CHAPTER XII.

CROWN AND GRAVE.

Arrival of Caroline, Princess of Wales--The King dines

at the Guildhall--Proclamation of the Pretender--

Counter-proclamations--Government prosecutions--A mutiny among

the troops--Impeachment of the Duke of Ormond of high treason

--Punishment of political offenders--Failure of rebellion

in Scotland--Punishment for wearing oak-boughs--Riot at the

mug-house in Salisbury Court, and its fatal consequences--The

Prince of Wales removed from the palace--Dissensions between

the King and the Prince--Attempt on the life of King George--

Marriage of the King’s illegitimate daughter--The South-Sea

Bubble--Birth of Prince William, the butcher of Culloden--Death

of the Duchess of Zell--Stricter imprisonment of the captive of

Ahlden--Her calm death--A new royal favourite, Mrs. Brett--Death

of the King.

While Sophia Dorothea continued to linger in her prison, her husband

and son, with the mistresses of the former and the wife of the latter,

were enjoying the advantages and anxieties which surround a throne. The

wife of the Prince of Wales, Caroline, arrived at Margate on the 13th

of October. She was accompanied by her two eldest daughters, Anne and

Amelia. Mother and children rested during one day in the town where

they had landed, slept one night at Rochester, and arrived at St.

James’s on the 15th. The royal coronation took place in Westminster

Abbey on the 20th of the same month. Amid the pomp of the occasion, no

one appears to have thought of her who should have been Queen-consort.

There was much splendour and some calamity, for as the procession was

sweeping by, several people were killed by the fall of scaffolding in

the Palace Yard. The new King entered the Abbey amid the cheers and

screams of an excited multitude.

Three days after, the monarch, with the Prince and Princess of Wales,

dined with the Lord Mayor and corporation in the Guildhall, London, and

there George performed the first grateful service to his people, by

placing a thousand guineas in the hands of the sheriffs, for the relief

of the wretched debtors then immured in the neighbouring horrible

prisons of Newgate and the Fleet.

Within a month, the general festivities were a little marred by the

proclamation of the Pretender, dated from Lorraine, wherein he laid

claim to the throne which George was declared to have usurped. At this

period the Duke of Lorraine was a sovereign prince, maintaining an

envoy at our court; but the latter was ordered to withdraw from the

country immediately after the arrival of the ‘Lorraine proclamation’ by

the French mail. Already George I. began to feel that on the throne he

was destined to enjoy less quiet than his consort in her prison.

The counter-proclamations made in this country, chiefly on account

of the Jacobite riots at Oxford and some other places, were made up

of nonsense and malignity, and were well calculated to make a good

cause wear the semblance of a bad one. They decreed, or announced,

thanksgiving on the 20th of January, for the accession of the House of

Hanover; and, to show what a portion of the people had to be thankful

for, they ordered a rigorous execution of the laws against papists,

non-jurors, and dissenters generally, who were assumed to be, as a

matter of course, disaffected to the reigning house.

After some of the first troubles of his reign had been got over, the

King visited Hanover, where he invested his brother, the Duke of York,

and Prince Frederick with the Order of the Garter. He even partook of

the pleasures of the chase in the woods around Ahlden; but except

ordering a more stringent rule for the safe-keeping of his consort, he

took no further notice of Sophia Dorothea. He returned to London on

the 18th of January 1716–17, and on that day week, hearing that the

episcopal clergy of Scotland continued to refuse to pray for him, he

issued a decree, which compelled many to fly the country or otherwise

abscond. The English clergy experienced even harsher treatment for less

offence. I may mention, as an instance, the case of the Rev. Laurence

Howell, who, for writing a pamphlet called ‘The State of Schism in

the Church of England truly stated,’ was stripped of his gown by the

executioner, fined 500_l._, imprisoned three years, and was sentenced

to be twice publicly whipped by the hangman!

On the first absence of the King from England, the Prince of Wales was

appointed regent, but he was never entrusted with that high office a

second time. ‘It is probable,’ says Walpole, ‘that the son discovered

too much fondness for acting the king, as that the father conceived a

jealousy of his 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.’ So that, in the second year of his reign, the King not only

held his wife in prison, but his son and heir was banished from his

presence.

Passing over the record of public events, the next interesting fact

connected with the private life of the faithless husband of Sophia

Dorothea was the marriage of his illegitimate daughter Charlotte with

Lord Viscount Howe. The bride’s mother was Charlotte Sophia, daughter

of the Countess von Platen; and Charlotte Sophia was decently married

to Baron Kielmansegge, Master of the Horse to George I. In 1719, at

the time of the above marriage, the baroness was a widow. George I.

himself gave away the bride as the baroness’s niece. ‘The King,’ says

Walpole, ‘was indisputably her father; and the first child born of this

union was named George, after the King.’ The Princess Amelia, daughter

of George II., ‘treated Lady Howe’s daughter, “Mistress Howe,” as a

princess of the blood-royal, and presented her with a ring, containing

a small portrait of George I., with a crown in diamonds.’ The best

result of this marriage was, that the famous Admiral Howe was one of

the sons born of it, and that was the only benefit which the country

derived from the vicious conduct of George I. If the marriage of the

child of one mistress tended to mortify the vanity of another, as is

said to have been the case with Von der Schulenburg, King George found

a way to pacify her. That lady was already Duchess of Munster, in

Ireland, and the King, in April 1719, created her a baroness, countess,

and duchess of Great Britain, by the name, style, and title of Baroness

of Glastonbury, Countess of Feversham, and Duchess of Kendal; and this

done, the King soon after embarked at Gravesend for Hanover.

The year 1720 saw King George more upon the Continent than at home,

where indeed universal misery reigned, in consequence of the bursting

of the great South Sea Bubble, which had promised such golden solidity

--which ended in such disappointment and ruin, and for furthering which

the Duchess of Kendal and her daughter received bribes of 10,000_l._

each. In April of the following year, William Augustus was born at

Leicester House. The daughter of Sophia Dorothea was his godmother; her

husband and the Duke of York were the godfathers. This son of George

Augustus and Caroline of Anspach, Prince and Princess of Wales, was

afterwards famous as the Duke of Cumberland.

On the 17th of January 1721, the royal family went into mourning, and

this was the only domestic incident of the reign in which Sophia

Dorothea was allowed to participate. With her, the mourning was not a

mere formality; it was not assumed, but was a testimony offered, in

sign of her sorrow, for the death of her mother, Eleanora, Duchess

of Zell. The Duchess had seen little of her daughter for some time

previous to her death, but she bequeathed to her as much of her private

property as she had power to dispose of by will.

Sophia Dorothea had now a considerable amount of funds placed to her

credit in the bank of Amsterdam. Of the incidents of her captivity

nothing whatever is known, save that it was most rigidly maintained.

She was forgotten by the world, because unseen, and they who kept

her in prison were as silent about her as the keepers of the Man in

the Iron Mask were about that mysterious object of their solicitude.

Where little is known there is little to be told. The captive bore her

restraint with a patience which even her daughter must have admired;

but she was not without hopes of escaping from a thraldom from which

it was clear she could never be released by the voluntary act of those

who kept her in an undeserved custody. It is believed that her funds

at Amsterdam were intended by her to be disposed of in the purchase of

aid to secure her escape; but it is added that her agents betrayed her,

embezzled her property, and by revealing for what purpose they were her

agents, brought upon her a closer arrest than any under which she had

hitherto suffered. Romance has made some additions to these items of

intelligence--items, great portions of which rest only on conjecture.

The undoubted fact that much of the property which she inherited was

to pass to her children rendered the death of a mother a consummation

to be desired by (it was said) so indifferent a son and daughter as

the Prince of Wales and the Queen of Prussia. The interest held by her

husband was of a similar description, and the fatal consequences that

might follow were not unprovided for by the friends of the prisoner.

‘It is known,’ says Walpole, ‘that in Queen Anne’s time there was much

noise about French prophets. A female of that vocation (for we know

from Scripture that the gift of prophecy is not limited to one gender)

warned George I. to take care of his wife, as he would not survive

her a year. That oracle was probably dictated to the French Deborah

by the Duke and Duchess of Zell, who might be apprehensive that the

Duchess of Kendal might be tempted to remove entirely the obstacle

to her conscientious union with their son-in-law. Most Germans are

superstitious, even such as have few other impressions of religion.

George gave such credit to the denunciation, that, on the eve of his

last departure, he took leave of his son and the Princess of Wales with

tears, telling them he should never see them more. It was certainly his

own approaching end that melted him, not the thought of quitting for

ever two persons that he hated.’

The poor princess, ‘Queen of Great Britain,’ as those who loved

her were wont to call her, had been long in declining health, born

of declining hopes; and yet she endured all things with patience,

contenting herself in her last moments with reasserting her innocence,

commending herself to God, naming her children, and pardoning her

oppressors. On the 2nd of November 1726, after much hope, not only

deferred but crushed out; after much disappointment of expectations,

built on the promises of false friends; and after marked but gradual

decrease of health, Sophia Dorothea became suddenly and dangerously

ill. She lost all consciousness, and on the 13th of the month she lay

dead on her bed in the castle of Ahlden.

The news soon reached Hanover, where the authorities, with a feeling of

becomingness, ordered a general mourning as for the death of a queen in

the land. As soon as this decent step was known in England, the King

was vulgar in his wrath. He sent peremptory orders to Hanover to do

away immediately with all signs of mourning, and the officials, if not

the public, went into ordinary, or holiday, gear.

At the Court of Berlin, the daughter of Sophia Dorothea, the King, and

consequently all the Prussian fashionable world, assumed the deepest

mourning, as for a Queen of England so nearly allied to the Queen of

Prussia. The King of Great Britain took this natural circumstance

for an insult; but he was obliged to bear, albeit with blaspheming

impatience, what he could not resent. The simple royal order for the

funeral was that the Duchess of Ahlden should be buried in a grave dug

for her on the banks of the Aller. The soil was dug into, over and over

again, but the water rushed in and mocked the attempts of the workmen.

Meanwhile, the body of Sophia Dorothea lay in a plain leaden coffin in

the castle and no one knew what to do with it, for fear of offending

the King. After several weeks had passed, a few strong men carried it

down to a cellar, and, covering it over with a cart-load or two of

sand, left it till further gracious orders should arrive from over the

water.

At the end of six months there was a stir in the royal stud stables at

Zell. Four of the King’s horses were taken thence and were ridden over

to Ahlden. The chief of the men in charge there showed the royal order

by which he was commissioned to take up the body from beneath the heap

of sand and carry it back to Zell. And this was to be done without any

ceremony whatever.

Accordingly, at midnight the coffin was dragged from under the sand,

hoisted into a suitable vehicle, and it was unceremoniously jolted over

the rough roads till it reached the chief church in the old ducal city

of Zell. The necessary workpeople were ready. They carried the plain

leaden coffin down to the vault below, and without any circumstance of

prayer or outward respect, they cast it into a corner; and there it

still lies, without even a name on the rough lead to indicate whose sad

burthen of life is deposited within.

Her royal husband in England simply notified in the _London Gazette_

that a Duchess of Ahlden had died at her residence on the date above

named; but he did not add that he had thereby lost a wife, or his

children lost a mother. No intimation was given of the relationship she

held towards him or them. The quality of his affection was illustrated

by his explosion of rage when he heard that his daughter, with the

Court of Prussia, had gone into mourning for the death of her mother.

