This time he returned to his ‘old’ wife laden with a fresh sorrow--the

memory of a new favourite. He had left his heart with the insinuating

Walmoden, and he brought to his superb Caroline nothing but a tribute

of ill-humour and spite. He hated more than ever the change from an

Electorate where he was so delightfully despotic, to a country where

he was only chief magistrate, and where the people, through their

representatives, kept a very sharp watch upon him in the execution of

his duties. He was accordingly as coarse and evil-disposed towards the

circle of his court as he was to her who was the centre of it. He,

too, was like one of those pantomime potentates who are for ever in

King Cambyses’ vein, and who sweep through the scene in a whirlwind of

farcically furious words and of violent acts, or of threats almost as

bad as if the menaces had been actually realised. It was observed that

his behaviour to Caroline had never been so little tinged with outward

respect as now. She bore his ill-humour with admirable patience; and

her quiet endurance only the more provoked the petulance of the little

and worthless King.

He was not only ill-tempered with the mistress of the palace, but

was made, or chose to think himself, especially angry at trifling

improvements which Caroline had carried into effect in the suburban

palace during the temporary absence of its master. The improvements

consisted chiefly in removing some worthless pictures and indifferent

statues and placing master-pieces in their stead. The King would

have all restored to the condition it was in when he had last left

the palace; and he treated Lord Hervey as a fool for venturing to

defend the Queen’s taste and the changes which had followed the

exercise of it. ‘I suppose,’ said the dignified King to the courteous

vice-chamberlain, ‘I suppose you assisted the Queen with your fine

advice when she was pulling my house to pieces, and spoiling all my

furniture. Thank God! at least she has left the walls standing!’

Lord Hervey asked if he would not allow the two Vandykes which the

Queen had substituted for ‘two signposts,’ to remain. George pettishly

answered, that he didn’t care whether they were changed or no; ‘but,’

he added, ‘for the picture with the dirty frame over the door, and the

three nasty little children, I will have them taken away, and the old

ones restored. I will have it done, too, to-morrow morning, before I go

to London, or else I know it will not be done at all.’

Lord Hervey next enquired if his Majesty would also have ‘his gigantic

fat Venus restored too?’ The King replied that he would, for he liked

his fat Venus better than anything which had been put in its place.

Upon this Lord Hervey says _he_ fell to thinking ‘that if his Majesty

had liked his _fat Venus_ as well as he used to do, there would have

been none of these disputations.’

By a night’s calm repose the ill-humour of the Sovereign was not

dispersed. On the following morning we meet with the insufferable

little man in the gallery, where the Queen and her daughters were

taking chocolate; her son, the Duke of Cumberland, standing by. He only

stayed five minutes, but in that short time the husband and father

contrived to wound the feelings of his wife and children. ‘He snubbed

the Queen, who was drinking chocolate, for being always stuffing; the

Princess Amelia for not hearing him; the Princess Caroline for being

grown fat; the Duke of Cumberland for standing awkwardly; and then he

carried the Queen out to walk, to be re-snubbed in the garden.’[21]

Sir Robert Walpole told his friend Hervey that he had done his utmost

to prepare the Queen for this change in the King’s feelings and

actions towards her. He reminded her that her personal attractions

were not what they had been, and he counselled her to depend more

upon her intellectual superiority than ever. The virtuous man advised

her to secure the good temper of the King by throwing certain ladies

in his way of an evening. Sir Robert mentioned, among others, Lady

Tankerville, ‘a very safe fool, who would give the King some amusement

without giving her Majesty any trouble.’ Lady Deloraine, the _Delia_

from whose rage Pope bade his readers dread slander and poison, had

already attracted the royal notice, and the King liked to play cards

with her in his daughter’s apartments. This lady, who had the loosest

tongue of the least modest women about the court, was characterised by

Walpole as likely to exercise a dangerous influence over the King. If

Caroline would retain her power, he insinuated, she must select her

husband’s favourites, through whom she might still reign supreme.

Caroline is said to have taken this advice in good part. There would

be difficulty in believing that it ever was given did we not know that

the Queen herself could joke, not very delicately, in full court, on

her position as a woman not first in her husband’s regard. Sir Robert

would comment on these jokes in the same locality, and with increase of

coarseness. The Queen, however, though she affected to laugh, was both

hurt and displeased--hurt by the joke and displeased with the joker, of

whom Swift has said, that--

By favour and fortune fastidiously blest,

He was loud in his laugh and was coarse in his jest.

In spite of the King’s increased ill-temper towards the Queen, and in

spite of what Sir Robert Walpole thought and said upon that delicate

subject, Lord Hervey maintains that at this very time the King’s heart,

as affected towards the Queen, was not less warm than his temper. The

facts which are detailed by the gentle official immediately after he

has made this assertion go strongly to disprove the latter. The detail

involves a rather long extract; but its interest, and the elaborate

minuteness with which this picture of a royal interior is painted, will

doubtless be considered ample excuse for reproducing the passages. Lord

Hervey was eye and ear-witness of what he here so well describes:--

‘About nine o’clock every night the King used to return to the Queen’s

apartment from that of his daughter’s, where, from the time of Lady

Suffolk’s disgrace, he used to pass those evenings he did not go to

the opera or play at quadrille, constraining them, tiring himself, and

talking a little indecently to Lady Deloraine, who was always of the

party.

‘At his return to the Queen’s side, the Queen used often to send for

Lord Hervey to entertain them till they retired, which was generally

at eleven. One evening among the rest, as soon as Lord Hervey came

into the room, the Queen, who was knotting, while the King walked

backwards and forwards, began jocosely to attack Lord Hervey upon an

answer just published to a book of his friend Bishop Hoadly’s on the

Sacrament, in which the bishop was very ill-treated; but before she

had uttered half what she had a mind to say, the King interrupted her,

and told her she always loved talking of such nonsense, and things she

knew nothing of; adding, that if it were not for such foolish people

loving to talk of these things when they were written, the fools who

wrote upon them would never think of publishing their nonsense, and

disturbing the government with impertinent disputes that nobody of any

sense ever troubled himself about. The Queen bowed, and said, “Sir,

I only did it to let Lord Hervey know that his friend’s book had not

met with that general approbation he had pretended.” “A pretty fellow

for a friend!” said the King, turning to Lord Hervey. “Pray what is it

that charms you in him? His pretty limping gait?” And then he acted

the bishop’s lameness, and entered upon some unpleasant defects which

it is not necessary to repeat. The stomachs of the listeners must

have been strong, if they experienced no qualm at the too graphic and

nasty detail. “Or is it,” continued the King, “his great honesty that

charms your lordship? His asking a thing of me for one man, and when

he came to have it in his own power to bestow, refusing the Queen to

give it to the very man for whom he had asked it? Or do you admire his

conscience, that makes him now put out a book that, till he was Bishop

of Winchester, for fear his conscience might hurt his preferment, he

kept locked up in his chest? Is his conscience so much improved beyond

what it was when he was Bishop of Bangor, or Hereford, or Salisbury

--for this book, I fear, was written so long ago--or is it that he

would not risk losing a shilling a year more whilst there was anything

better to be got than what he had? I cannot help saying, that if the

Bishop of Winchester is your friend, you have a great puppy, and a very

dull fellow, and a great rascal, for your friend. It is a very pretty

thing for such scoundrels, when they are raised by favour above their

deserts, to be talking and writing their stuff, to give trouble to

the government which has showed them that favour; and very modest for

a canting, hypocritical knave to be crying that _the kingdom of Christ

is not of this world_ at the same time that he, as Christ’s ambassador,

receives 6,000_l._ or 7,000_l._ a year. But he is just the same thing

in the Church that he is in the government, and as ready to receive the

best pay for preaching the Bible, though he does not believe a word of

it, as he is to take favour from the Crown, though, by his republican

spirit and doctrine, he would be glad to abolish its power.”’

There is something melancholily suggestive in thus hearing the temporal

head of a Church accusing of rank infidelity a man whom he had raised

to be an overseer and bishop of souls in that very Church. If George

knew that Hoadly did not believe in Scripture, he was infinitely worse

than the prelate for the simple fact of his having made him a prelate,

or having translated him from one diocese to another of more importance

and more value. But, to resume:--

‘During the whole time the King was speaking, the Queen, by smiling

and nodding in proper places, endeavoured all she could, but in vain,

to make her court, by seeming to approve everything he said.’ Lord

Hervey then attempted to give a pleasant turn to the conversation by

remarking on prelates who were more docile towards government than

Hoadly, and who, for being dull branches of episcopacy, and ignorant

piecers of orthodoxy, were none the less good and quiet subjects. From

the persons of the Church the vice-chamberlain got to the fabric,

and then descanted to the Queen upon the newly restored bronze gates

in Henry VII.’s Chapel. This excited the King’s ire anew. ‘My lord,’

said he, ‘you are always putting some of these fine things in the

Queen’s head, and then I am to be plagued with a thousand plans and

workmen.’ He grew sarcastic, too, on the Queen’s grotto in Richmond

Gardens, which was known as _Merlin’s Cave_, from a statue of the great

enchanter therein; and in which there was a collection of books, over

which Stephen Duck, thresher, poet, and parson, had been constituted

librarian. The _Craftsman_ paper had attacked this plaything of the

Queen, and her husband was delighted at the annoyance caused to her by

such an attack.

