeared the more likely,
as this portrait was afterwards missing when the others were returned
to her. Mrs. Fitzherbert was possessed of an annuity of 6,000_l._,
settled on her by George the Fourth, which she enjoyed to the year of
her death, 1833.
It is said that when the news of the death of George IV. was announced
to the Duchess of Clarence the new Queen burst into tears. The
prayer-book she held in her hand at the moment she conferred on the
noble messenger, as a memorial of the incident and of her regret. The
messenger looked, perhaps, for a more costly guerdon; but she was
thinking only of her higher and stranger duties. If Queen Adelaide
really regretted that these now had claims upon her, not less was their
advent regretted by certain of the labouring poor of Bushey, whose
harvest-homes had never been so joyous as since the Duke and Duchess of
Clarence had been living among them.
The course of life of the new Queen was only changed in degree. Her
income was larger, so also were her charities. Her time had more calls
upon it, but her cheerfulness was not diminished. Her evenings were
generally given up to tapestry work, and as she bent over the frame
many of the circle around her already sorrowingly remarked that the new
Queen, though not old in years, seemed descending into the vale of life.
The esteem of her husband for her was equal to her merits. His
affection and respect were boundless; and when the senate granted her,
on the motion of Lord Althorpe, 100,000_l._ per annum, with Marlborough
House and Bushey Park, in case she survived the King, the good old
monarch was the first to congratulate her, and was pleased to put her
in office himself, by appointing her Perpetual Ranger of the Park,
which was to become her own at his decease.
William IV. was not forgetful of his old loves, and Queen Adelaide
was not jealous of such memories. She looked more indulgently than
the general public did on the ennobling of his children of the Jordan
family. If that step could have been met by objections in these
later days, it was at least supported by that amazingly powerful but
sometimes perilous engine, precedent. Though indeed there was precedent
for the contrary; and perhaps the husband of Queen Adelaide would
have manifested a greater sense of propriety on this occasion had he
rather followed the decent example, in a like matter, of the scrupulous
Richard the Third than that of Henry the Eighth or the Second Charles.
There was another ennobling, however, which the public as warmly
approved as the Queen heartily sanctioned. In 1834, her husband raised
to the dignity of a Baroness the lady who had declined to share with
him whatever of higher or more equivocal honour he could have conferred
by marrying her. In that year Miss Wykeham became, by the grateful
memory and good taste of her old royal lover, Baroness Wenman of Thame
Park, Oxon. This testimony of the memory of an old affection was an
act to be honoured by a Queen, and to it that royal homage was freely
tendered. Inquirers, on turning over the peerage books, may discover
many honours conferred on women too ready to listen to the suit of
a monarch; but here, for the first time, was a title of nobility
presented to a lady who had declined to give ear to royal suit, paid
in honesty and honour. Baroness Wenman bore her honours with grace and
dignity till her death, in 1870.
There was something chivalrous in the bearing of the King towards
ladies; hearty, but a courteous heartiness. This sort of tribute he
loved to render to his wife; and there was nothing so pleasant to
hear, in his replies to addresses after his accession, as the gallant
allusions to the qualities of the Queen, who stood at his side serenely
satisfied. This heartiness was not an affectation in him. It was of
his nature; and another phase of his character was manifested by King
William at the first dinner after he ascended the throne, at which his
relations only were present. On that pleasant occasion, although it
was a family dinner, he gave as a toast, ‘Family peace and affection;’
it was the hearty sentiment of a citizen King who loved quiet and
simple ways, who walked the streets with his intimate friends, and
often occupied the box-seat of his open carriage, turning round to
converse with the Queen inside. King William took much interest in the
first lady whom his brother, George IV., had married. Mrs. Fitzherbert
resided some part of the year at Brighton. The King visited her, and
invited her to the Pavilion. He authorised her to put her servants
in the royal livery, and to wear widow’s weeds for his late brother.
On Mrs. Fitzherbert paying her first homage to Queen Adelaide, the
King went down to her carriage to meet her, took her by the hand,
and introduced her to his consort and all the members of his family
who were present. Mrs. Fitzherbert told Lord Stourton that ‘she was
herself much surprised at the great composure with which she was
able to sustain a trial of fortitude which appeared so alarming at a
distance.’ After this she was frequently a guest. Queen Adelaide was a
gentle hostess, and the royal Sunday dinners were as elegant as they
were comfortable. Mrs. Fitzherbert very decidedly declined being made a
Duchess.
When Adelaide became Queen-consort some persons who would not have been
ill-pleased to see her fail affected to fear that the homely Duchess
would prove to be unequal to the exigencies of the queenly character.
One exalted person hinted that, in this matter, she would not do ill
were she to take counsel of the Princess Elizabeth of Hesse Homburg,
‘than whom none could better record to her Majesty the forms and
usages and _prescriptions_ of the court of Queen Charlotte.’ But Queen
Adelaide needed no such instruction as the good daughter of George III.
could give her. She observed the forms and usages that were worthy of
observance; and as for _prescriptions_, she could prescribe readily
enough when duty demanded the service, as the Church felt, with mingled
feelings, when she declined to invite clergymen to her state balls or
her dancing _soirées_. The dancing clergy had their opportunity for
censure when the King and Queen gave dinner-parties on the Sunday.
The court was essentially a homely court. The two sovereigns fed
thousands of the poor in Windsor Park, and looked on at the feasting.
The Queen went shopping to Brighton fancy fairs, and when on one
occasion she bent to pick up the ‘reticule’ which an infirm old lady
had dropped, as much was made of it as of the incident of King Francis,
who picked up (or did not pick up) Titian’s pencil, and handed it to
that sovereign gentleman among artists.
Then the new sovereigns paid more private visits than any pair who had
hitherto occupied the British throne. While the Queen called on Sir
David and Lady Scott at Brighton, her royal husband, with whom she had
just previously been walking on the Esplanade, would suddenly appear
at the door of some happy but disconcerted old admiral, and invite the
veteran and his wife to dinner. To the hearty ‘Come along, directly,’
if there was a glance from the lady at her toilet, the citizen King
would encourage her by an intimation never to mind it, for he and his
wife were quiet people; ‘and, indeed,’ as he once remarked, ‘the Queen
does nothing after dinner but embroider flowers.’ Which, indeed, was
true enough, and, to tell the truth, very dull did the finer people
find it.
The consequence of this familiarity of the sovereigns with their
humbler friends was a rather audacious familiarity ventured upon by
people who left their queer names in the book at the King’s door, and
more than once successfully passed it, and penetrated to the Queen’s
drawing-room. This evil, however, was soon remedied. There were other
matters Queen Adelaide was bold enough to, at least, attempt to remedy.
Indecorousness of dress in a lady she would censure as sharply as
Queen Charlotte; and if, when Mrs. Blomfield appeared at her first
drawing-room in a ‘train of rich immortal velvet,’ as the fashionable
chroniclers of the day called it, she did not even hint surprise, it
was, perhaps, out of respect for the successor of the Apostles, of whom
that good but richly velvetted lady was the honoured wife.
The letter-writers who dealt with court incidents at the period of the
accession of this domestic couple tell of various illustrations of the
simplicity of the new sovereigns. When the Duke of Norfolk had an
interview with William IV. at Bushey, on the affair which had brought
him thither being concluded, the King declared he must not leave the
house without seeing the Queen; and, thereupon ringing the bell, he
bade the official who answered the summons to ‘tell the Queen I want
her.’