The husband of Sophia Dorothea became of gayer humour than usual after

her death. After receiving intelligence of that event, the royal

widower went to see the Italian comedians in the Haymarket act ‘Il

Mercante Prodigo,’ or ‘Harlequin Prodigal Merchant.’ He liked this

sort of entertainment so well, that, a few nights later, he commanded

the performance of ‘Pantalone, Barone di Sloffenburgo,’ at the King’s

Theatre. On Christmas Eve, the newspapers recorded the fact that Prince

Waldeck (who had come over with despatches in November) had taken leave

of his Majesty and had returned to Hanover. Therewith seemed to have

come the end of a long, and dark, and mournful history.

In the list of the persons of note and distinction in Great Britain

and Ireland, and of the Foreign Princes who died in the year

1726--published in the _Daily Post_ in January 1727, no record was made

of the demise of Sophia Dorothea. On the other hand, there is an entry

of a bereavement by which her husband, the King, had been afflicted,

in the same mouth of November, namely, in the death of ‘Mr. Mahomet,

_valet de chambre_ to his Majesty.’

A story was current that Sophia Dorothea, on her death-bed, had

summoned her husband, the King, to meet her at the great judgment

seat of Heaven within a year. This summons was conveyed in a letter

addressed by her to him, but it was not delivered to the King till

after he had, in nervous restlessness, set out for Hanover.

On the night of the 2nd of June 1727, little Horace Walpole, then

ten years old, was conducted by the King’s illegitimate daughter,

Petronilla Melusina (Lady Walsingham) to the King himself, to kiss the

royal hand as his Majesty passed on his way to sup (for the last time,

as it proved) with Petronilla’s mother (the former von der Schulenburg,

now Duchess of Kendal) the King’s old mistress. This presentation

had been accorded to the prayer of the first minister’s wife, Horace

Walpole’s mother.

On the following day, the 3rd of June, the King left England. On the

night of that day week he died at Osnaburgh, aged sixty-seven years and

thirteen days. The King had landed at Vaer, in Holland, on the 7th, and

he travelled thence to Utrecht, by land, escorted by the Guards to the

frontiers of Holland. On Friday, the 9th, he reached Dalden, at twelve

at night, when he was apparently in excellent health. He partook of

supper largely, and with appetite, eating, among other things, part of

a melon, a fruit which has killed more than one emperor of Germany. At

three the next morning he resumed his journey. According to the story

to which allusion has just been made, the letter of Sophia Dorothea was

then given to him. He read it, appeared shocked, and became ill. He was

probably moved by something more than mere sentiment, for he had not

travelled two hours when he was attacked by violent abdominal pains.

He hurried on to Linden, where dinner awaited him; but, being able

to eat nothing, he was immediately bled, and other remedies made use

of. Anxious to reach Hanover, he ordered the journey to be continued

with all speed. He fell into a lethargic doze in the carriage, and so

continued, leaning on a gentleman in waiting who was with him in the

carriage. To this attendant he feebly announced in French, ‘I am a dead

man.’ He reached the episcopal palace at Osnaburgh at ten that night;

was again bled in the arm and foot, but ineffectually; his lethargy

increased, and he died about midnight.

The King’s mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, who had gone thither to

meet him, tore her hair, beat her breast, and uttered loud cries of

despair at this bereavement. She repaired to Brunswick and shut herself

up, for three months, as the most afflicted of widows. Subsequently,

she returned to her house near Isleworth. A raven was the last pet of

this lady; and the familiarity of the two gave rise to the popular

legend that George had promised to visit his old mistress, after death,

if such circumstance were allowed, and that he was keeping his word in

the shape of the much caressed bird in sables.

Even in her estrangement from her husband, Sophia Dorothea never

uttered a word of complaint against him. She never failed to exhibit

either mildness or dignity in her captivity: on the contrary, she

manifested both; and Coxe says of her, in his ‘Memoirs of Walpole,’

that, ‘on receiving the sacrament once every week, she never omitted

making the most solemn asseverations that she was not guilty of the

crime laid to her charge.’ Her son (George II.) had a double fault in

his father’s eyes, namely, his popularity, and, at one time, his love

for his mother--whom he loved, we are told, as much as he hated his

father. A pleasant household, a sorry hearth; mistresses resting their

rouged cheeks on the monarch’s bosom, a wife in prison, and a son

hating her oppressor, and loving, but not redressing, the oppressed.

Had Sophia Dorothea survived her consort, her son, it is said, had

determined to bring her over to England and proclaim her Queen-dowager.

Lady Suffolk, the snubbed mistress of that son, expressed to Horace

Walpole her surprise on going (in the morning after the intelligence

of the death of George I. had reached England) to the new Queen, ‘at

seeing, hung up in the Queen’s dressing-room, a whole-length of a

lady in royal robes; and, in the bed-chamber, a half-length of the

same person, neither of which Lady Suffolk had ever seen before. The

prince had kept them concealed, not daring to produce them during the

life of his father. The whole-length he probably sent to Hanover. The

half-length I have frequently seen in the library of the Princess

Amelia, who told me it was the property of her grandmother. She

bequeathed it, with other pictures of her family, to her nephew, the

Landgrave of Hesse.’

If George II. never in his later days named his mother, it was because

the enemies of the dynasty pretended to trace in the features of the

second George a likeness to Count Königsmark, his mother’s gallant

cavalier! The Whigs had denied the legitimacy of the son of James II.,

and the Tories embraced with eagerness an opportunity to deny that of

the heir of Brunswick.

The son of Sophia Dorothea was the pupil of his grandmother, Sophia

of Hanover; and his boyhood did little credit to the system, or the

acknowledged good sense of his instructress.

When the Earl of Macclesfield was at Hanover, in the year 1700, bearing

with him that Act of Succession which secured a throne for the husband

and son of Sophia Dorothea, that son, George Augustus, was not yet out

of his ‘teens.’ He was of that age at which a prince is considered

wise enough to rule kingdoms, but is yet incapable of governing

himself. At that time he was said to ‘give the greatest hopes of

himself that we, or any people on earth, could desire.’ He was not of

proud stature, indeed--and Alexander was not six feet high; but Toland

asserts, what is very hard to believe, that George possessed a winning

countenance, and a manly aspect and deportment. In later years, he was

rigid of feature, and walked as a man does who is stiff in the joints.

He was, in the days of his youth, a graceful and easy speaker; that is,

his phrases were well constructed, and he expressed them with facility.

His complexion was fair, and his hair a light brown. Like his father,

he spoke Latin fluently; and English much better than his father, but

with a decided foreign accent, like William of Orange. As the utmost

care was taken, according to Toland, to furnish him with such other

accomplishments as are fit for a gentleman and a prince, it is a pity

that he made so unprofitable a use of so desirable a provision. He was

tolerably well-versed in history, but history to him was not philosophy

teaching by example; for though, in his earlier years, panegyrists said

of him, not only that his inclinations were virtuous, but that he was

‘wholly free from all vice,’ his life, subsequently, could not be so

characterised, and the later practice marred the fair precedent. But

let Toland limn the object of his love.

‘These acquired parts,’ he says, ‘with a generous disposition and a

virtuous inclination, will deservedly render him the darling of our

people, and probably grace the English throne with a most knowing

prince.’ In the popular sense of the term, the last words cannot be

denied; and yet he never knew how to obtain, or cared how to merit,

his people’s love. ‘He learns English with inexpressible facility,

and has not only learned of his grandmother to have a real esteem for

Englishmen, but he likewise entertains a high notion of the wisdom,

goodness, and power of the English government, concerning which I

heard him, to my great satisfaction, ask several pertinent questions,

and such as betokened no mean or common observation. I was surprised

to find he understood so much of our affairs already; but his great

vivacity will not let him be ignorant of anything. There is nothing

more to be wished,’ says Toland, ‘but that he be proof against the

temptations which accompany greatness, and defended from the poisonous

infection of flatterers, who are the greatest bane of society, and

commonly occasion the ruin of princes, if not in their lives, yet, at

least, in their fame and reputation.’ It was under the temptations

alluded to that George Augustus made shipwreck of his fame. His

history, however, will be traced more fully hereafter. At present we

will only consider the career and character of his sister.

The daughter of Sophia Dorothea, some years younger than her brother,

was a promising girl when the Act of Succession opened a throne to

her father, but not to her mother. She had in her youth sweetness of

manners, fairness of features, and a soft and winning voice. Her fair

brown hair, as in her mother’s case, heightened the grace and charms of

a fair complexion; and her blue eyes were the admiration of the poets,

and the inspiration even of those whom the gods had not made poetical.

Her features, taken singly, were not without defect; but the expression

which pervaded them was a good substitute for purely unintellectual

beauty. The Electress Sophia was, if not her governess, the

superintendent of her governesses; and the training, rigid and formal,

failed in the development that was most to be desired. ‘In minding

her discourse to others,’ says Toland, ‘and by what she was pleased

to say to myself, she appears to have a more than ordinary share of

good sense and wit. The whole town and court commend the easiness of

her manners, and the evenness of her disposition; but, above all her

other qualities, they highly extol her good humour, which is the most

valuable endowment of either sex, and the foundation of most other

virtues. Upon the whole, considering her personal merit and the dignity

of her family, I heartily wish and hope to see her some day Queen of

Sweden.’ This hearty wish was not to be realised. The younger Sophia

Dorothea became the wife of a brute and the mother of a hero. The old

paternal Seigneurie of ‘D’Olbreuse, dans le pays D’Aulnis,’ was raised

to the dignity of a Countship in 1729. It became the property of Sophia

Dorothea’s children, George II., King of England, and Sophia, Queen

of Prussia. They, with some propriety--but probably under constraint

of the law of France--made it over to the nearest French relative of

Eleanora D’Olbreuse, Sophia Dorothea’s mother--Alexandre Prevost de

Gayemont.

This would seem to be the end of a sad history. But the persecution of

Sophia Dorothea did not terminate with her life.

A hundred and seven years after Sophia Dorothea had ended that unhappy

life, her unhappy story was revived, and her memory was now made to

suffer under calumny that had not been thought of in her life-time.

In the year 1833 a Swede, named Propst Wisselgren, contributed to No.

33 of the ‘Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes’ the copy of an

alleged love-letter, the original of which existed, it was said, in

Sophia Dorothea’s hand-writing, in the archives of the Count de la

Gardie.

In the year 1836 Cramer, in his ‘Denkwürdigkeiten der Gräfin Maria

Aurora von Königsmark,’ referred to this letter, and expressed his

disbelief in its genuineness and authenticity.

Until 1847 the memory of Sophia Dorothea was left unassailed by any

further attempt against it. In that year, however, further alleged

autograph letters, not only of hers, but also others said to be written

by Königsmark, appeared in the ‘Literarische Blätter für Unterhaltung.’

They were preceded by an introduction and explanations by the Swedish

writer Palmblad, who had selected them, it was stated, from more than

a hundred which were then in the possession of Count Stephen de la

Gardie, of Löberod, in Schonen.

How did these alleged autograph letters find their way into Sweden?