The poor Queen probably thought _she_ had succeeded in cleverly

changing the topic of conversation by referring to and expressing

disapproval of the expensive habit of giving _vails_ to the servants of

the house at which a person has been visiting. She remarked that she

had found it no inconsiderable expense during the past summer to visit

her friends even in town. ‘That is your own fault,’ growled the King;

‘for my father, when he went to people’s houses in town, never was fool

enough to give away his money.’ The Queen pleaded that she only gave

what her chamberlain, Lord Grantham, informed her was usual; whereupon

poor Lord Grantham came in for his full share of censure. The Queen,

said her consort, ‘was always asking some fool or another what she was

to do, and that none but a fool would ask another fool’s advice.’

The vice-chamberlain gently hinted that liberality would be expected

from a Queen on such occasions as her visits at the houses of her

subjects. ‘Then let her stay at home, as I do,’ said the King. ‘You do

not see me running into every puppy’s house to see his new chairs and

stools.’ And then, turning to the Queen, he added: ‘Nor is it for _you_

to be running your nose everywhere, and to be trotting about the town,

to every fellow that will give you some bread and butter, like an old

girl who loves to go abroad, no matter where, or whether it be proper

or no.’ The Queen coloured, and knotted a good deal faster during this

speech than before; whilst the tears came into her eyes, but she said

not one word.

Such is the description of Lord Hervey, and it shows Caroline in a

favourable light. The vice-chamberlain struck in for her, by observing

that her Majesty could not see private collections of pictures without

going to the owners’ houses, and honouring them by her presence.

‘Supposing,’ said the King, ‘she had a curiosity to see a tavern,

would it be fit for her to satisfy it? and yet the innkeeper would be

very glad to see her.’ The vice-chamberlain did not fail to see that

this was a most illogical remark, and he very well observed, in reply,

that, ‘if the innkeepers were used to be well received by her Majesty

in her palace, he should think that the Queen’s seeing them at their

own houses would give no additional scandal.’ As George found himself

foiled by this observation, he felt only the more displeasure, and he

gave vent to the last by bursting forth into a torrent of German, which

sounded like abuse, and during the outpouring of which ‘the Queen made

not one word of reply, but knotted on till she tangled her thread, then

snuffed the candles that stood on the table before her, and snuffed one

of them out. Upon which the King, in English, began a new dissertation

upon her Majesty, and took her awkwardness for his text.’[22]

Unmoved as Caroline appeared at this degrading scene, she felt it

acutely; but she did not wish that others should be aware of her

feelings under such a visitation. Lord Hervey was aware of this; and

when, on the following morning, she remarked that he had looked at her

the evening before as if he thought she had been going to cry, the

courtier protested that he had neither done the one nor thought the

other, but had expressly directed his eyes on another object, lest if

they met hers, the comicality of the scene should have set both of

them laughing.

And such scenes were of constant occurrence. The King extracted

something unpleasant from his very pleasures, just as acids may be

produced from sugar. Sometimes he fell into a difficulty during the

process. Thus, on one occasion, when the party were again assembled

for their usual delightful evening, the Queen had mentioned the name

of a person whose father, she said, was known to the King. It was

at the time when his Majesty was most bitterly incensed against his

eldest son. Caroline was on better terms with Frederick; but, as she

remarked, they each knew the other too well to love or trust one

another. Well, the King hearing father and son alluded to, observed,

that ‘one very often sees fathers and sons very little alike; a wise

father has very often a fool for his son. One sees a father a very

brave man, and his son a scoundrel; a father very honest, and his son

a great knave; a father a man of truth, and his son a great liar;

in short, a father that has all sorts of good qualities, and a son

who is good for nothing.’[23] The Queen and all present betrayed, by

their countenances, that they comprehended the historical parallel;

whereupon the King attempted, as he thought, to make it less flagrantly

applicable, by running the comparison in another sense. ‘Sometimes,’

he said, ‘the case was just the reverse, and that very disagreeable

fathers had very agreeable men for their sons.’ In this case, the King,

as Lord Hervey suggests, was thinking of his own father, as in the

former one he had been thinking of his son.

But how he drew what was sour from the sweetest of his pleasures

is shown from his remarks after having been to the theatre to see

Shakspeare’s ‘Henry IV.’ He was tolerably well pleased with all the

actors, save the ‘Prince of Wales.’ He had never seen, he said,

so awkward a fellow and so mean a looking scoundrel in his life.

Everybody, says Lord Hervey, who hated the actual Prince of Wales

thought of him as the King here expressed himself of the player; ‘but

all very properly pretended to understand his Majesty literally, joined

in the censure, and abused the theatrical Prince of Wales for a quarter

of an hour together.’

It may be here noticed that Shakspeare owed some of his reputation, at

this time, to the dissensions which existed between the King and his

son. Had it, at least, not been for this circumstance, it is not likely

that the play of ‘Henry IV.’ would have been so often represented as

it was at the three theatres--Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, Covent Garden,

and Drury Lane. Every auditor knew how to make special application

of the complainings and sorrowings of a royal sire over a somewhat

profligate son; or of the unfilial speeches and hypocritical assurance

of a princely heir, flung at his Sovereign and impatient sire. The

house in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields had the reputation of being the Tory

house; and the Prince of Wales _there_ was probably represented as a

proper gentleman; not out of love to _him_, but rather out of contempt

to the father. It was not a house which received the favour of either

Caroline or her consort. The new pieces there ran too strongly against

the despotic rule of kings--the only sort of rule for which George

at all cared, and the lack of which made him constantly abusive of

England, her institutions, parliament, and public men. It is difficult

to say what the real opinion of Caroline was upon this matter, for at

divers times we find her uttering opposite sentiments. She could be as

abusive against free institutions and civil and religious rights as

ever her husband was. She has been heard to declare that sovereignty

was worth little where it was merely nominal, and that to be king or

queen in a country where people governed through their parliament was

to wear a crown and to exercise none of the prerogatives which are

ordinarily attached to it. At other times she would declare that the

real glory of England was the result of her free institutions; the

people were industrious and enterprising because they were free, and

knew that their property was secure from any attack on the part of

prince or government. They consequently regarded their sovereign with

more affection than a despotic monarch could be regarded by a slavish

people; and she added, that she would not have cared to share a throne

in England, if the people by whom it was surrounded had been slaves

without a will of their own, or without a heart that throbbed at the

name of liberty. The King never had but one opinion on the subject, and

_therefore_ the theatre at Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields was for ever resounding

with clap-traps against despotism, and _that_ in presence of an

audience of whom Frederick, Prince of Wales, was chief, and Bolingbroke

led the applause.

But even Drury Lane could be as democratic as Lincoln’s Inn. Thus,

in the very year of which we are treating, Lillo brought out his

‘Christian Hero’ at Drury Lane, and the audience had as little

difficulty to apply the parts to living potentates as they had

reluctance to applaud to the echo passages like the following against

despotic rulers:--

Despotic power, that root of bitterness,

That tree of death that spreads its baleful arms

Almost from pole to pole, beneath whose cursed shade

No good thing thrives, and every ill finds shelter,

Had found no time for its detested growth

But for the follies and the crimes of men.

But ‘Drury’ did not often offend in this guise, and even George and

Caroline might have gone to see ‘Junius Brutus,’ and have been amused.

The Queen, who well knew the corruption of the senate, might have

smiled as Mills, in Brutus, with gravity declared that the senators--

Have heaped no wealth, though hoary grown in honours,

and George might have silently assented to the reply of Cibber, Jun.,

in ‘Messala,’ that--

On crowns they trample with superior pride;

They haughtily affect the pomp of princes.

The Queen’s vice-chamberlain asserts that the King’s heart still beat

for Caroline as warmly as his temper did against her. This assertion

is not proved, but the contrary, by the facts. These facts were of so

painful a nature to the Queen that she did not like to speak of them,

even to Sir Robert Walpole. One of them is a precious instance of the

conjugal warmth of heart pledged for by Lord Hervey.

The night before the King had last left Hanover for England he supped

gaily, in company with Madame Walmoden and her friends, who were not

so _nice_ as to think that the woman who had deserted her husband

for a King who betrayed his consort had at all lost _caste_ by such

conduct. Towards the close of the banquet, the frail lady, all wreathed

in mingled tears and smiles, rose, and gave as a toast, or sentiment,

the ‘next 29th of May.’ On that day the old libertine had promised to

be again at the feet of his new concubine; and as this was known to

the select and delicate company, they drank the ‘toast’ amid shouts of

loyalty and congratulations.

The knowledge of this fact gave more pain to Caroline than all the

royal fits of ill-humour together. The pain was increased by the King’s

conduct at home. It had been his custom of a morning, at St. James’s,

to tarry in the Queen’s rooms until after he had, from behind the

blinds, seen the guard relieved in the court-yard below: this took

place about eleven o’clock. This year he ceased to visit the Queen or

to watch the soldiers; but by nine o’clock in the morning he was seated

at his desk, writing lengthy epistles to Madame Walmoden, in reply to

the equally long letters from the lady, who received and despatched a

missive every post.

‘He wants to go to Hanover, does he?’ asked Sir Robert Walpole of Lord

Hervey; ‘and to be there by the 29th of May. Well, he shan’t go for all

that.’