They had previously been kept, we are gravely told, in a drawer in

Oefiwedskloster, by the widowed Countess Amelia Ramel (a Löwenhaupt by

birth), at whose death, in 1810, they came into the possession of her

son, a Count de la Gardie. Löberod was acquired by a Count Jacob Gustus

de la Gardie in 1817.

But how did the Lady Amelia Ramel become the holder of these

extraordinary documents?

The answer is: As the descendant of General Karl von Löwenhaupt, who

had married Amelia, one of the two sisters of Königsmark. This lady is

stated to have made over this mass of letters to her children, with

this observation: Here are the letters captured again (wiedererobert)

at great peril, which cost a brother his life and a king’s mother her

freedom.

Captured, seized, recovered at great peril! When? where? by whom? from

whom?

No reply; not the smallest particle of evidence is given on these

important points. If they were obtained under circumstances of great

danger, it must have been from some one who considered them of great

importance, but who must have allowed himself to be plundered of them

with great indifference. No one ever heard of the robbery or capture,

nor of the means by which it was effected.

In 1838 one letter saw the light. In 1847 several were published in

Germany and Sweden. To all enquiry, no other answer has been made than

that the letters had existed since 1810 in the keeping of the persons

above named; that they had come down from Amelia Königsmark, who had

wedded with a Löwenhaupt; that they were genuine letters, and that they

conclusively proved the guilt of Sophia Dorothea and Count Königsmark.

Sophia Dorothea, it must be remembered, never had the guilt implied

laid to her charge. The name of Königsmark was never once uttered

at her trial--if it may so be called. She was punished for alleged

disobedience to, and desertion of, her husband. She retained so much of

the character of a wife that she was not allowed to marry again. She

remained till her death the wife of a King of England, with whom she

would hold no association. Her husband kept her for more than thirty

years a state prisoner. How could this cruelty be better justified than

by blasting her character and memory for ever--long after all parties

were far beyond questioning? How could this dire penalty be inflicted,

after death, more easily than by preparing a correspondence between the

two personages, which might be kept in a cloister drawer till it could

be produced to serve its infamous purpose?

The persons who held these papers in later years may have

conscientiously believed in their genuineness. Of the contemporaries of

Sophia Dorothea, the Countess von Platen and even Bernstorf are said

to have been able to imitate the handwriting of Sophia Dorothea. We do

not insinuate that they were willing to forge these letters. But some

one probably did so. Königsmark’s letters may indeed be genuine; but it

does not follow that they were addressed to the wife of him who was

afterwards George I. Without name, date, or address, they might serve

to calumniate any other lady of Sophia Dorothea’s time.

Of the letters themselves, Palmblad, who inspected the precious

collection, states in his ‘Aurora Königsmark,’ or rather in an appendix

to the first part of that historical romance, that they consist of

several hundreds, of which two-thirds are by Königsmark, the other

third by Sophia Dorothea, and that in print they would fill a stout

volume.

Those of the princess are in an elegant, somewhat flowing hand,

and, with rare exception, correct in expression. They are on fine,

gilt-edged paper. Königsmark’s letters are, we are told, on coarse,

thick paper, which hardly agreed with his fine gentlemanly style in

everything. They are legibly written, but the spelling is that of an

ignorant school-boy.

In some portions, cyphers, numbers, or disguised names were used, the

interpretation of which was easily got at, as would be the case if the

letters were forged and were intended to be easily understood a century

after the events had happened to which they referred.

Very few of the letters--none of importance--have any address on them.

They have strayed from their envelopes, says Palmblad; but envelopes

were not then in use. Letters were folded and the address written

on the blank outside folding. Some few, according to Palmblad, have

external directions and are sealed with Königsmark’s private seal--a

heart within the motto, ‘Cosi fosse il vostro dentre il mio’ (so may be

yours within mine!). The post-mark is on some. One of them is directed,

‘Pour la personne connue.’ Palmblad suggests that it was originally

enclosed within one ‘to the Confidant.’ Several are addressed to

‘Mademoiselle La Frole de Knesebeck.’ The latter name is occasionally

spelt ‘Qnesbegk.’ A nearly complete (and very convenient) absence of

dates defies all attempts to place this correspondence in anything like

chronological order. Conjecturally, the experts suggest that the dates

extend from 1688 to 1693, inclusive--six years.

When it is remembered that the princess and Königsmark were closely

watched, in order, if possible, to make a case out against them, and

that the two friends knew they were surrounded by spies, the idea of

their sending letters through the post, and of such letters being

preserved instead of destroyed, seems folly too absurd for serious

belief.

‘The contents of these letters,’ Palmblad informs us, ‘consist, for

the most part, of mutual assurances of love and everlasting fidelity;

of complaints over separation and of the constraint put on them by the

secret relations existing between them; of plans for privately meeting,

or expressed hopes of a coming uninterrupted life together; of accounts

of their occupations, pleasures, and their conversational intercourse

with others; mixed up with jealous reproaches, and subsequent apologies

for making them. When both pass an evening at court festivals, where

the princess is unable to bestow a tender glance or a stolen word

on her beloved, or has spoken or walked with another cavalier, then

Königsmark addresses to her an epistle full of complaints at her

coquetry, and her ‘airs connus.’ With the same mistrust does the

princess notice every step of her (supposed) adorer. Nevertheless,

no two persons so tenderly loved one another as Königsmark his

Leonisse--the fond pseudonym of the princess.’

As far as the above description goes, any fairly practised hand might

have invented the whole series of letters.

Even Professor Palmblad does not venture to guess when the

correspondence began. His assertion that Königsmark was at Hanover,

in the military service of that state, in 1685, is disproved by the

painstaking author of ‘Die Herzogin von Ahlden,’ who finds Königsmark

settled there not till 1688. Palmblad, with his earlier date, points

laughingly to the birth of Sophia Dorothea’s daughter, in 1687; and

asks if the Prussian royal family, into which that daughter married,

has in its veins the blood of Guelph or of Königsmark. In like easy

manner, regardless of chronology, the Jacobites in England used to

speak of the son of George I. as ‘Young Königsmark!’

When Königsmark was absent campaigning, the princess, says Palmblad,

sent him her portrait, and he returned a gift of his own portrait,

painted expressly for her in Brussels. Whereupon, Palmblad says, ‘the

princess forwarded to him her diary.’ This has not yet been found or

forged, but Palmblad has no doubt as to the nature of its contents.

The whole story is founded on letters which the least scrupulous of

autograph dealers would hesitate to warrant.

What follows is to be read with the remembrance that the plotters

against Sophia Dorothea never lost sight of her or of the count. They

could not make a step without being observed by spies, employed by

principals who wished to destroy both the princess and Königsmark.

Through the very eye-holes of the tapestried figures in the palace

human eyes peered, in search of evidence to work the ruin of those two

friends. Not finding it, Königsmark was secretly murdered, and Sophia

Dorothea shut up for the remainder of her life, on no other charge than

that of deserting her husband’s society and refusing to return to it.

This is Palmblad’s story: ‘During Königsmark’s presence at court,

he was generally admitted to the princess by her confidant, after

midnight, and he sometimes remained four-and-twenty hours with her. He

had previously declared himself indisposed and under medical regimen

as an excuse for appearing to keep within doors. Aye,’ adds Palmblad,

bolder grown, ‘the princess herself glided secretly at night into

Königsmark’s quarters’ (which were at some distance from the palace).

‘She speaks in the most fervid expressions of her love, her ‘_ardeur_,’

and declares herself ready to sacrifice for him her reputation, and

to accompany him to the remotest corner of the world! Königsmark

hesitates; his fortune is not secure, his position uncertain, and he

must first seek glory and riches in war: but her prayers detain him in

Hanover.’

These two persons could have said this and more to one another in

complete or comparative safety. To write such things down, and to

preserve what was written, was madness, fatal to life and honour if

discovered. But if these, and much worse, were not written down by some

one, how could Sophia Dorothea be made infamous for ever in the eyes of

posterity?

One can only judge of the bushel by the sample; and of the whole

correspondence, which is now in the library of the University of

Lund, by the fragmentary extracts which have been made public. If

two persons, knowing they were watched, and their letters detained,

could write such fiercely ardent assurances of mutual love, express

such utter contempt for the consequences of discovery, and explain to

one another how they were tracked and betrayed, they must have been

hopelessly insane. An enemy would bend invention to such course as the

one best calculated to destroy those against whom it was directed.

But there is one point which seems conclusive against the genuineness

of this correspondence. There are passages in the alleged letters of

Königsmark to the princess which no man, however devoid of every manly

quality, would write to a woman whom he loved--would write to any woman

at all. These passages not even the most utterly and irretrievably

abandoned of women would be able to read without sense of insult and

outrage even to such soiled and shattered womanhood as hers. A man

writing such things, supposing they were intelligible to the person

addressed, would in that person’s eyes be loathsome and execrable for

ever.

Of course it is a horrible thought that any one could be sufficiently

wicked and cruel to forge letters with the idea of slaying reputations

by the forgery. But this wickedness and this cruelty were not uncommon.

Scores upon scores of letters have been forged in France alone in

order to destroy the reputation of Sir Isaac Newton. As a mere matter

of profitable business, the manufactory of forged letters, simply for

the market, is in the greatest possible activity. A letter by any one,

written at any time, eagerly demanded, is sure to be supplied after a

while. Letters, with other purpose in view than mere profit--intended

to turn up in long after years, in order to fasten a calumny on some

victim--are also not uncommon. One instance may be cited in the case

of the multitudinous forged letters of Shelley. The late Mr. Moxon

published a volume of Shelley letters; and soon after he withdrew the

volume, on discovery that every one of these letters was a forgery.

Stray letters of Shelley, however, continued to come into the market.

Letters to his wife of the most confidential nature, containing vile

aspersions against his father, were bought as genuine by Sir Percy

Shelley, the poet’s son. These, too, were discovered to be forgeries

and were destroyed. One of these precious epistles, addressed to Byron,

and bearing Shelley’s signature, contained an assertion against the

fidelity of ‘Harriet.’ Whoever bought it paid six guineas for a calumny

against a dead and defenceless woman, to which was appended the forged

signature of her dead and defenceless husband. Till something more

is known of the history of the alleged correspondence between Sophia

Dorothea and Königsmark--of which correspondence nothing was known to

the world till more than a century after her death--let us put against

it her own assertions of her innocence. It is only a woman’s word; but

it was asserted on solemn occasions, and it may surely be accepted

against the letters which were not put forth till long after she, too,

was dead and defenceless, who, when living, was not charged with the

guilt which this mysterious correspondence would cast heavily upon her.

Sophia Dorothea, from the time her husband ascended the throne of Great

Britain, was, in a sort of loving sorrow, called by the few left to

love her--the Queen. She was indeed an uncrowned Queen of England. As

little really of a queen as Caroline of Brunswick in after years. But

her true place, nevertheless, is among them. Her blood--the blood of

the French Protestant, Seigneur D’Olbreuse--has doubly asserted itself.

Through the son of Sophia Dorothea and his descendants, it flows in the

veins of that honoured lady, the Queen of Great Britain and Empress of

India. Through the daughter of Sophia Dorothea, it is inherited by the

Emperor of Germany; and the inheritance was enriched and strengthened

when the Princess Royal of England became the wife of the Crown Prince

of Prussia, the heir of the German Empire.

_CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA_,

WIFE OF GEORGE II.

Da seufzt sie, da presst sie das Herz--es war

Ja Lieb und Glück nur geträumet.

GEIBEL.

CHAPTER I.

BEFORE THE ACCESSION.

Birth of Princess Caroline--Her early married life--Eulogised

by the poets--Gaiety of the Court of the Prince and Princess

at Leicester House--Beauty of Miss Bellenden--Mrs. Howard,

the Prince’s favourite--Intolerable grossness of the Court of

George the First--Lord Chesterfield and the Princess--The

mad Duchess--Buckingham House--Rural retreat of the Prince at

Richmond; the resort of wit and beauty--Swift’s pungent verses

--The fortunes of the young adventurers, Mr. and Mrs. Howard--

The Queen at her toilette--Mrs. Clayton, her influence with

Queen Caroline--The Prince ruled by his wife--Dr. Arbuthnot and

Dean Swift--The Princess’s regard for Newton and Halley--Lord

Macclesfield’s fall--His superstition, and that of the Princess

--Prince Frederick’s vices--Not permitted to come to England

--Severe rebuff to Lord Hardwicke--Dr. Mead--Courage of the

Prince and Princess--The Princess’s friendship for Dr. Friend--

Swift at Leicester House--Royal visit to ‘Bartlemy Fair.’

Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea was the daughter of John Frederick,

Marquis of Brandenburg Anspach, and of Eleanor Erdmuth Louisa, his

second wife, daughter of John George, Duke of Saxe Eisenach. She was

born in 1683, and married the Electoral Prince of Hanover, afterwards

George II., in the year 1705. Her mother having re-married, after her

father’s death, when Caroline was very young, the latter left the

court of her step-father, George IV., Elector of Saxony, for that of

her guardian, Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg, afterwards King of

Prussia. The Electress of Brandenburg was the daughter of Sophia,

Electress of Hanover, and sister of George I. The young Caroline was

considered fortunate in being placed under the care of a lady, who, it

was said at the time, would assuredly give her a ‘tincture of her own

politeness.’

Notice has already been taken of the suitors who early offered

themselves for the hand of the youthful princess; and for what

excellent reason she selected the son of Sophia Dorothea. It was

said, when she came to share the throne of England with her husband,

that Heaven had especially reserved her in order to make Great

Britain happy. Her early married life was one of some gaiety, if not

of felicity; and Baron Pilnitz says in his Memoir, that when the

Electoral family of Hanover was called to the throne of this country,

she showed more cool carelessness for the additional grandeur than

any of the family, whose _outward_ indifference was a matter of

admiration, in the old sense of that word, to all who beheld it. The

Princess Caroline, according to the baron, particularly demonstrated

that she was thoroughly satisfied in her mind that she could be happy

without a crown, and that ‘both her father-in-law and her husband were

already kings in her eyes, because they highly deserved that title.’

Of her conduct during the period she was Princess of Wales, the same

writer says that she favoured neither political party, and was equally

esteemed by each. This, however, is somewhat beside the truth.

The poets were as much concerned with the Princess of Wales as the

politicians. Some abused, and some adored her. Addison, in 1714,

assured her that the Muse waited on her person, and that she herself was

Born to strengthen and to grace our isle.

The same writer could not contemplate the daughter of Caroline, but

that his prophetic eye professed to--

Already see the illustrious youths complain,

And future monarchs doom’d to sigh in vain.

Frederick (Duke of Gloucester), the elder and less loved son of

Caroline, was not yet in England, but her favourite boy, William,

was at her side; and of him Addison said, that he had ‘the mother’s

sweetness and the father’s fire.’ The poet went on, less to prophesy

than to speculate with a ‘perhaps’ on the future destiny of William

of Cumberland; and it was well he put in the saving word, for nothing

could be less like fact than the ‘fortune’ alluded to in the following

lines:--

For thee, perhaps, even now of kingly race,

Some dawning beauty blooms in every grace.

Some Caroline, to Heaven’s dictates true,

Who, while the sceptred rivals vainly sue,

Thy inborn worth with conscious eyes shall see,

And slight th’ imperial diadem for thee.

Of the princess herself, he says more truly, that she--

with graceful ease

And native majesty is form’d to please.

And he adds, that the stage, growing refined, will draw its finished

heroines from her, who was herself known to be ‘skill’d in the labours

of the deathless muse.’ In short, Parnassus was made to echo with

eulogies of or epigrams upon this royal lady. George I., for years

together, never addressed a word to the Prince of Wales, but the

princess would compel him, as Count Broglie, the French ambassador

writes, to answer the remarks which she addressed to him when she

encountered him ‘in public.’ ‘But even then,’ says the count, ‘he only

speaks to her on these occasions for the sake of decorum.’ _She-devil_

was the appellation commonly employed by the amiable King to designate

his high-spirited daughter-in-law.

The Prince and Princess of Wales, on withdrawing from St. James’s,

established their court in ‘Leicester Fields.’ Of this court, Walpole

draws a pleasant picture. It must have been a far livelier locality

than that of the King, whose ministers were the older Whig politicians.

‘The most promising,’ says Walpole, ‘of the young lords and gentlemen

of that party, and the prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies,

formed the new court of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The

apartment of the bedchamber-women in waiting became the fashionable

evening rendezvous of the most distinguished wits and beauties: Lord

Chesterfield, Lord Stanhope, Lord Scarborough, Carr (Lord Hervey),

elder brother of the more known John Lord Hervey, and reckoned to have

superior parts; General (at that time only Colonel) Charles Churchill,

and others, not necessary to mention, were constant attendants; Miss

Lepell, afterwards Lady Hervey, my mother, Lady Walpole, Mrs. Selwyn,

mother of the famous George, and herself of much vivacity, and pretty;

Mrs. Howard, and, above all, for universal admiration, Miss Bellenden,

one of the maids of honour. Her face and person were charming; lively

she was almost to _étourderie_; and so agreeable she was, that I never

heard her mentioned afterwards by one of her contemporaries who did not

prefer her as the most perfect creature they ever knew.’

To this pleasant party in this pleasant resort, the Prince of Wales

often came--his chief attraction being, not the wit or worth of the

party, but the mere beauty of one of the party forming it. This was

Miss Bellenden, who, on the other hand, saw nothing in the fair-haired

and little prince that could attract her admiration. The prince was

never famous for much delicacy either of expression or sentiment, but

he could exhibit a species of wit in its way. He had probably been

contemplating the engraving of the visit of Jupiter to the nymph Danae

in a shower of gold, when he took to pouring the guineas from his purse

in Miss Bellenden’s presence. He seemed to her, if we may judge by the

comment she made upon his conduct, much more like a villainous little

bashaw offering to purchase a Circassian slave; and on one occasion, as

he went on counting the glittering coin, she exclaimed, ‘Sir, I cannot

bear it; if you count your money any more I will go out of the room.’

She did even better, by marrying the man of her heart, Colonel John

Campbell--a step at which the prince, when it came to his knowledge,

affected to be extremely indignant; and never forgave her for an

offence, which indeed was no offence and required no forgiveness. The

prince, like that young Duke of Orleans who thought he would suffer in

reputation if he had not a ‘favourite’ in his train, let his regard

stop at Mrs. Howard, another of his wife’s bedchamber-women, who

was but too happy to receive such regard, and to return it with all

required attachment and service.

The Princess of Wales, during the reign of her father-in-law,

maintained a brilliant court, and presided over a gay round

of pleasures. In this career she gained that which she sought

after--popularity. What she did from policy, her husband the prince

did from taste; and the encouragement and promotion of pleasure were

followed by the one as a means to an end, by the other for the sake

of the pleasure itself. Every morning there was a drawing-room at

the princess’s, and twice a week the same splendid reunion in her

apartments, at night. This gave the fashion to a very wide circle;

crowded assemblies, balls, masquerades, and ridottos became the

‘rage;’ and from the fatigues incident thereto, the votaries of fashion

found relaxation in plays and operas.

Quiet people were struck by the change which had come over court

circles since the days of ‘Queen Anne, who had always been decent,

chaste, and formal.’ The change indeed was great, but diverse of

aspect. Thus the court of pleasure at which Caroline reigned supreme

was a court where decency was respected; respected, at least, as

much as it well could be at a time when no superabundance of respect

for decency was exhibited in any quarter. Still, there was not the

intolerable grossness in the house of the prince which was to be met

with in the very presence of his sire. Lord Chesterfield said of that

sire that ‘he had nothing bad in him as a man,’ and yet he records of

him that he had no respect for women--but some liking, it may be added,

for those who had little principle and much fat. ‘He brought over with

him,’ says Chesterfield, ‘two considerable samples of his bad taste and

good stomach--the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Darlington;

leaving at Hanover, because she happened to be a Papist, the Countess

von Platen, whose weight and circumference was little inferior to

theirs. These standards of his Majesty’s tastes made all those ladies

who aspired to his favour, and who were near the statutable size,

strain and swell themselves, like the frogs in the fable, to rival the

bulk and dignity of the ox. Some succeeded and others burst.’ If the

house of the son was not the abode of all the virtues, it at least was

not the stye wherein wallowed his father. Upon the change of fashion,

Chesterfield writes to Bubb Dodington, in 1716, the year when Caroline

began to be looked up to as the arbitress of fashion:--‘As for the gay

part of the town, you would find it much more flourishing than when

you left it. Balls, assemblies, and masquerades have taken the place

of dull, formal, visiting days, and the women are much more agreeable

trifles than they were designed. Puns are extremely in vogue, and the

license very great. The variation of three or four letters in a word

breaks no squares, insomuch that an indifferent punster may make a very

good figure in the best companies.’ The gaiety at the town residence of

the prince and princess did not, however, accompany them to Richmond

Lodge. There Caroline enjoyed the quiet beauties of her pretty retreat,

which was, however, shared with her husband’s favourite, ‘Mrs. Howard.’

‘Leicester Fields’ was, nevertheless, not always such a bower of bliss

as Walpole has described it, from hearsay. If the prince and ladies

were on very pleasant terms, the princess and the ladies were sometimes

at loggerheads, with as little regard for _bienséance_ as if they had

been very vulgar people; indeed, they often were exceedingly vulgar

people themselves.

It was with Lord Chesterfield that Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea was

most frequently at very disgraceful issue. Lord Chesterfield was one

of the prince’s court, and he was possessed of an uncontrollable

inclination to turn the princess into ridicule. Of course she was made

acquainted with this propensity of the refined Chesterfield by some

amiable friend, who had the regard which friends, with less judgment

than what they call amiability, generally have for one’s failings.

Caroline, perhaps half afraid of the peer, whom she held to be a

more annoying joker than a genuine wit, took a middle course by way

of correcting Chesterfield. It was not the course which a woman of

dignity and refinement would have adopted; but it must be remembered

that, at the period in question, the princess was anxious to keep as

many friends around her husband as she could muster. She consequently

told Lord Chesterfield, half in jest and half in earnest, that he had

better not provoke her, for though he had a wittier, he had not so

bitter a tongue as she had, and any outlay of his wit, at her cost,

she was determined to pay, in her way, with an exorbitant addition of

interest upon the debt he made her incur.

The noble lord had, among the other qualifications of the fine

gentleman of the period, an alacrity in lying. He would gravely assure

the princess that her royal highness was in error; that he could never

presume to mimic her; and thereupon he would only watch for a turn of

her head to find an opportunity for repeating the offence which he had

protested could not possibly be laid to his charge.

Caroline was correct in asserting that she had a bitter tongue. It was

under control, indeed; but when she gave it unrestricted freedom, its

eloquence was not well savoured. Indeed her mind was far less refined

than has been generally imagined. Many circumstances might be cited

in proof of this assertion; but perhaps none is more satisfactory, or

conclusive rather, than the fact that she was the correspondent of the

Duchess of Orleans, whose gross epistles can be patiently read only by

grossly inclined persons; but which, nevertheless, tell so much that

is really worth knowing that students of history read, blush, and are

delighted.

The Prince of Wales, dissatisfied with his residences, entered into

negotiations for the purchase of Buckingham House. That mansion was

then occupied by the Dowager-duchess of Buckingham, she whose mother

was Catherine Sedley, and whose father was James II. She was the mad

duchess, who always went into mourning and shut up Buckingham House on

the anniversary of the death of her grandfather, Charles I. The duchess

thus writes of the negotiation, in a letter to Mrs. Howard:--

‘If their royal highnesses will have everything stand as it is,

furniture and pictures, I will have 3,000_l._ _per annum_. Both run

hazard of being spoiled; and the last, to be sure, will be all to be

new bought, whenever my son is of age. The quantity the rooms take

cannot be well furnished under 10,000_l._ But if their highnesses will

permit all the pictures to be removed, and buy the furniture as it will

be valued by different people, the house shall go at 2,000_l._ If the

prince or princess prefer much the buying outright, under 60,000_l._

it will not be parted with as it now stands; and all his Majesty’s

revenue cannot purchase a place so fit for them, nor for less a sum.

The princess asked me at the drawing-room if I would not sell my fine

house. I answered her, smiling, that I was under no necessity to

part with it; yet, when what I thought was the value of it should be

offered, perhaps my prudence might overcome my inclination.’

At the period when Caroline expressed some inclination to possess this

residence, on the site of the old mulberry garden, there was a mulberry

garden at Chelsea, the owner of which was a Mrs. Gale. In these gardens

some very rich and beautiful satin was made, from English silkworms,

for the Princess of Wales, who took an extraordinary interest in the

success of ‘the native worm.’ The experiments, however, patronised as

they were by Caroline, did not promise a realisation of sufficient

profit to warrant their being pursued any further.

The town residence of the prince and princess lacked, of course, the

real charms, the quieter pleasures, of the lodge at Richmond. The

estate on which the latter was built formed part of the forfeited

property of the Jacobite Duke of Ormond.

The prince and princess kept a court at Richmond, which must have been

one of the most pleasant resorts at which royalty has ever presided

over fashion, wit, and talent. At this court the young (John) Lord

Hervey was a frequent visitor, at a time when his mother, Lady

Bristol, was in waiting on the princess, and his brother, Lord Carr

Hervey, held the post of groom of the bedchamber to the prince. Of the

personages at this ‘young court,’ the right honourable John Wilson

Croker thus speaks:--

‘At this period Pope and his literary friends were in great favour at

this “young court,” of which, in addition to the handsome and clever

princess herself, Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Selwyn, Miss Howe, Miss Bellenden,

and Miss Lepell, with Lords Chesterfield, Bathurst, Scarborough, and

Hervey, were the chief ornaments. Above all, for beauty and wit, were

Miss Bellenden and Miss Lepell, who seem to have treated Pope, and been

in return treated by him, with a familiarity that appears strange in

our more decorous days. These young ladies probably considered him as

no more than what Aaron Hill described him--

Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames’ fair side,

The ladies’ _plaything_ and the Muse’s pride.’

Mr. Croker notices that Miss Lepell was called _Mrs._ according to the

fashion of the time. It was the custom so to designate every single

lady who was old enough to be married.

Upon Richmond Lodge Swift showered some of his most pungent verses. He

was there more than once when it was the scene of the ‘young court.’ Of

these occasions he sang, after the princess had become Queen, to the

following tune:--

Here went the Dean, when he’s to seek,

To sponge a breakfast once a week,

To cry the bread was stale, and mutter

Complaints against the royal butter.

But now I fear it will be said,

No butter sticks upon his bread.

We soon shall find him full of spleen,

For want of tattling to the Queen;

Stunning her royal ears with talking;

His rev’rence and her highness walking.

Whilst saucy Charlotte,[3] like a stroller,

Sits mounted on the garden roller.

A goodly sight to see her ride,

With ancient Mirmont at her side.

In velvet cap his head is warm,

His hat, for shame, beneath his arm.

Other poets were occasionally more audacious than Swift in

appropriating domestic incidents in the princess’s family for their

subjects. Early in 1723 one of them thus addresses an expected member

of that family:--

Promis’d blessing of the year,

Fairest blossom of the Spring,

Thy fond mother’s wish;--appear!

Haste to hear the linnets sing!

Haste to breathe the vernal air,

Come to see the primrose blow;

Nature doth her lap prepare,

Nature thinks thy coming slow.

Glad the people, quickly smile

Darling native of our isle.

The gentle Princess Mary (subsequently the unhappy Princess of Hesse)

cannot be said to have kept the linnets or the primroses waiting, the

birth of this fourth daughter of the Prince and Princess of Wales

having taken place on the 22nd of February 1723.

During a large portion of the married life of George Augustus and

Caroline, each was supposed to be under the influence of a woman, whose

real influence was, however, overrated, and whose importance, if great,

was solely so because of the undue value attached to her imaginary

influence. Both those persons were of the ‘young court,’ at Leicester

House and Richmond Lodge.

The women in question were Mrs. Howard, the prince’s ‘favourite,’ and

Mrs. Clayton, bedchamber-woman, like Mrs. Howard, to Caroline. The

first lady was the daughter of a Knight of the Bath, Sir Henry Hobart.

Early in life she married Mr. Howard, ‘the younger brother of more than

one Earl of Suffolk, to which title he at last succeeded himself, and

left a son by her, who was the last earl of that branch.’ The young

couple were but slenderly dowered; the lady had little, and her husband

less. The court of Queen Anne did not hold out to them any promise

of improving their fortune, and accordingly they looked around for a

locality where they might not only discern the promise, but hope for

its realisation. Their views rested upon Hanover and ‘the rising sun’

there; and thither, accordingly, they took their way; and there they

found a welcome at the hands of the old Electress Sophia, with scanty

civility at those of her grandson, the Electoral Prince.

At this time, the fortunes of the young adventurers were so low, and

their aspirations so high, that they were unable to give a dinner to

the Hanoverian minister, till Mrs. Howard found the means by cutting

off a very beautiful head of hair and selling it. If she did this in

order that she might not incur a debt, she deserves some degree of

praise, for a habit of prompt payment was not a fashion of the time.

The sacrifice probably sufficed; for it was the era of full-bottomed

wigs, which cost twenty or thirty guineas, and Mrs. Howard’s hair,

to be applied to the purpose named, may have brought her a dozen

pounds, with which a very recherché dinner might have been given, at

the period, to even the most gastronomic of Hanoverian ministers, and

half-a-dozen secretaries of legation to boot.

The fortune sought for was seized, although it came but in a

questionable shape. After the lapse of some little time, the lady had

made sufficient impression on the hitherto cold Prince George Augustus

to induce him, on the accession of his father to the crown of England,

to appoint her one of the bedchamber-women to his wife, Caroline,

Princess of Wales.

When Mrs. Howard had won what was called the ‘regard’ of the prince,

she separated from her husband. _He_, it is true, had little regard

_for_, and merited no regard _from_, his wife; but he was resolved

that she should attain not even a bad eminence unless he profited by

it. He was a wretched, heartless, drunken, gambling profligate; too

coarse, even, for the coarse fine gentlemen of the day. When he found

himself deserted by his wife, therefore, and discovered that she had

established her residence in the household of the prince, he went down

to the palace, raised an uproar in the courtyard, before the guards and

other persons present, and made vociferous demands for the restoration

to him of a wife whom he really did not want. He was thrust out of

the quadrangle without much ceremony, but he was not to be silenced.

He even appears to have interested the Archbishop of Canterbury in

the matter. The prelate affected to look upon the princess as the

protectress of her bedchamber-woman and the cause of the latter living

separate from her husband, to whom he recommended, by letter, that

she should be restored. Walpole says, further, that the archbishop

delivered an epistle from Mr. Howard himself, addressed through the

Princess Caroline to his wife, and that the princess ‘had the malicious

pleasure of delivering the letter to her rival.’

Mrs. Howard continued to reside under the roof of this

strangely-assorted household. There was no scandal excited thereby at

the period, and she was safe from conjugal importunity, whether at

St. James’s Palace or Leicester House. ‘The case was altered,’ says

Walpole, ‘when, on the arrival of summer, their royal highnesses were

to remove to Richmond. Being only woman of the bedchamber, etiquette

did not allow Mrs. Howard the entrée of the coach with the princess.

She apprehended that Mr. Howard might seize her upon the road. To

baffle such an attempt, her friends, John, Duke of Argyle, and his

brother, the Earl of Islay, called for her in the coach of one of them,

by eight o’clock in the morning of the day by noon of which the prince

and princess were to remove, and lodged her safely in their house at

Richmond.’ It would appear, that after this period the servant of

Caroline and the favourite of George Augustus ceased to be molested by

her husband; and, although there be no proof of that gentleman having

been ‘bought off,’ he was of such character, tastes, and principles,

that he cannot be thought to have been of too nice an honour to allow

of his agreeing to terms of peace for pecuniary ‘consideration.’

George thought his show of regard for Mrs. Howard would stand for

proof that he was not ‘led’ by his wife. The regard wore an outwardly

Platonic aspect, and daily at the same hour the royal admirer resorted

to the apartment of the lady, where an hour or two was spent in ‘small

talk’ and conversation of a generally uninteresting character.

It is very illustrative of the peculiar character of George Augustus,

that his periodical visits, every evening at nine, were regulated with

such dull punctuality ‘that he frequently walked about his chamber for

ten minutes, with his watch in his hand, if the stated minute was not

arrived.’

Walpole also notices the more positive vexations Mrs. Howard received

when Caroline became Queen, whose head she used to dress, until she

acquired the title of Countess of Suffolk. The Queen, it is said,

delighted in subjecting her to such servile offices, though always

apologising to _her good Howard_. ‘Often,’ says Walpole, ‘her Majesty

had more complete triumph. It happened more than once that the King,

coming into the room while the Queen was dressing, has snatched off the

handkerchief, and turning rudely to Mrs. Howard, has cried, ‘Because

you have an ugly neck yourself, you hide the Queen’s.’