Domestic griefs could not depress the Queen’s wit. An illustration of

this is afforded by her remark on the _Triple Alliance_. ‘It always put

her in mind,’ she said, ‘of the _South Sea_ scheme, which the parties

concerned entered into, not without knowing the cheat, but hoping to

make advantage of it, everybody designing, when he had made his own

fortune, to be the first in scrambling out of it, and each thinking

himself wise enough to be able to leave his fellow-adventurers in the

lurch.’

It has been well observed that the King’s good humour was now as

insulting to her Majesty as his bad. When he was in the former rare

vein, he exhibited it by entertaining the Queen with accounts of her

rival, and the many pleasures which he and that lady had enjoyed

together. He appears at Hanover to have been as extravagant in the

entertainments which he gave as his grandfather, Ernest Augustus.

Some of these court revels he caused to be painted on canvas; the

ladies represented therein were all portraits of the actual revellers.

Several of such pictures were brought over to England, and five of

them were hung up in the Queen’s dressing-room. Occasionally, of an

evening, the King would take a candle from the Queen’s table, and go

from picture to picture, with Lord Hervey, telling him its history,

explaining the joyous incidents, naming the persons represented, and

detailing all that had been said or done on the particular occasion

before them. ‘During which lecture,’ says the vice-chamberlain himself,

‘Lord Hervey, while peeping over his Majesty’s shoulders at those

pictures, was shrugging up his own, and now and then stealing a look,

to make faces at the Queen, who, a little angry, a little peevish, and

a little tired at her husband’s absurdity, and a little entertained

with his lordship’s grimaces, used to sit and knot in a corner of the

room, sometimes yawning, and sometimes smiling, and equally afraid of

betraying those signs, either of her lassitude or mirth.’

In the course of the year which we have now reached, Queen Caroline

communicated to Lord Hervey a fact, which is not so much evidence of

her Majesty’s common-sense, as of the presumption and immorality of

those who gave Caroline little credit for having even the sense which

is so qualified. Lord Bolingbroke had married the Marchioness de

Villette, niece of Madame de Maintenon, about the year 1716. The union,

however, was not only kept secret for many years, but when Bolingbroke

was under attainder, and a sum of 52,000_l._ belonging to his wife was

in the hands of Decker, the banker, Lady Bolingbroke swore that she

was not married to him, and so obtained possession of a sum which,

being hers, was her husband’s, and which being her husband’s, who was

attainted as a traitor, was forfeit to the Crown. However, as some of

it went through the hands of poor Sophia Dorothea’s rival, the easy

Duchess of Kendal, and her rapacious niece, Lady Walsingham, the matter

was not enquired into. Subsequently Lady Bolingbroke attempted to

excuse her husband’s alleged dealings with the Pretender, by asserting

that he entered into them solely for the purpose of serving the Court

of London. ‘That was, in short,’ said Caroline to Lord Hervey, ‘to

betray the Pretender; for though Madame de Villette softened the word,

she did not soften the thing, which I own,’ continued the Queen, ‘was

a speech which had so much impudence and villainy mixed up in it, that

I could never bear him or her from that hour, and could hardly hinder

myself from saying to her--“And pray, madam, what security can the King

have that my Lord Bolingbroke does not desire to come here with the

same honest desire that he went to Rome? or that he swears that he is

no longer a Jacobite, with any more truth than you have sworn you are

not his wife?”’ The only wonder is, considering Caroline’s vivacious

character, that she restrained herself from giving expression to her

thoughts. She was eminently fond of ‘speaking daggers’ to those who

merited such a gladiatorial visitation.

CHAPTER V.

THE MARRIAGE OF FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES.

The Queen’s cleverness--Princess Augusta of Saxe Gotha, the

selected bride of Prince Frederick--Spirited conduct of

Miss Vane, the Prince’s mistress--The King anxious for a

matrimonial alliance with the Court of Prussia--Prussian

intrigue to prevent this--The Prussian _mandats_ for entrapping

recruits--Quarrel, and challenge to duel, between King George

and the Prussian monarch--The silly duel prevented--Arrival

of the bride--The royal lovers--Disgraceful squabbles of the

Princes and Princesses--The marriage--Brilliant assemblage

in the bridal chamber--Lady Diana Spencer proposed as a match

for the Prince--_Débût_ of Mr. Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham,

in the House of Commons--Riot of the footmen at Drury Lane

Theatre--Ill-humour exhibited by the Prince towards the Queen.

The Queen never exhibited her _cleverness_ in a clearer light than

when, in 1735, she got over the expected difficulty arising from a

threatened parliamentary address to the throne for the marriage and

settlement of the Prince of Wales. She ‘crushed’ it, to use the term

employed by Lord Hervey, by gaining the King’s consent--no difficult

matter--to tell the prince that it was his royal sire’s intention to

marry him forthwith. The King had no princess in view for him; but was

ready to sanction any choice he might think proper to make, and the

sooner the better. As if the thing were already settled, the Queen, on

her side, talked publicly of the coming marriage of the heir-apparent;

but not a word was breathed as to the person of the bride. Caroline,

moreover, to give the matter a greater air of reality, purchased

clothes for the wedding of her son with the yet ‘invisible lady,’ and

sent perpetually to jewellers to get presents for the ideal future

Princess of Wales.

The lady, however, was not a merely visionary bride. It was during the

absence of the King in Hanover that it was delicately contrived for him

to see a marriageable princess--Augusta of Saxe Gotha. He approved of

what he saw, and wrote home to the Queen, bidding her to prepare her

son for the bridal.

Caroline communicated the order to Frederick, who received it with due

resignation. His mother, who had great respect for outward observances,

counselled him to begin his preparations for marriage by sending

away his ostentatiously maintained _favourite_, Miss Vane. Frederick

pleased his mother by dismissing Miss Vane, and then pleased himself

by raising to the vacant bad eminence Lady Archibald Hamilton, a woman

of thirty-five years of age and the mother of ten children. The prince

visited her at her husband’s house, where he was as well received by

the master as by the mistress. He saw her constantly at her sister’s,

rode out with her, walked with her daily for hours in St. James’s

Park, ‘and, whenever she was at the drawing-room (which was pretty

frequently), his behaviour was so remarkable that his nose and her

ear were inseparable, whilst, without discontinuing, he would talk to

her as if he had rather been relating than conversing, from the time

he came into the room to the moment he left it, and then seemed to be

rather interrupted than to have finished.’[24]

The first request made by Lady Archibald to her royal lover was,

that he would not be satisfied with putting away Miss Vane; but that

he would send her out of the country. The prince did not hesitate a

moment; he sent a royal message, wherein he was guilty of an act of

which no _man_ would be guilty to the woman whom he had loved. The

message was taken by Lord Baltimore, who bore proposals, offering an

annuity of 1,600_l._ a year to the lady, on condition that she would

proceed to the continent, and give up the little son which owed to her

the disgrace of his birth, but to whom both she and the prince were

most affectionately attached. The alternative was starvation in England.

Miss Vane had an old admirer, to whom she sent in the hour of

adversity, and who was the more happy to aid her in her extremity as,

by so doing, he would not only have some claim on her gratitude, but

that he could, to the utmost of his heart’s desire, annoy the prince,

whom he intensely despised.

Lord Hervey sat down, and imagining himself for the nonce in the place

of Miss Vane, he wrote a letter in that lady’s name. The supposed

writer softly reproved the fickle prince, reminded him of the fond

old times ere love yet had expired, resigned herself to the necessity

of sacrificing her own interests to that of England, and then running

over the sacrifices which a foolish woman must ever make--of character,

friends, family, and peace of mind--for the fool or knave whom she

loves with more irregularity than wisdom, she burst forth into a tone

of indignation at the mingled meanness and cruelty of which she was now

made the object, and finally refused to leave either England or her

child, spurning the money offered by the father, and preferring any

fate which might come, provided she were not banished from the presence

and the love of her boy.

Frederick was simple enough to exhibit this letter to his mother,

sisters, and friends, observing at the same time that it was far too

clever a production to come from the hand of Miss Vane, and that he

would not give her a farthing until she had revealed the name of the

‘rascal’ who had written it. The author was popularly set down as being

Mr. Pulteney.

On the other hand, Miss Vane published the prince’s offer to her,

and therewith her own letter in reply. The world was unanimous in

condemning him as mean and cruel. Not a soul ever thought of finding

fault with him as immoral. At length a compromise was effected. The

prince explained away the cruel terms of his own epistle, and Miss Vane

withdrew what was painful to him in hers. The pension of 1,600_l._

a year was settled on her, with which she retired to a mansion in

Grosvenor Street, her little son accompanying her. But the anxiety

she had undergone had so seriously affected her health that she was

very soon after compelled to proceed to Bath. The waters were not

healing waters for her. She died in that city, on the 11th of March

1736, having had one felicity reserved for her in her decline, the

inexpressible one of seeing her little son die before her. ‘The Queen

and the Princess Caroline,’ says Lord Hervey, ‘thought the prince more

afflicted for the loss of this child than they had ever seen him on any

occasion, or thought him capable of being.’