One other instance may be cited here of Caroline’s dislike of her good

Howard. ‘The Queen had an obscure window at St. James’s that looked

into a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at night, which

looked upon Mrs. Howard’s apartment. Lord Chesterfield, one Twelfth

Night at court, had won so large a sum of money that he thought it

not prudent to carry it home in the dark, and deposited it with the

mistress. Thence the Queen inferred great intimacy, and thenceforwards

Lord Chesterfield could obtain no favour from court; and, finding

himself desperate, went into opposition.’ But this is anticipating

events. Let us speak of the other bedchamber-woman of the Princess of

Wales and subsequently of Queen Caroline, also a woman of considerable

note in the quiet and princely circle at Leicester House, and the more

brilliant _réunions_ at St. James’s and Kensington. She was a woman

of fairer reputation, of greater ability, and of worse temper than

Mrs. Howard. Her maiden name was Dyves, her condition was of a humble

character, but her marriage with Sir Robert Clayton, a clerk in the

Treasury, gave her importance and position, and opportunity to improve

both. Her husband, in addition to his Treasury clerkship, was one of

the managers of the Marlborough estates in the duke’s absence, and this

brought his wife to the knowledge and patronage of the duchess. The

only favour ever asked by the latter of the House of Hanover was a post

for her friend Mrs. Clayton, who soon afterwards was appointed one of

the bedchamber-women to Caroline, Princess of Wales.

Mrs. Clayton has been as diversely painted by Lord Hervey and Horace

Walpole as Chesterfield himself. It is not to be disputed, however,

that she was a woman of many accomplishments; of not so many as her

flatterers ascribe to her, but of more than were conceded to her by

her enemies. The same may be said of her alleged virtues. Walpole

describes her as a corrupt, pompous simpleton, and Lord Hervey as a

woman of great intelligence and rather ill-regulated temper, the latter

preventing her from concealing her thoughts, let them be what they

might. The noble lord intimates, rather than asserts, that she was more

resigned than desirous to live at court, for the dirty company of which

she was too good, but whom she had the honesty to hate but not the

hypocrisy to tell them they were good. Hervey adds, that she did good,

for the mere luxury which the exercise of the virtue had in itself.

Others describe her as corrupt as the meanest courtier that ever lived

by bribes. She would take jewels with both hands, and wear them without

shame, though they were the fees of offices performed to serve others

and enrich herself. The Duchess of Marlborough was ashamed of her

protegée in this respect, if there be truth in the story of her grace

being indignant at seeing Mrs. Clayton wearing gems which she knew were

the price of services rendered by her. Lady Wortley Montague apologises

for her by the smart remark, that people would not know where wine was

sold if the vendor did not hang out a bush.

Of another fact there is no dispute--the intense hatred with which Mrs.

Howard and Mrs. Clayton regarded each other. The former was calm, cool,

cutting, and contemptuous, but never unlady-like, always self-possessed

and severe. The latter was hot, eager, and for ever rendering her

position untenable for want of temper, and therefore lack of argument

to maintain it. Mrs. Clayton, doubtless, possessed more influence with

the Queen than her opponent with the King, but the influence has

been vastly overrated. Caroline only allowed it in small matters, and

exercised in small ways. Mrs. Clayton was, in some respects, only her

authorised representative, or the medium between her and the objects

whom she delighted to relieve or to honour. The lady had some influence

in bringing about introductions, in directing the Queen’s notice to

works of merit, or to petitions for relief; but on subjects of much

higher importance Caroline would not submit to influence from the same

quarter. On serious questions she had a better judgment of her own

than she could be supplied with by the women of the bedchamber. The

great power held by Mrs. Clayton was, that with her rested to decide

whether the prayer of a petitioner should or should not reach the eye

of Caroline. No wonder, then, that she was flattered, and that her

good offices were asked for with showers of praise and compliment

to herself, by favour-seekers of every conceivable class. Peers of

every degree, and their wives, bishops and poor curates, philosophers

well-to-do, and authors in shreds and patches; sages and sciolists;

inventors, speculators, and a mob of ‘beggars’ which cannot be classed,

sought to approach Caroline through Mrs. Clayton’s office, and humbly

waited Mrs. Clayton’s leisure, while they profusely flattered her in

order to tempt her to be active in their behalf.

Caroline not only ruled her husband without his being aware of it, but

could laugh at him heartily, without hurting his feelings by allowing

him to be conscious of it. Hereafter mention may be made of the

sensitiveness of the court to satire; but before the death of George

I., it seems to have been enjoyed--at least by Caroline, Princess of

Wales--more than it was subsequently by the same illustrious lady when

Queen of England. Dr. Arbuthnot, at the period alluded to, had occasion

to write to Swift. The doctor had been publishing, by subscription,

his ‘Tables of Ancient Coins,’ and was gaining very few modern

specimens by his work. The dean, on the other hand, was then reaping a

harvest of profit and popularity by his ‘Gulliver’s Travels’--that book

of which the puzzled Bishop of Ferns said, on coming to the last page,

that, all things considered, he did not believe a word of it!

Arbuthnot, writing to Swift on the subject of the two works, says

(November 8, 1726) that his book had been out about a month, but that

he had not yet got his subscribers’ names. ‘I will make over,’ he says,

‘all my profits to you for the property of “Gulliver’s Travels,” which,

I believe, will have as great a run as John Bunyan. Gulliver is a happy

man, that, at his age, can write such a book.’ Arbuthnot subsequently

relates, that when he last saw the Princess of Wales ‘she was reading

Gulliver, and was just come to the passage of the hobbling prince,

which she laughed at.’ The laugh was at the cost of her husband, whom

Swift represented in the satire as walking with one high and low heel,

in allusion to the prince’s supposed vacillation between the Whigs and

Tories.

The princess, however, had more regard, at all times, for sages

than she had for satirists. It was at the request of Caroline that

Newton drew up an abstract of a treatise on Ancient Chronology, first

published in France, and subsequently in England. Her regard for

Halley dates from an earlier period than Newton’s death or Caroline’s

accession. She had, in 1721, pressed Halley to become the tutor of her

favourite son, the Duke of Cumberland; but the great perfector of the

theory of the moon’s motion was then too busy with his syzygies to be

troubled with teaching the humanities to little princes. It was for the

same reason that Halley resigned his post of secretary to the Royal

Society.

This question of the education of the children of the Prince and

Princess of Wales was one much discussed, and not without bitterness,

by the disputants on both sides. In the same year that the Princess

of Wales desired to secure Halley as the instructor of William of

Cumberland (1721) George I. made an earl of that Thomas Parker who,

from an attorney’s office, had steadily risen through the various

grades of the law, had been entrusted with high commissions, and

finally became Lord Chancellor. George I., on his accession, made him

Baron of Macclesfield, and in 1721 raised him to the rank of earl.

He paid for the honour by supporting the King against the Prince and

Princess of Wales. The latter claimed an exclusive right of direction

in the education of their children. Lord Macclesfield declared that,

by law, they had no right at all to control the education of their

offspring. Neither prince nor princess ever forgave him for this. They

waited for the hour of repaying it; and the time soon came. The first

‘Brunswick Chancellor’ became notorious for his malpractices--selling

places and trafficking with the funds of the suitors. His enemies

resolved to impeach him. This resolution originated at Leicester

House, and was carried out with such effect that the chancellor was

condemned to pay a fine of 30,000_l._ George I., knowing that the son

whom he hated was the cause of so grave, but just, a consequence,

promised to repay to the ex-chancellor the amount of the fine which

Lord Macclesfield had himself paid, a few days after the sentence, by

the mortgage of a valuable estate. The King, however, was rather slow

in acquitting himself of his promise. He forwarded one instalment of

1,000_l._, but he paid no more, death supervening and preventing the

further performance of a promise only made to annoy his son and his

son’s wife.

In one respect Lord Macclesfield and the Princess of Wales resembled

each other--in entertaining a curious feeling of superstition. It

will be seen, hereafter, how certain Caroline felt that she should

die on a Wednesday, and for what reasons. So, like her, but with more

accuracy, the fallen Macclesfield pointed out the day for his decease.

In his disgrace he had devoted himself to science and religion. He

was, however, distracted by a malady which was aggravated by grief, if

not remorse. Dr. Pearce, his constant friend, called on him one day

and found him very ill. Lord Macclesfield said: ‘My mother died of the

same disorder on the eighth day, and so shall I.’ On the eighth day

this prophecy was fulfilled; and the Leicester House party were fully

avenged.

The feelings of both prince and princess were for ever in excess. Thus

both appear to have entertained a strong sentiment of aversion against

their eldest child, Frederick. Caroline did not bring him with her to

this country when she herself first came over to take up her residence

here. Frederick was born at Hanover, on the 20th of January 1707. He

was early instructed in the English language; but he disliked study

of every description and made but little progress in this particular

branch. As a child, he was remarkable for his spitefulness and cunning.

He was yet a youth when he drank like any German baron of old, played

as deeply as he drank, and entered heart and soul into other vices,

which not only corrupted both, but his body also. His tutor was

scandalised by his conduct, and complained of it grievously. Caroline

was, at that time, given to find excuses for conduct with which she did

not care to be so far troubled as to censure it; and she remarked that

the escapades complained of were mere page’s tricks. ‘Would to Heaven

they were no more!’ exclaimed the worthy governor; ‘but in truth they

are tricks of grooms and scoundrels.’ The Prince spared his friends as

little as his foes, and his heart was as vicious as his head was weak.

Caroline had little affection for this child, whom she would have

willingly defrauded of his birthright. At one time she appears to

have been inclined to secure the Electorate of Hanover for William,

and to allow Frederick to succeed to the English throne. At another

time she was as desirous, it is believed, of advancing William to the

crown of England and making over the Electorate to Frederick. How far

these intrigues were carried on is hardly known, but that they existed

is matter of notoriety. The law presented a barrier which could not,

however, be broken down; but, nevertheless, Lord Chesterfield, in

his character of the princess, intimated that she was busy with this

project throughout her life.

Frederick was not permitted to come to England during any period of the

time that his parents were Prince and Princess of Wales. An English

title or two may be said to have been flung to him across the water.

Thus, in 1717, he was called rather than created Duke of Gloucester.

The Garter was sent to him the following year. In 1726 he became Duke

of Edinburgh. He never occupied a place in the hearts of either his

father or mother.

It is but fair to the character of the Princess of Wales to say

that, severe as was the feeling entertained by herself against Lord

Macclesfield--a feeling shared in by her consort--neither of them ever

after entertained any ill feeling against Philip Yorke, subsequently

Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, who defended his friend Lord Macclesfield,

with great fearlessness, at the period of his celebrated trial. Only

once, in after life, did George II. visit Lord Hardwicke with a severe

rebuff. The learned lord was avaricious, discouraging to those who

sought to rise in their profession, and caring only for the advancement

of his own relations. He was once seeking for a place for a distant

relation, when the husband of Caroline exclaimed, ‘You are always

asking favours, and I observe that it is invariably in behalf of some

one of your family or kinsmen.’ We shall hereafter find Caroline making

allusions to ‘Judge Gripus’ as a character in a play, but it was a name

given to Lord Hardwicke, on account of his ‘meanness.’ This feeling

was shared by his wife. The expensively embroidered velvet purse in

which the great seal was carried was renewed every year during Lord

Hardwicke’s time. Each year, Lady Hardwicke ordered that the velvet

should be of the length of one of her state rooms at Wimpole. In course

of time the prudent lady obtained enough to tapestry the room with the

legal velvet, and to make curtains and hangings for a state bed which

stood in the apartment. Well might Pope have said of these:--

Is yellow dirt the passion of thy life?