One of the most cherished projects of George the Second was the union

by marriage of two of his own children with two of the children of the

King of Prussia. Such an alliance would have bound more intimately

the descendants of Sophia Dorothea through her son and daughter. The

double marriage was proposed to the King of Prussia, in the name of

the King of England, by Sir Charles Hotham, minister-plenipotentiary.

George proposed that his eldest son, Frederick, should marry the eldest

daughter of the King of Prussia, and that his second daughter should

marry the same King’s eldest son. To these terms the Prussian monarch

would not agree, objecting that if he gave _his_ eldest daughter to the

Prince of Wales, he must have the eldest, and not the second, daughter

of George and Caroline for the Prince of Prussia. Caroline would have

agreed to these terms; but George would not yield: the proposed

intermarriages were broken off, and the two courts were estranged for

years.

The Prussian princess, Frederica Wilhelmina, has published the memoirs

of her life and times; and Ranke, quoting them in his ‘History of the

House of Brandenburgh,’ enters largely into the matrimonial question,

which was involved in mazes of diplomacy. Into the latter it is not

necessary to enter; but to those who would know the actual causes of

the failure of these proposed royal marriages the following passage

from Ranke’s work will not be without interest:--

‘Whatever be their exaggerations and errors, the memoirs of the

Princess Frederica Wilhelmina must always be considered as one of

the most remarkable records of the state of the Prussian court of

that period. From these it is evident that neither she herself, nor

the Queen, had the least idea of the grounds which made the King

reluctant to give an immediate consent to the proposals. They saw

in him a domestic tyrant, severe only towards his family, and weak

to indifferent persons. The hearts on both sides became filled with

bitterness and aversion. The Crown Prince, too, who was still of an

age when young men are obnoxious to the influence of a clever elder

sister, was infected with these sentiments. With a view to promote

her marriage, he suffered himself to be induced to draw up in secret

a formal declaration that he would give his hand to no other than

an English princess. On the other hand, it is inconceivable to what

measures the other party had recourse, in order to keep the King steady

to his resolution. Seckendorf had entirely won over General Grumbkoo,

the King’s daily and confidential companion, to his side; both of them

kept up a correspondence of a revolting nature with Reichenbach, the

Prussian resident in London. This Reichenbach, who boasts somewhere

of his indifference to outward honours, and who was, at all events,

chiefly deficient in an inward sense of honour, not only kept up a

direct correspondence with Seckendorf, in which he informed him of all

that was passing in England in relation to the marriage, and assured

the Austrian agent that he might reckon on him as on himself; but,

what is far worse, he allowed Grumbkoo to dictate to him what he was

to write to the King, and composed his despatches according to his

directions. It is hardly conceivable that these letters should not have

been destroyed; they were, however, found among Grumbkoo’s papers at

his death. Reichenbach, who played a subordinate part, but who regarded

himself as the third party to this conspiracy, furnished on his side

facts and arguments which were to be urged orally to the King, in

support of his statements. Their system was to represent to the King

that the only purpose of England was to reduce Prussia to the condition

of a province, and to turn a party around him that might fetter and

control all his actions; representations to which Frederick William

was already disposed to lend an ear. He wished to avoid having an

English daughter-in-law because he feared he should be no longer master

in his own house; perhaps she would think herself of more importance

than he; he should die, inch by inch, of vexation. On comparing these

intrigues, carried on on either side of the King, we must admit that

the former--those in his own family--were the more excusable, since

their sole object was the accomplishment of those marriages, upon

the mere suspicion of which the King broke out into acts of violence

which terrified his family and his kingdom and astonished Europe. The

designs of the other party were far more serious; their purpose was to

bind Prussia in every point to the existing system, and to keep her

aloof from England. Of this the King had no idea; he received without

suspicion whatever Reichenbach wrote or Grumbkoo reported to him.’

The mutual friends, whose interest it was to keep Prussia and England

wide apart, laboured with a zeal worthy of a better cause, and not only

broke the proposed marriages, but made enemies of the two Kings. A

dispute was built up between them touching Mecklenburgh; and Prussian

press-gangs and recruiting parties crossed into the Hanoverian

territory, and carried off or inveigled the King of England’s Electoral

subjects into the military service of Prussia. This was the most

outrageous insult that could have been devised against the English

monarch, and it was the most cruel that could be inflicted upon the

inhabitants of the Electorate.

The King of Prussia was not nice of his means for entrapping men, nor

careful on whose territory he seized them, provided only they were

obtained. The districts touching on the Prussian frontier were kept in

a constant state of alarm, and border frays were as frequent and as

fatal as they were on England and Scotland’s _neutral_ ground, which

derived its name from an oblique application of etymology, and was so

called because neither country’s faction hesitated to commit murder

or robbery upon it. I have seen in the inns near these frontiers some

strange memorials of these old times. Those I allude to are in the

shape of _mandats_, or directions, issued by the authorities, and

they are kept framed and glazed, old curiosities, like the ancient

way-bill at the _Swan_ at York, which announces a new fast coach

travelling to London, God willing, in a week. These _mandats_, which

were very common in Hanover when Frederick, after refusing the English

alliance, took to sending his _Werbers_, or recruiters, to lay hold

of such of the people as were likely to make good tall soldiers, were

to this effect: they enjoined all the dwellers near the frontiers to

be provided with arms and ammunition; the militia to hold themselves

ready against any surprise; the arms to be examined every Sunday

by the proper authorities; watch and ward to be maintained day and

night; patrols to be active; and it was ordered, that, the instant

any strange soldiers were seen approaching, the alarm-bells should be

sounded and preparations be made for repelling force by force. The

Prussian _Werbers_, as they were called, were wont sometimes to do

their spiriting in shape so questionable that the most anti-belligerent

travellers and the most unwarlike and well-intentioned bodies were

liable to be fired upon if their characters were not at once explained

and understood. These were times when Hanoverians, who stood in fear of

Prussia, never lay down in bed but with arms at their side; times when

young peasants who, influenced by soft attractions, stole by night from

one village to another to pay their _devoirs_ to bright eyes waking to

receive them, walked through perils, love in their hearts, and a musket

on their shoulders. The enrollers of Frederick, and indeed those of his

great son after him, cast a chill shadow of fear over every age, sex,

and station of life.

In the meantime the two Kings reviled each other as coarsely as any two

dragoons in their respective services. The quarrel was nursed until

it was proposed to be settled, not by diplomacy, but by a duel. When

this was first suggested, the place, but not the time, of meeting, was

immediately agreed upon. The territory of Hildesheim was to be the spot

whereon were to meet in deadly combat two monarchs--two fathers, who

could not quietly arrange a marriage between their sons and daughters.

It really seemed as if the blood of Sophia Dorothea of Zell was ever to

be fatal to peace and averse from connubial felicity.

The son of Sophia Dorothea selected Brigadier-General Sutton for his

second. Her son-in-law (it will be remembered that he had married

that unhappy lady’s daughter) conferred a similar honour on Colonel

Derschein. His English Majesty was to proceed to the designated

arena from Hanover; Frederick was to make his way thither from

Saltzdhal, near Brunswick. The two Kings of Brentford could not have

looked more ridiculous than these two. They would, undoubtedly, have

crossed weapons, had it not been for the strong common sense of a

Prussian diplomatist, named Borck. ‘It is quite right and exceedingly

dignified,’ said Borck one day, to his master, when the latter was

foaming with rage against George the Second, and expressing an eager

desire for fixing a near day whereon to settle their quarrel--‘it

is most fitting and seemly, since your Majesty will not marry with

England, to cut the throat, if possible, of the English monarch;

but your faithful servant would still advise your Majesty not to

be over-hasty in fixing the day: ill-luck might come of it.’ On

being urged to show how this might be, he remarked--‘Your gracious

Majesty has lately been ill, is now far from well, and might, by

naming an early day for voidance of this quarrel, be unable to keep

the appointment.’ ‘We would name another,’ said the King. ‘And in

the meantime,’ observed Borck, ‘all Europe generally, and George of

England in particular, would be smiling, laughing, commenting on, and

ridiculing the King who failed to appear where he had promised to be

present with his sword. Your Majesty must not expose your sacred person

and character to such a catastrophe as this: settle nothing till there

is certainty that the pledge will be kept; and, in the meantime, defer

naming the day of battle for a fortnight.’

The advice of Borck was followed, and of course the fight never ‘came

off.’ The ministers of both governments exerted themselves to save

their respective masters from rendering themselves supremely, and

perhaps sanguinarily, ridiculous--for the blood of both would not have

washed out the absurdity of the thing. Choler abated, common-sense

came up to the surface, assumed the supremacy, and saved a couple of

foolish kings from slaying or mangling each other. George, however, was

resolved, and that for more reasons than it is necessary to specify,

that a wife must be found for his heir-apparent; and it was Caroline

who directed him to look at the princesses in the small and despotic

court of Saxe Gotha. Walpole was the more anxious that the Prince of

Wales should be fittingly matched, as a report had reached him that

Frederick had accepted an offer from the Duchess of Marlborough of a

hundred thousand pounds and the hand of her favourite grand-daughter,

Lady Diana Spencer. The marriage, it was said, was to come off

privately, at the duchess’s lodge in Richmond Park.

Lord Delawar, who was sent to demand the hand of the Princess Augusta

from her brother, the Duke of Saxe Gotha, was long, lank, awkward, and

unpolished. There was no fear here of the catastrophe which followed on

the introduction to Francesca da Rimini of the handsome envoy whom she

mistook for her bridegroom, and with whom she fell in love as soon as

she beheld him.