Look but on Gripus and on Gripus’ wife.

But this is again anticipating the events of history. Let us go back to

1721, when Caroline and her husband exercised a courage which caused

great admiration in the saloons of Leicester House and a doubtful sort

of applause throughout the country. Lady Mary Wortley Montague had

just reported the successful results of inoculation for the small-pox,

which she had witnessed at Constantinople. Dr. Mead was ordered by the

prince to inoculate six criminals who had been condemned to death, but

whose lives were spared for this experiment. It succeeded admirably,

and the patients were more satisfied by the result of the experiment

than any one besides. In the year following, Caroline allowed Dr.

Mead to inoculate her two daughters, and the doctor ultimately became

physician-in-ordinary to her husband.

The medical appointments made by Caroline and her husband certainly

had a political motive. Thus, the Princess of Wales persuaded her

husband to name Freind his physician-in-ordinary just after the latter

had been liberated from the Tower, where he had suffered incarceration

for daring to defend Atterbury in the House of Commons when the bishop

was accused of being guilty of treason. Caroline always had a high

esteem for Freind, independently of his political opinions, and one of

her first acts, on ceasing to be Princess of Wales, was to make Freind

physician to the Queen.

It is said by Swift that the Princess of Wales sent for him to

Leicester Fields no less than nine times before he would obey the

reiterated summons. When he _did_ appear before Caroline, he roughly

remarked that he understood she liked to see odd persons; that she

had lately inspected a wild boy from Germany, and that now she had

the opportunity of seeing a wild parson from Ireland. Swift declares

that the court in Leicester Fields was very anxious to settle him in

England, but it may be doubted whether the anxiety was very sincere.

Swift’s declaration that he had no anxiety to be patronised by the

Princess of Wales was probably as little sincere. The patronage

sometimes exercised there was mercilessly sneered at by Swift. Thus

Caroline had expressed a desire to do honour to Gay; but when the post

offered was only that of a gentleman usher to the little Princess

Caroline, Swift was bitterly satirical on the Princess of Wales

supposing that the poet Gay would be willing to act as a sort of male

nurse to a little girl of two years of age.

The Prince of Wales was occasionally as cavalierly treated by the

ladies as the princess by the men. One of the maids of honour of

Caroline, the well-known Miss Bellenden, would boldly stand before him

with her arms folded, and when asked why she did so, would toss her

pretty head, and laughingly exclaim that she did so, not because she

was cold, but that she chose to stand with her arms folded. When her

own niece became maid of honour to Queen Caroline, and audacious Miss

Bellenden was a grave married lady, she instructively warned her young

relative not to be so imprudent a maid of honour as her aunt had been

before her.

But strange things were done by princes and princesses in those days,

as well as by those who waited on them. For instance, in 1725, it is

reported by Miss Dyves, maid of honour to the Princess Amelia, daughter

of the Princess of Wales, that ‘the Prince, and everybody but myself,

went last Friday to Bartholomew Fair. It was a fine day, so _he_ went

by water; and I, being afraid, did not go; after the fair, they supped

at the King’s Arms, and came home about four o’clock in the morning.’

An heir-apparent, and part of his family and consort, going by water

from Richmond to ‘Bartlemy Fair,’ supping at a tavern, staying out all

night, and returning home not long before honest men breakfasted, was

not calculated to make royalty respectable.

CHAPTER II.

THE FIRST YEARS OF A REIGN.

Death of George the First--Adroitness of Sir Robert Walpole--The

first royal reception--Unceremonious treatment of the late King’s

will--The coronation--Magnificent dress of Queen Caroline--Mrs.

Oldfield, as Anne Boleyn, in ‘Henry VIII.’--The King’s revenue

and the Queen’s jointure, the result of Walpole’s exertions--His

success--Management of the King by Queen Caroline--Unseemly

dialogue between Walpole and Lord Townshend--Gay’s ‘Beggars’

Opera,’ and satire on Walpole--Origin of the opera--Its great

success--Gay’s cause espoused by the Duchess of Queensberry--Her

smart reply to a royal message--The tragedy of ‘Frederick, Duke

of Brunswick’--The Queen appointed Regent--Prince Frederick

becomes chief of the opposition--His silly reflections on the

King--Agitation about the repeal of the Corporation and Test

Acts--The Queen’s ineffectual efforts to gain over Bishop

Hoadly--Sir Robert extricates himself--The Church made the

scapegoat--Queen Caroline earnest about trifles--Etiquette of

the toilette--Fracas between Mr. Howard and the Queen--Modest

request of Mrs. Howard--Lord Chesterfield’s description of her.

Sir Robert Walpole was sojourning at Chelsea, and thinking of nothing

less than of the demise of a king, when news was brought him, by a

messenger from Lord Townshend, at three o’clock in the afternoon of the

14th of June 1727, that his late most sacred Majesty was then lying

dead in the Westphalian palace of his serene highness the Bishop of

Osnaburgh. Sir Robert immediately hurried to Richmond, in order to be

the first to do homage to the new sovereigns, George and Caroline.

George accepted the homage with much complacency, and on being asked by

Sir Robert as to the person whom the King would select to draw up the

usual address to the privy council, George II. mentioned the speaker

of the House of Commons, Sir Spencer Compton.

This was a civil way of telling Sir Robert that his services as

prime-minister were no longer required. He was not pleased at being

supplanted, but neither was he wrathfully little-minded against

his successor--a successor so incompetent for his task that he was

obliged to have recourse to Sir Robert to assist him in drawing up

the address above alluded to. Sir Robert rendered the assistance with

much heartiness, but was not the less determined, if possible, to

retain his office, in spite of the personal dislike of the King, and

of that of the Queen, whom he had offended, when she was Princess of

Wales, by speaking of her as ‘that fat beast, the prince’s wife.’

Sir Robert could easily make poor Sir Spencer communicative with

regard to his future intentions. The latter was a stiff, gossiping,

soft-hearted creature, and might very well have taken for his motto

the words of Parmeno in the play of Terence:--‘Plenus rimarum sum.’

He intimated that on first meeting parliament he should propose an

allowance of 60,000_l._ per annum to be made to the Queen. ‘I will make

it 40,000_l._ more,’ said Sir Robert, subsequently, through a second

party, to Queen Caroline, ‘if my office of minister be secured to me.’

Caroline was delighted at the idea, intimated that Sir Robert might

be sure ‘the fat beast’ had friendly feelings towards him, and then

hastening to the King, over whose weaker intellect her more masculine

mind held rule, explained to her royal husband that as Compton

considered Walpole the fittest man to be--what he had so long been

with efficiency--prime-minister, it would be a foolish act to nominate

Compton himself to the office. The King acquiesced, Sir Spencer was

made president of the council, and Sir Robert not only persuaded

parliament, without difficulty, to settle one hundred thousand a

year on the Queen, but he also persuaded the august trustees of the

people’s money to add the entire revenue of the civil list, about one

hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year, to the annual sum of seven

hundred thousand pounds, which had been settled as proper revenue for a

king. Sir Robert had thus the wit to bribe King and Queen, out of the

funds of the people, and we cannot be surprised that their Majesties

looked upon him and his as true allies. Indeed Caroline did not wait

for the success of the measure in order to show her confidence in

Walpole. Their Majesties had removed from Richmond to their temporary

palace in Leicester Fields, on the very evening of their receiving

notice of their accession to the crown; and the next day all the

nobility and gentry in town crowded to kiss their hands. ‘My mother,’

says Horace Walpole, ‘among the rest, who, Sir Spencer Compton’s

designation and not his evaporation being known, could not make her

way between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor

could approach nearer to the Queen than the third or fourth row; but

no sooner was she descried by her Majesty than the Queen said aloud:

“There I am sure I see a friend!” The torrent divided and shrank to

either side, “and as I came away,” said my mother, “I might have walked

over their heads, had I pleased.”’

George I. had drawn up a will which he coolly thought his successor

would respect. Perhaps he remembered that his son believed in ghosts

and vampires, and would fulfil a dead man’s will out of mere terror of

a dead man’s visitation. But George Augustus had no such fear, nor any

such respect, as that noticed above.

At the first council held by George II., Dr. Wake, Archbishop of

Canterbury, in whose hands George I. had deposited his last will and

testament, produced that precious instrument, placed it before the

King, and composed himself to hear the instructions of the deceased

parent recited by his heir. The new King, however, put the paper in

his pocket, walked out of the room, never uttered a word more upon the

subject, and general rumour subsequently proclaimed that the royal will

had been dropped into the fire by the testator’s son.

That testator, however, had been a destroyer of wills himself. He had

burnt that of the poor old Duke of Zell, and he had treated in like

manner the last will of Sophia Dorothea. The latter document favoured

both his children more than he approved, and the King, who could do

no wrong, committed a felonious act, which for a common criminal

would have purchased a halter. Being given to this sort of iniquity

himself, he naturally thought ill of the heir whom he looked upon as

bound to respect the will of his father. To bind him the more securely

to such observance, he left two duplicates of his will; one of which

was deposited with the Duke of Wolfenbüttel, the other with another

German prince, whose name has not been revealed, and both were given

up by the depositaries, for fee and reward duly paid for the service.

The copies were destroyed in the same way as the original. What

instruction was set down in this document has never been ascertained.

Walpole speaks of a reported legacy of forty thousand pounds to the

King’s surviving mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, and of a subsequent

compromise made with the husband of the duchess’s ‘niece’ and heiress,

Lady Walsingham--a compromise which followed upon a threatened action

at law. Something similar is said to have taken place with the King of

Prussia, to whose wife, the daughter of George I., the latter monarch

was reported to have bequeathed a considerable legacy.

However this may be, the surprise of the council and the consternation

of the primate were excessive. The latter dignitary was the last

man, however, who could with propriety have blamed a fellow-man for

acting contrary to what was expected of him. He himself had been the

warmest advocate of religious toleration, until he reached the primacy

and had an opportunity for the exercise of a little harshness towards

dissenters. The latter were as much astonished at their ex-advocate as

the latter was astounded by the act of the King.

We will not further allude to the coronation of George and Caroline

than by saying that, on the occasion in question, these Sovereigns

displayed a gorgeousness of taste of a somewhat barbarous quality. The

coronation was the most splendid which had been seen for years. George,

despite his low stature and fair hair, which heightened the weakness of

his expression at this period, was said to be on this occasion ‘every

inch a king.’ He enjoyed the splendour of the scene and of himself, and

thought it cheaply purchased at the cost of much fatigue.

Caroline was not inferior to her lord. It is true that of crown jewels

she had none, save a pearl necklace, the solitary spoil left of all

the gems, ‘rich and rare,’ which had belonged to Queen Anne, and

which had, for the most part, been distributed by the late King among

his favourites of every degree. Caroline wore on the occasion of her

crowning, not only the pearl necklace of Queen Anne, but ‘she had on

her head and shoulders all the pearls and necklaces which she could

borrow from the ladies of quality at one end of the town, and on her

petticoat all the diamonds she could hire of the Jews and jewellers at

the other; so,’ adds Lord Hervey, from whom this detail is taken, ‘the

appearance and the truth of her finery was a mixture of magnificence

and meanness, not unlike the _éclat_ of royalty in many other

particulars, when it comes to be nicely examined and its sources traced

to what money hires and flattery lends.’