Walpole, writing from King’s College on the 2nd of May 1736, says: ‘I

believe the princess will have more beauties bestowed upon her by the

occasional poets than even a painter would afford her. They will cook

up a new Pandora, and in the bottom of the box enclose Hope--that all

they have said is true. A great many, out of excess of good breeding,

who have heard that it was rude to talk Latin before women, proposed

complimenting her in English; which she will be much the better for. I

doubt most of them, instead of fearing their compositions should not be

understood, should fear they should; they wish they don’t know what to

be read by they don’t know who.’

When the King despatched some half dozen lords of his council to

propose to the prince that he should espouse the youthful Princess

Augusta, he replied, with a tone of mingled duty and indifference,

something like Captain Absolute in the play, that ‘whoever his Majesty

thought a proper match for his son would be agreeable to him.’

The match was straightway resolved upon; and as the young lady knew

little of French and less of English, it was suggested to her mother

that a few lessons in both languages would not be thrown away. The

Duchess of Saxe Gotha, however, was wiser in her own conceit than her

officious counsellors; and remembering that the Hanoverian family had

been a score of years, and more, upon the throne of England, she very

naturally concluded that the people all spoke or understood German,

and that it would really be needlessly troubling the child to make her

learn two languages, to acquire a knowledge of which would not be worth

the pains spent upon the labour.

When princesses then espoused heirs to thrones they were treated but

with very scanty ceremony. Their own feelings were allowed to exercise

very little influence in the matter; there was no pleasant wooing time;

the bridegroom did not even give himself the trouble to seek the bride

--he does not always do so, even now; and when the bride married the

deputy who was despatched to espouse her by proxy, she knew as little

of the principal as she did of his representative. But the blooming

young Princess of Saxe Gotha submitted joyfully to custom and the

chance of becoming Queen of England. She was willing to come and win

what the Prince of Wales, had not dignity made him ungallant, should

have gone and laid at her feet and besought her to accept. Accordingly,

the royal yacht, _William and Mary_, destined to carry many a less

noble freight before its career was completed, bore the bride to our

shores. When Lord Delawar handed the bride ashore at Greenwich, on

the 25th of April 1736, she excited general admiration by her fresh

air, good humour, and tasteful dress. It was St. George’s day; no

inauspicious day whereon landing should be made in England by the young

girl of seventeen, who was to be the mother of the first king born and

bred in England since the birthday of James II.

The royal bride was conducted to the Queen’s house in the park, where,

as my fair readers, and indeed _all_ readers with equal good sense and

a proper idea of the fitness of things, will naturally conclude that

all the royal family had assembled to welcome, with more than ordinary

warmth, one who came among them under circumstances of more than

ordinary interest. But the truth is that there was no one to give her

welcome but solemn officers of state and criticising ladies-in-waiting.

The _people_ were there of course, and the princess had no cause to

complain of any lack of warmth on their part. For want of better

company, she spent half an hour with the English commonalty; and as

she sat in the balcony overlooking the park, the gallant mob shouted

themselves hoarse in her praise, and did her all homage until the

tardy lover arrived, whose own peculiar homage he should have been

in a little more lover-like haste to pay. However, Frederick came at

last, and he came alone. The King, Queen, duke, and princesses sent

‘their compliments, and hoped she was well!’ They could not have sent

or said less had she been Griselda, fresh from her native cottage and

about to become the bride of the prince without their consent and

altogether without their will. But the day was Sunday, and perhaps

those distinguished personages were reluctant to indulge in too much

expansion of feeling on the sacred day.

On the following day, Monday, Greenwich was as much alive as it used

to be on a fine fair-day: for the princess dined in public, and all

the world was there to see her. That is to say, she and the prince

dined together in an apartment the windows of which were thrown open

‘to oblige the curiosity of the people;’ and it is only to be hoped

that the springs of the period were not such inclement seasons as

those generally known by the name of spring to us. The people having

stared their fill, and the princess having banqueted as comfortably

as she could under such circumstances, the Prince of Wales took her

down to the water, led her into a gaily decorated barge, and slowly up

the river went the lovers--with horns playing, streamers flying, and

under a fusillade from old stocks of old guns, the modest artillery

of colliers and Other craft anxious to render to the pair the usual

noisy honours of the way. They returned to Greenwich in like manner,

similarly honoured, and there, having supped in public, the prince

kissed her hand, took his leave, and promised to return upon the morrow.

On the Tuesday the already enamoured Frederick thought better of his

engagement, and tarried at home till the princess arrived there. She

had left Greenwich in one of the royal carriages, from which she

alighted at Lambeth, where, taking boat, she crossed to Whitehall.

Here one of Queen Caroline’s state chairs was awaiting her, and in

it she was borne, by two stout carriers, plump as Cupids but more

vigorous, to St. James’s Palace. The reception here was magnificent and

tasteful. On the arrival of the bride, the bridegroom, already there

to receive her, took her by the hand as she stepped out of the chair,

softly checked the motion she made to kneel to him and kiss his hand,

and, drawing her to him, gallantly impressed a kiss--nay two, for the

record is very precise on this matter--upon her lips. All confusion and

happiness, the illustrious couple ascended the staircase hand in hand.

The prince led her into the presence of a splendid and numerous court,

first introducing her to the King, who would not suffer her to kneel,

but, putting his arm around her, sainted her on each cheek. Queen

Caroline greeted as warmly the bride of her eldest son; and the Duke of

Cumberland and the princesses congratulated her on her arrival in terms

of warm affection.

The King, who had been irritably impatient for the arrival of the

bride, and had declared that the ceremony should take place without

him if it were not speedily concluded, was softened by the behaviour

of the youthful princess on her first appearing in his presence. ‘She

threw herself all along on the floor, first at the King’s and then at

the Queen’s feet.’[25] This prostration was known to be so acceptable

a homage to his Majesty’s pride, that, joined to the propriety of

her whole behaviour on this occasion, it gave the spectators great

prejudice in favour of her understanding.

The poor young princess, who came into England unaccompanied by a

single female friend, behaved with a propriety and ease which won the

admiration of Walpole and the sneers of old ladies who criticised

her. Her self-possession, joined as it was with modesty, showed that

she was ‘well-bred.’ She was not irreproachable of shape or carriage,

but she was fair, youthful, and sensible--much more sensible than the

bridegroom, who quarrelled with his brothers and sisters, in her very

presence, upon the right of sitting down and being waited on in such

presence!

The squabbles between the brothers and sisters touching etiquette show

the extreme littleness of the minds of those who engaged in them.

The prince would have had them, on the occasion of their dining with

himself and bride the day before the wedding, be satisfied with stools

instead of chairs, and consent to being served with something less than

the measure of respect shown to _him_ and the bride. To meet this, they

refused to enter the dining-room till the stools were taken away and

chairs substituted. They then were waited upon by their own servants,

who had orders to imitate the servants of the Prince of Wales in every

ceremony used at table. Later in the evening, when coffee was brought

round by the prince’s servants, his visitors declined to take any, out

of fear that their brother’s domestics might have had instructions to

inflict ‘some disgrace (had they accepted of any) in the manner of

giving it!’

On the day of the arrival of the bride at St. James’s, after a dinner

of some state, and after some rearrangement of costume, the ceremony of

marriage was performed, under a running salute from artillery, which

told to the metropolis the progress made in the nuptial solemnity. The

bride ‘was in her hair,’ and wore a crown with one bar, as Princess

of Wales, a profusion of diamonds adding lustre to a youthful bearing

that could have done without it. Over her white robe she wore a mantle

of crimson velvet, bordered with row upon row of ermine. Her train

was supported by four ‘maids,’ three of whom were daughters of dukes.

They were Lady Caroline Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond;

Lady Caroline Fitzroy, daughter of the Duke of Grafton; Lady Caroline

Cavendish, daughter of the Duke of Devonshire,--and with the three

bridesmaids who bore the name of the Queen was one who bore that of

her whom the King had looked upon as really Queen of England--of

Sophia, his mother. This fourth lady was Lady Sophia Fermor, daughter

of the Earl of Pomfret. Excepting the mantle, the ‘maids’ were dressed

precisely similar to the ‘bride’ whom they surrounded and served. They

were all in ‘virgin habits of silver.’ Each bridesmaid wore diamonds

of the value of from twenty to thirty thousand pounds.

The Duke of Cumberland performed the office of father to the bride,

and they were ushered to the altar by the Duke of Grafton and Lord

Hervey, the lord and vice-chamberlains of the household. The Countess

of Effingham and the other ladies of the household left the Queen’s

side to swell the following of the bride. The Lord Bishop of London,

Dean of the Chapel Royal, officiated on this occasion; and when he

pronounced the two before him to have become as one, voices in harmony

arose within, the trumpets blazoned forth their edition of the event,

the drums rolled a deafening peal, a clash of instruments followed, and

above all boomed the thunder of the cannon in the park, telling in a

million echoes of the conclusion of the irrevocable compact. A little

ceremony followed in the King’s drawing-room, which was in itself

appropriate, and which seemed to have heart in it. On the assembling

there of the entire bridal party, the newly-married couple went, once

more hand in hand, and kneeling before the King and his consort, who

were seated at the upper end of the room, the latter solemnly gave

their blessing to their children and bade them be happy.