The Queen dressed for the grand ceremony in a private room at

Westminster. Early in the morning she put on ‘an undress’ at St.

James’s, of which we are told that ‘everything was new.’ She was

carried across St. James’s Park privately in a chair, bearing no

distinctive mark upon it, and preceded, at a short distance, by the

Lord Chancellor and Mrs. Howard, both of whom were in ‘hack sedans.’

She was dressed by that lady. Mrs. Herbert, another bed-chamber woman,

would fain have shared in the honour, but as she was herself in full

dress for the ceremony, she was pronounced incapable of attiring her

who was to be the heroine of it. At the conclusion of the august affair

the Queen unrobed in an adjacent apartment, and, as in the morning, was

smuggled back to St. James’s in a private chair.

Magnificent as Caroline was in borrowed finery at her coronation,

she was excelled in point of show by Mrs. Oldfield, on the stage at

Drury Lane. The theatre was closed on the night of the real event--the

government had no idea then of dividing a multitude; but the management

expended a thousand pounds in getting up the pageant of the crowning

of Anne Boleyn, at the close of ‘Henry VIII.’ In this piece, Booth

made Henry the principal character, and Cibber’s Wolsey sank to a

second-rate part. The pageant, however, was so attractive, that it was

often played, detached from the piece, at the conclusion of a comedy or

any other play. Caroline went more than once with her royal consort to

witness this representation, an honour which was refused to the more

vulgar show, which had but indifferent success, at Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields.

The King’s revenue, as settled upon him by the Whig parliament, was

larger than any of our Kings had before enjoyed. Caroline’s jointure,

100,000_l._ a year, with Somerset House and Richmond Lodge, was

double that which had been granted previously to any Queen. This

success had been so notoriously the result of Walpole’s exertions,

that the husband of Caroline, who dealt in very strong terms, began

to look complacently on the ‘rogue and rascal,’ thought his brother

Horace bearable, in spite of his being, as George used to call him,

‘scoundrel,’ ‘fool,’ and ‘dirty buffoon,’ and he even felt less averse

than usual to the two secretaries of state of Walpole’s administration,

the Duke of Newcastle, the ‘impertinent fool,’ whom he had threatened

at the christening of William, Duke of Cumberland, and Lord Townshend,

whom he was wont to designate as a ‘choleric blockhead.’ The issue

of the affair was, that of Walpole’s cabinet no one went out but the

minister’s son-in-law, Lord Malpas, roughly ejected from the Mastership

of the Robes, and ‘Stinking Yonge,’ as the King used elegantly to

designate Sir William, who was turned out of the Commission of

Treasury, and whose sole little failings were, that he was ‘pitiful,

corrupt, contemptible, and a great liar,’ though, as Lord Hervey says,

‘rather a mean than a vicious one,’ which does not seem to mend the

matter, and which is a distinction without a difference. After all, Sir

William only dived to come up fresh again. And Lord Malpas performed

the same feat.

Henceforth, it was understood by every lady, says Lord Hervey, ‘that

Sir Robert was the Queen’s minister; that whoever he favoured she

distinguished, and whoever she distinguished the King employed.’ The

Queen ruled, without seeming to rule. She was mistress by power of

suggestion. A word from her in public, addressed to the King, generally

earned for her a rebuke. Her consort so pertinaciously declared that he

was independent, and that she never meddled with public business of any

kind, that every one, even the early dupes of the assertion, ceased at

last to put any faith in it. Caroline ‘not only meddled with business,

but directed everything which came under that name, either at home or

abroad.’ It is too much, perhaps, to say that her power was unrivalled

and unbounded, but it was doubtless great, and purchased at great cost.

That she could induce her husband to employ a man whom he had not yet

learned to like was in itself no small proof of her power, considering

the peculiarly obstinate disposition of the monarch.

Her recommendation of Walpole was not based, it is believed, upon any

very exalted motives. Walpole himself, in his official connections with

the Sovereign, was certainly likely to take every advantage of the

opportunity to create favourable convictions of his ability. Caroline,

in praising his ability to the King, suggested that Sir Robert was rich

enough to be honest, and had so little private business of his own that

he had all the more leisure to devote to that of the King. ‘New leeches

would be not the less hungry;’ and with this very indifferent sort of

testimony to her favourite’s worth, Caroline secured a servant for the

King and a minister for herself.

The tact of the Queen was so admirable that the husband, who followed

her counsel in all things, never even himself suspected but that he

was leading her. This was the very triumph of the Queen’s art, and

the crowning proof of the simplicity and silliness of the King. It is

said that he sneered at Charles I. for being governed by _his_ wife;

at Charles II. for being governed by his mistresses; at James led

by priests; at William duped by men; at Queen Anne deceived by her

favourites; and at his father, who allowed himself to be ruled by any

one who could approach him. And he finished his catalogue of scorn by

proudly asking, ‘Who governs now?’ The courtiers probably smiled behind

their jaunty hats. The wits, and some of them were courtiers too,

answered the query more roughly, and they remarked, in rugged rhyme and

bad grammar--

You may strut, dapper George, but ’twill all be in vain;

We know ’tis Queen Caroline, not you that reign--

You govern no more than Don Philip of Spain.

Then if you would have us fall down and adore you,

Lock up your fat spouse, as your dad did before you.

The two were otherwise described by other poetasters, as--

So strutting a king and so prating a queen.

It is a fact, at which we need not be surprised, that the most cutting

satires against the King, as led by his wife, were from the pens of

female writers--or said to be so. And this is likely enough; for in

no quarter is there so much contempt for a man who leans upon, rather

than supports, his wife. The court certainly offered good opportunity

for the satirists to make merry with. At the court of Caroline, it

must be confessed, there was not much female delicacy, and still less

manly dignity--even in the presence of the Queen herself. Thus we hear,

for instance, of Caroline, one evening, at Windsor, asking Sir Robert

Walpole and Lord Townshend where they had dined that day? My lord

replied that he had dined with Lord and Lady Trevor, an aged couple,

and the lady remarkable for her more than ordinary plainness. Whereupon

Sir Robert, with considerable latitude of expression, intimated,

jokingly, that his friend was paying political court to the lord, in

order to veil a court of another kind addressed to the lady. Lord

Townshend, not understanding raillery on such a topic, grew angry, and

in defending himself against the charge of seducing old Lady Trevor,

was not content with employing phrases of honest indignation alone, but

used illustrations that no ‘lord’ would ever think of using before a

lady. Caroline grew uneasy, not at the growing indelicacy of phrase,

but at the angry feelings of the Peachum and Lockit of the court; and

‘to prevent Lord Townshend’s replying, or the thing being pushed any

further, only laughed, and began immediately to talk on some other

subject.’[4]

The mention of the heroes in Gay’s opera serves to remind me that, in

1729, the influence of the Queen was again exerted to lead the King to

do what he had not himself dreamed of doing.

Sir Robert Walpole must have been more ‘thin-skinned’ than he is

usually believed to have been, if he could really have felt wounded, as

it would appear was the case, by the alleged satire of the ‘Beggars’

Opera.’ The public would seem to have been the authors of such satire

rather than Gay, for they made application of many passages, to which

the writer of them probably attached no personal meaning.

The origin of the piece was certainly _not_ political. It was a mere

Newgate pastoral put into an operatic form, and intended to ridicule,

what it succeeded in overthrowing for a season, the newly introduced

Italian Opera. The piece had been refused by Cibber, and was accepted

by Rich, who brought it out at Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, on the 29th of

January 1728, with such success, that it was said of it, that it made

Gay rich, and Rich gay. Walker was the Macheath, and Miss Fenton,

afterwards Duchess of Bolton, the Polly--a character in which she

was not approached by either of her three immediate successors, Miss

Warren, Miss Cantrell, or sweet Kitty Clive. Johnson says of the piece

that it was plainly written only to divert--without any moral purpose,

and therefore not likely to do good. This is the truth, no doubt; and

if Gay put in a few strong passages just previous to representation,

it was the public application which gave them double force. Perhaps

the application would have been stronger if Quin had originally

played, as was intended, the part of Macheath. To step from Macbeth

to the highwayman might have had a political signification given to

it; and indeed Quin did play, and sing, the captain one night for his

benefit---just as another great tragedian, Young, did, within our own

recollection. However, never had piece such success. It was played at

every theatre in the kingdom, and every audience was as keenly alive

for passages which could be applied against the court and government as

they were for mere ridicule against the Italian Opera.

Caroline herself was probably not opposed to the _morale_ of the piece.

Her own chairmen were suspected of being in league with highwaymen,

and probably were; but on their being arrested and dismissed from her

service by the master of her household, who suspected their guilt,

she was indignant at the liberty taken and insisted on their being

restored. She had no objection to be safely carried by suspected

confederates of highwaymen.

The poverty of ‘Polly’ could not render it exempt from being made the

scapegoat for the ‘Beggars’ Opera,’ in which Walpole, from whom Gay

could not obtain a place, was said to be ‘shown-up,’ night after night,

as a thief and the friend of thieves. The ‘Beggars’ Opera’ had a run

before its satire was felt by him against whom it was chiefly directed.

‘Polly’ is very stupid and not satirical, but it was a favourite with

the author. The latter, therefore, was especially annoyed at receiving

an injunction from the lord chamberlain’s office, obtained at the

request of Sir Robert, whereby the representation of ‘Polly’ was

forbidden in every theatre. The poet determined to shame his enemies

by printing the piece with a smart political supplement annexed.

Gay was the ‘spoiled child’ of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry.

They espoused his cause; and the duchess was especially active, urgent,

and successful in procuring subscriptions--compelling them, by gentle

violence, even from the most reluctant. This zeal for the vexed poet

went so far that the duchess solicited subscriptions even in the

Queen’s apartment and in the royal drawing-room. There was something

pleasant in making even the courtiers subscribe towards the circulating

of a piece which royalty, through its official, had prohibited from

being acted. The zealous duchess was thus busy with three or four

gentlemen, in one corner of the room, when the King came upon them and

enquired the nature of her business. ‘It is a matter of humanity and

charity,’ said her grace, ‘and I do not despair but that your Majesty

will contribute to it.’ The Monarch disappointed Gay’s patroness in

this respect, but he exhibited no symptom whatever of displeasure,

and left her to her levying occupation. Subsequently, however, in the

Queen’s apartment, the subject was talked over between the royal pair,

and not till then did George perceive that the conduct of the duchess

was so impertinent that it was necessary to forbid her appearing again,

at least for the present, at court.

The King’s vice-chamberlain, Mr. Stanhope, was despatched with a verbal

message to this effect. The manner and the matter equally enraged

Gay’s patroness, and she delivered a note of acknowledgment to the

vice-chamberlain, in which she stated that she was both surprised and

gratified at the royal and agreeable command to stay away from court,

seeing that she had never gone there but for her own diversion, and

also from a desire of showing some civility to the King and Queen! The

lively lady further intimated, that perhaps it was as well that they

who dared to speak, or even think, truth, should be kept away from

a court where it was unpalatable; although she had thought that in

supporting truth and innocence in the palace, she was paying the very

highest compliment possible to both their Majesties.