A royally joyous supper succeeded, at half-past ten, where healths

were drunk and a frolicsome sort of spirit maintained, as was common

in those somewhat ‘common’ times. And then followed a sacred portion

of the ceremony, which is now considered as being more honoured in the

breach than the observance. The bride was conducted processionally to

her sleeping apartment; while the prince was helped to disrobe by his

royal sire, and his brother the duke. The latter aided in divesting him

of some of his heavy finery, and the King very gravely ‘did his royal

highness, the prince, the honour to put on his shirt.’ All this must

have been considered more than nuisance enough by the parties on whom

it was inflicted by way of honour, but the newly-married victims of

that day had much more to endure.

When intimation had been duly made that the princess had been undressed

and re-dressed by her maids, and was seated in the bed ready to receive

all customary and suitable honour, the King and Queen entered the

chamber. The former was attired in a dress of gold brocade, turned up

with silk, embroidered with large flowers in silver and colours, with

a waistcoat of the same, and buttons and star dazzling with diamonds.

Caroline was in ‘a plain yellow silk, robed and faced with pearls,

diamonds, and other jewels, of immense value. The Dukes of Newcastle,

Grafton, and St. Albans, the Earl of Albemarle, Colonel Pelham, and

many other noblemen, were in gold brocades of from three to five

hundred pounds a suit. The Duke of Marlborough was in a white velvet

and gold brocaded tissue. The waistcoats were universally brocades with

large flowers. It was observed,’ continues the court historiographer,

‘most of the rich clothes were of the manufactures of England, and in

honour of our own artists. The few which were French did not come up to

those in goodness, richness, or fancy, as was seen by the clothes worn

by the royal family, which were all of the British manufacture. The

cuffs of the sleeves were universally deep and open, the waists long,

and the plaits more sticking out than ever. The ladies were principally

in brocades of gold and silver, and wore their sleeves much lower than

had been done for some time.’

When all these finely dressed people were assembled, and the bride

was sitting upright in bed, in a dress of superb lace, the princely

bridegroom entered, ‘in a nightgown of silver stuff and cap of the

finest lace.’ He must have looked like a facetious prince in a

Christmas extravaganza. However, he took his place by the side of

the bride; and while both sat ‘bolt upright’ in bed, the ‘quality’

generally were admitted to see the sight, and to smile at the edifying

remarks made by the King and other members of the royal family who

surrounded the couch.

The record of this happy event would hardly be complete were we to

omit to notice that it was made the occasion of a remarkable _débût_

in the House of Commons. An address congratulatory of the marriage

was moved by Mr. Lyttelton, and the motion was seconded by Mr. Pitt,

subsequently the first Earl of Chatham, who then made his first speech

in parliament. The speech made by Lyttelton was squeaking and smart.

That of Cornet Pitt, as he was called, was so favourable to the virtues

of the son, and, by implication, so insulting to the person of the

father, that it laid the foundation of the lasting enmity of George

against Pitt--an enmity the malevolence of which was first manifested

by depriving Pitt of his cornetcy. The poets were, of course, as

polite as the senators, and epithalamia rained upon the happy pair in

showers of highly complimentary and very indifferent verse. The lines

of Whitehead, the laureate, were tolerably good, for a laureate, and

the following among them have been cited ‘as containing a wish which

succeeding events fully gratified.’

Such was the age, so calm the earth’s repose,

When Maro sung and a new Pollio rose.

Oh! from such omens may again succeed

Some glorious youth to grace the nuptial bed;

Some future Scipio, good as well as great,

Some young Marcellus with a better fate:

Some infant Frederick, or some George, to grace

The rising records of the Brunswick race.

If these set ringing the most harmonious of the echoes which Parnassus

could raise on the occasion, the other metrical essays must have been

wretched things indeed. But the Muse at that time was not a refined

muse. If a laureate would only find rhyme, decency and logic were

gladly dispensed with.

The prince was very zealous and painstaking in introducing his bride to

the people. For this purpose they were often together at the theatre.

On one of these occasions the princess must have had but an indifferent

idea of the civilisation of the people over whom she fairly expected

one day to reign as queen-consort. The occasion alluded to was on

the 3rd of May 1736, when great numbers of footmen assembled, with

weapons, in a tumultuous manner, broke open the doors of Drury Lane

Theatre, and fighting their way to the stage-doors, which they forced

open, they prevented the Riot Act being read by Colonel de Veal, who

nevertheless arrested some of the ringleaders and committed them to

Newgate. In this tumult, founded on an imaginary grievance that the

footmen had been illegally excluded from the gallery, to which they

claimed to go _gratis_, many persons were severely wounded, and the

terrified audience hastily separated; the prince and princess, with a

large number of persons of distinction, retiring when the tumult was at

its highest. The Princess of Wales had never witnessed a popular tumult

before; and, though this was ridiculous in character, it was serious

enough of aspect to disgust her with that part of ‘the majesty of the

people’ which was covered with _plush_.

The King, in spite of Sir Robert Walpole’s threat, proceeded to

Hanover in the month of May. Before he quitted England he sent word

to his son that, wherever the Queen Regent resided, _there_ would be

apartments for the Prince and Princess of Wales. Frederick looked

upon this measure in its true light, namely, as making him a sort of

prisoner, and preventing the possibility of two separate courts in the

King’s absence. The prince determined to disobey his father and thwart

his mother. When the Queen removed from one residence to another, he

feigned preparations to follow her, and then feigned obstructions to

them. He pleaded an illness of the princess which did not exist, and

was surprised that his medical men declined to back up _his_ lie by

another of their own. The Queen on her side, feigning anxious interest

in her daughter-in-law, visited her in her imaginary illness; but the

patient, who was first said to be suffering from measles, then from a

rash, and finally was declared to be really indisposed with a cold,

was kept in a darkened room, and was otherwise so trained to deceive

that Caroline left the bed-side as wise as when she went to it. In this

conduct towards his mother Frederick was chiefly influenced by his

ill-humour at the Queen’s being appointed regent. When she opened the

commission at Kensington, which she always did as soon as she received

intelligence of the landing of the King in Holland, Frederick would not

attend the council, but contrived to reach the palace just after the

members had concluded their business.

CHAPTER VI.

AT HOME AND OVER THE WATER.

The Queen and Walpole govern the kingdom--The bishops reproved

by the Queen--Good wishes for the bishops entertained by the

King--Anecdote of Bishop Hare--Riots--An infernal machine--Wilson

the smuggler and the Porteous mob--General Moyle--Coldness of the

Queen for the King--Walpole advises her Majesty--Unworthy conduct

of Caroline and vice of her worthless husband--Questionable

fidelity of Madame Walmoden--Conduct of the Princess at the

Chapel Royal--The Princess and her doll--Pasquinades, &c. on

the King--Farewell royal supper at Hanover--Dangerous voyage

of the King--Anxiety of the Court about him--Unjust blame

thrown on Admiral Wager--The Queen congratulates the King on his

escape--The King’s warm reply--Discussions about the Prince’s

revenue--Investigation into the affairs of the Porteous mob--The

Queen and the Bill for reduction of the National Debt--Vice in

high life universal--Represented on the stage, occasions the

censorship--Animosity of the Queen and Princesses towards Prince

Frederick.

Though the King delegated all royal power to the Queen, as regent

during his absence, he exercised his kingly office when in Hanover by

signing commissions for officers. The Queen would not consent that

objection should be taken to this course followed by her husband, or

that any representation should be made to him on the subject. Such

acts, indeed, did not interfere with her great power as regent--a

power which she wielded in union with Walpole. These two persons

governed the kingdom according to their own councils; but the minister,

nevertheless, placed every conclusion at which he and the Queen had

arrived before the cabinet council, by the obsequious members of

which the conclusions, whatever they were, were sanctioned, and the

necessary documents signed. Thus Walpole, by the side of the Queen,

acted as independently as if he had been King; but of his acts he

managed to make the cabinet share with him the responsibility.

The office exercised by the Queen was far from being a sinecure or

exempt from great anxieties; but it was hardly more onerous than that

which she exercised during the King’s residence in England. Her chief

troubles, she was wont to say, were derived from the bishops.

If Caroline could not speak so harshly of the prelates, generally or

individually, as her husband, she could reprove them, when occasion

offered, with singular asperity. We may see an instance of this in the

case of the episcopal opposition to the Mortmain and to the Quakers’

Relief Bills; but especially to the latter. This particular bill had

for its object to render more easy the recovery of tithes from Quakers;

the latter did not ask for exemption, but for less oppression in the

method of levying. The court wished that the bill should pass into law.

Sherlock, now Bishop of Salisbury, wrote a pamphlet against it; and the

prelates generally, led by Gibson, Bishop of London, stirred up all

the dioceses in the kingdom to oppose it, with a cry of _The Church

in danger_. Sir Robert Walpole represented to the Queen that all the

bishops were blameable; but that the chief blame rested upon Sherlock,

whose opposition was described as being as little to be justified in

point of understanding and policy as in integrity and gratitude. Sir

Robert declared that he was at once the dupe and the willing follower

of the Bishop of London, and that both were guilty of endeavouring to

disturb the quiet of the kingdom.

The first time Dr. Sherlock appeared at court after this the Queen chid

him extremely, and asked him if he was not ashamed to be overreached

in this manner by the Bishop of London. She accused him of being a

second time the dupe of the latter prelate, who was charged with having

misled him in a matter concerning the advancement of Dr. Rundle to an

episcopal see. ‘How,’ she asked him, ‘could he be blind and weak enough

to be running his nose into another’s dirt again!’ As for the King, he

spoke of the prelates on this occasion ‘with his usual softness.’ They

were, according to the hereditary defender of the faith, ‘a parcel of

black, canting, hypocritical rascals.’ They were ‘silly,’ ‘impertinent’

fellows, presuming to dictate to the Crown; as if it were not the duty

of a bishop to exercise this boldness when emergency warranted and

occasion suited.

Both bills were passed in the Commons. The Mortmain Bill (to prevent

the further alienation of lands by will in mortmain) passed the Lords;

but the Quakers’ Relief Bill was lost there by a majority of two.

The Queen was far from desiring that the bishops should be so treated

as to make them in settled antagonism with the Crown. She one day

ventured to say something in this spirit to the King. It was at a

time when he was peevishly impatient to get away to Hanover, to the

society of Madame Walmoden, and to the young son born there since his

departure. He is reported to have exclaimed to Caroline, when she was

gently urging a more courteous treatment of the bishops--‘I am sick to

death of all this foolish stuff, and wish, with all my heart, that the

devil may take all your bishops, and the devil take your minister, and

the devil take the parliament, and the devil take the whole island,

provided I can get out of it and go to Hanover.’[26]

What Caroline meant by moderation of behaviour towards the bishops it

is hard to understand; for when Drs. Sherlock and Hare complained to

her that, in spite of their loyalty to the Crown they were nightly

treated with great coarseness and indignity by lords closely connected

with the court, Caroline spoke immediately, in the harsh tone and

strong terms ordinarily employed by her consort, and said, that she

could more easily excuse Lord Hervey, who was chiefly complained of

as speaking sharply against them in parliament--‘I can easier excuse

him,’ exclaimed her Majesty, ‘for throwing some of the Bishop of

London’s dirt upon you than I can excuse _all you other fools_ (who

love the Bishop of London no better than he does) for taking the Bishop

of London’s dirt upon yourselves.’ She claimed a right to chide the

prelates soundly, upon the ground that she loved them deeply; and

she made very liberal use of the privilege she claimed. Bishop Hare,

in replying, called Lord Hinton, one of Lord Hervey’s imitators, his

‘ape.’ The Queen told this to Lord Hervey, who answered, that his

ape, if he came to know that such a term had been applied to him,

would certainly knock down the Queen’s ‘baboon.’ Caroline, with a

childish spirit of mischief, communicated to Hare what _she_ had done,

and what her vice-chancellor had said upon it. The terrified prelate

immediately broke the third commandment, exclaiming, ‘Good God! madam,

what have you done! As for Lord Hervey, he will satisfy himself,

perhaps, with playing his wit off upon me, and calling me _Old Baboon_;

but for my Lord Hinton, who has no wit, he will knock me down.’ The

vice-chamberlain, who reports the scene, says--‘This tallied so

ridiculously with what Lord Hervey had said to the Queen that she burst

into a fit of laughter, which lasted some minutes before she could

speak; and then she told the bishop, “That is just, my good lord, what

Lord Hervey did do, and what he said the ape would do.”’ The Queen,

however, promised that no harm should come to the prelate.

No inconsiderable amount of harm, however, was inflicted on many of the

prelates, including Hare himself. Walpole was disposed to translate him

when an advantageous opportunity offered; but Hervey showed him good

reason for preferring pliant Potter, then of Oxford. Gibson, the Bishop

of London, had been looking to be removed to Canterbury whenever Dr.

Wake’s death there should cause a vacancy. He expected, however, that,

in accordance with his wish, Sherlock would succeed him in London. The

Queen was disposed to sanction the arrangement; but she was frightened

out of it by Walpole and Hervey. She accordingly advised Sherlock ‘to

go down to his diocese and live quietly; to let the spirit he had

raised so foolishly against him here subside; and to reproach himself

only if he had failed, or should fail, of what he wished should be done

and she had wished to do for him.’

During the absence of the King, in 1736, in Hanover, the Queen Regent

had but an uneasy time of it at home. First, there were corn riots in

the west, which were caused by the attempts of the people to prevent

the exportation of corn, and which could only be suppressed by aid

of the military. Next, there were labour riots in the metropolis in

consequence of the market being overstocked by Irish labourers, who

offered to work at lower rates than the English; and which also the

bayonet alone was able to suppress. Thirdly, the coasts were infested

by smugglers, whom the prospect of the hangman could not deter from

their exciting vocation, and who not only killed revenue officers

in very pretty battles, but were heartily assisted by the country

people, who looked upon the contrabandists as most gallant and useful

gentlemen. Much sedition was mixed up with the confusion which arose

from these tumultuary proceedings: for wherever the people were opposed

in their inclinations, they immediately took to cursing the Queen

especially; not, however, sparing the King, nor forgetting, in their

street ovations, to invoke blessings upon James III. It was, indeed,

the fashion for every aggrieved person to speak of George II., in his

character of Elector of Hanover, as ‘a foreign prince.’ When this was

done by a nonjuring clergyman named Dixon, who exploded an innocent

infernal machine in Westminster Hall (to the great terror of judges

and lawyers), which scattered papers over the hall denouncing various

acts of parliament--first that against the sale of gin in unlicensed

places, then the act for building Westminster Bridge, the one to

suppress smuggling, and that which enabled ‘a foreign prince’ to borrow

600,000_l._ of money sacredly appropriated to the payment of our debts

--the Lord Chancellor and the Chief Justice were so affrighted that

they called the escapade ‘a treason.’ Caroline summoned a council

thereon, and, having at last secured the half-mad and destitute

offender, they consigned him to rot in a gaol; although, as Lord Hervey

says, ‘the lawyers _should_ have sent him to Bedlam, and _would_ have

sent him to Tyburn.’

The popular fury was sometimes so excited that it was found necessary,

as in the Michaelmas of this year, to double the guards who had the

care of her sacred Majesty at Kensington. The populace had determined

upon being drunk, when, where, and how they liked. The government had

resolved that they should not get drunk upon gin at any but licensed

places; and thereupon the majesty of the people became so furious that

even the person of Caroline was hardly considered safe in her own

palace.

Nor were riots confined only to England. A formidable one broke out in

Edinburgh, based upon admiration for a smuggler named Wilson, who had

cleverly robbed a revenue officer, as well as defrauded the revenue.

The mob thought it hard that the poor fellow should be hanged for such

little foibles as these; and though they could not rescue him from the

gallows, they raised a desperate tumult as he was swung from it. The

town guard fired upon the rioters, by order of their captain, Porteous,

and several individuals were slain. The captain was tried for this

alleged unlawful slaying, and was condemned to die; but Caroline, who

admired promptness of character, stayed the execution by sending down a

reprieve. The result is well known; the mob broke open the prison, and

inflicted Lynch law upon the captain, hanging him in the market-place,

amid a shower of curses and jeers against Caroline and her reprieve.

The indignation of the Queen Regent was almost uncontrollable. She was

especially indignant against General Moyle, commander of the troops,

who had refused to interfere to suppress the riot. He was tolerably

well justified in his refusal; for the magistrates of Edinburgh, ever

ready to invoke assistance, were addicted to betray them who rendered

it to the gallows if the riot was suppressed by shedding the blood of

the rioters. His conduct on this occasion was further regulated by

orders from his commander-in-chief. Caroline had no regard for any of

the considerations which governed the discreet general; and, in the

vexation of her chafed spirit, she declared that Moyle deserved to be

shot by order of a court-martial. It was with great difficulty that

her ministers and friends succeeded in softening the asperity of her

temper. Even Sir Robert Walpole, who joined in representing that it

were better to hold Moyle harmless, maintained in private that the

general was fool, knave, or coward. Lord Hervey says that the Queen

resented the conduct of the Scotch on this occasion, as showing ‘a

tendency to shake off all government; and I believe was a little more

irritated, from considering it in some degree as a personal affront to

her, who had sent down Captain Porteous’s reprieve; and had she been

told half what was reported to have been said of her by the Scotch mob

on this occasion, no one could think that she had not ample cause to be

provoked.’

To return to the domestic affairs of Caroline: it is to be observed

that the Queen had not seen the King leave England, with indifference.

She was aware that he was chiefly attracted to Hanover by the

unblushing rival who, on his departure thence, had drunk, amid smiles

and tears, to his speedy return. His departure, therefore, something

affected her proud spirit, and she was for a season depressed. But

business acted upon her as a tonic, and she was occupied and happy, yet

not without her hours of trial and vexation, until the time approached

for the King’s return.

Bitter, however, were her feelings when she found that return

protracted beyond the usual period. For the King to be absent on his

birthday was a most unusual occurrence, and Caroline felt that the

rival must have some power indeed who could thus restrain him from

indulgence in old habits. She was, however, as proud as she was pained.

She began to grow cool in her ceremony and attentions to the King. She

abridged the ordinary length of her letters to him, and the usual four

dozen pages were shortened into some seven or eight. Her immediate

friends, who were aware of this circumstance, saw at once that her

well-known judgment and prudence were now in default. They knew that

to attempt to insinuate reproach to the King would arouse his anger,

and not awaken his sleeping tenderness. They feared lest her power

over him should become altogether extinct, and that his Majesty would

soon as little regard his wife by force of habit as he had long ceased

to do by readiness of inclination. It was Walpole’s conviction that

the King’s respect for her was too firmly based to be ever shaken.

Faithless himself, he reverenced the fidelity and sincerity which

he knew were in her; and if she could not rule by the heart, it was

certain that she might still continue supreme by the head--by her

superior intellect. Still, the minister recognised the delicacy and

danger of the moment, and, in an interview with Caroline, he made it

the subject of as extraordinary a discussion as was ever held between

minister and royal mistress--between man and woman. Walpole reminded

her of faded charms and growing years, and he expatiated on the

impossibility of her ever being able to establish supremacy in the

King’s regard by power of her personal attractions! It is a trait of

her character worth noticing, that she listened to these unwelcome,

but almost unwarrantably expressed, truths with immoveable patience.

But Walpole did not stop here. He urged her to resume her long letters

to the King, and to address him in terms of humility, submissiveness,

duty, and tender affection; and he set the climax on what one might

almost be authorised to consider his impudence, by recommending her to

invite the King to bring Madame Walmoden with him to England. At this

counsel the tears _did_ spring into the eyes of Caroline. The softened

feeling, however, only maintained itself for a moment. It was soon

forgotten in her desire to recover or retain her power. She promised

to obey the minister in all he had enjoined upon her; but Walpole,

well as he knew her, very excusably conjectured that there _must_

still be enough of the mere woman in her, to induce her to refuse to

perform what she had promised to accomplish. He was, however, mistaken.

It is true, indeed, that her heart recoiled at what the head had

resolved, but she maintained her resolution. She conversed calmly with

Walpole on the best means of carrying it out. But the minister put

no trust in her assertions until such a letter as he had recommended

had actually been despatched by her to the King. She rallied Walpole

on his doubts of her, but praised him for his abominable counsel.

It was this commendation which alarmed him. He could believe in her

reproof; but he affirmed that he was always afraid when Caroline

‘_daubed_.’ However, he was now obliged to believe, for the Queen spoke

calmly of the coming of her rival, allotted rooms for her reception,

devised plans and projects for rendering her comfortable, and even

expressed her willingness to take her into her own service! Walpole

opposed this, but she cited the case of Lady Suffolk. Upon which the

minister observed, with infinite moral discrimination, that there

was a difference between the King’s making a mistress of the Queen’s

servant, and making a Queen’s servant of his mistress. The people might

reasonably look upon the first as a very natural condition of things,

while the popular virtue might feel itself outraged at the second.

Caroline said nothing, but wrote certainly the most singular letter

that ever wife wrote to a husband. It was replied to by a letter also

the most singular that ever husband addressed to a wife.[27] The King’s

epistle was full of admiration at his consort’s amiable conduct, and

of descriptions of her rival’s bodily and mental features. He extolled

the virtues of his wife, and then expressed a wish that he could be as

virtuous as she! ‘But,’ wrote he, in very elegant French, ‘you know my

passions, my dear Caroline; you know my weaknesses; there is nothing in

my heart hidden from you; and would to God,’ exclaimed the mendacious,

blaspheming libertine, ‘would to God that you could correct me with the

same facility with which you apprehend me! Would to God that I could

imitate you as well as I admire you, and that I could learn of you all

the virtues which you make me see, feel, and love!’

The Queen, then, had not only to look after the affairs of the kingdom

in the monarch’s absence, but to assist him with her advice for the

better management of his love-affairs in Hanover. With all Madame

Walmoden’s affected fidelity towards him, he had good grounds for

suspecting that his interest in her was shared by less noble rivals.

The senile dupe was perplexed in the extreme. One rival named as being

on too familiar terms with the lady was a Captain von der Schulenburg,

a relation of the Duchess of Kendal. There was a little drama enacted

by all three parties, as complicated as a Spanish comedy, and full of

love-passages, rope-ladders, and lying. The closing scene exhibits the

lady indignant in asserting her innocence, and the wretched monarch

too happy to put faith in her assertions. When left alone, however,

he addressed a letter to his wife, asking her what she thought of

the matter, and requesting her to consult Walpole, as a man ‘who has

more experience in these sort of matters, my dear Caroline, than

yourself, and who in the present affair must necessarily be less

prejudiced than I am!’ There never was an epithet of obloquy which this

miserable fellow flung at his fellow men which might not have been more

appropriately applied to himself.

Caroline, doubtless, gave the counsel that was expected from her; and

then, having settled to the best of her ability this very delicate

affair, she was called upon to interfere in a matter more serious.

The young Princess of Wales had scandalised the whole royal family

by taking the sacrament at the German Lutheran chapel. Serious

remonstrance was made to her on the subject; but the young lady shed

tears, and pleaded her conscience. Religious liberty, however, was not

a thing to be thought of, and she must take the sacrament according

to the forms prescribed by the Church of England. She resisted the

compulsion, until it was intimated to her that if she persisted in

the course on which she had entered, there was a possibility that she

might be sent back to Saxe Gotha. Upon that hint she at once joined

the Church of England. She had no more hesitation than a Lutheran or

Catholic German princess who marries into the Czar’s family has of at

once accepting all which the Greek Church enjoins, and which the lady

neither cares for nor comprehends.

Nor was this the only church matter connected with the princess which

gave trouble to the Queen. The case of conscience was followed by a

case of courtesy, or rather, perhaps, of the want of it. The Queen

attended divine service regularly in the chapel in Kensington Palace,

and set a good example of being early in her attendance, which was not

followed by the Prince and Princess of Wales, when they also were in

residence at the palace. It was the bad habit of the latter, doubtless

at the instigation of her husband, not to enter the chapel till after

the service had commenced and the Queen was engaged in her devotions.

The princess had then, in order to get to the seat allotted to her,

to pass by the Queen--a large woman in a small pew! The scene was

unbecoming in the extreme; for the princess passed in front of her

Majesty, between her and the prayer-book, and there was much confusion

and unseemliness in consequence. When this had been repeated a few

times, the Queen ordered Sir William Toby, the princess’s chamberlain,

to introduce his royal mistress by another door than that by which

the Queen entered, whereby her royal highness might pass to her place

without indecorously incommoding her Majesty. The prince would not

allow this to be done, and he only so far compromised the matter, by

ordering the princess, whenever she found the Queen at chapel before

herself, not to enter at all, but to return to the palace.

Caroline, offended as she was with her son, would not allow him to

pretend that she was as difficult to live with as his father, and so

concealed her anger. Lord Hervey so well knew that the prince wished to

render the Queen unpopular, that he counselled his royal mistress not

to let her son enjoy a grievance that he could trade upon. Lord Hervey

said, ‘he could wish that if the prince was to sit down in her lap,

that she would only say she hoped he found it easy.’

For the princess the Queen had nothing but a feeling which partook

mostly of a compassionate regard. She knew her to be really harmless,

and thought her very dull company; which, for a woman of Caroline’s

intellect and power of conversation, she undoubtedly was. The woman

of cultivated mind yawned wearily at the truisms of the common-place

young lady, and made an assertion with respect to her which bespoke a

mind more coarse than cultivated. ‘Poor creature!’ said Caroline, of

her young daughter-in-law; ‘were she to spit in my face, I should only

pity her for being under such a fool’s direction, and wipe it off.’

The fool, of course, was the speaker’s son. The young wife, it must

be confessed, was something childish in her ways. Nothing pleased her

better than to play half through the day with a large, jointed doll.

This she would dress and undress, and nurse and fondle at the windows

of Kensington Palace, to the amusement and wonder, rather than to the

edification, of the servants in the palace and the sentinels beneath

the windows. The Princess Caroline almost forgot her gentle character

in chiding her sister-in-law, and desiring her ‘not to stand at the

window during these operations on her baby.’ The Princess Caroline

did not found her reproach upon the impropriety of the action, but

upon that of allowing it to be witnessed by others. The lower people,

she said, thought everything ridiculous that was not customary, and

the thing would draw a mob about her, and make _la canaille_ talk

disagreeably!

The act showed the childishness of her character at that time; a

childishness on which her husband improved by getting her to apply,

through the Queen, for the King’s consent to allow her to place Lady

Archibald Hamilton upon her household. Frederick informed his young

wife of the position in which the world said the lady stood with regard

to him; but he assured her that it was all false. Augusta believed, or

affected to believe, or was perhaps indifferent; and Lady Archibald was

made lady of the bedchamber, privy purse, and mistress of the robes to

the princess, with a salary of nine hundred pounds a-year.

While the ladies of the court discussed the subject of the King, his

wife, his favourite, and the favourite of the prince, and seriously

canvassed the expediency of bringing Madame Walmoden to England,

there were some who entertained an idea that it would be well if

the Sovereign himself could be kept out of it. The people took

to commiserating Caroline, and many censured her husband for his

infidelity, while others only reproved him because that faithlessness

was made profitable to foreigners and not to fairer frailty at home.

In the meantime, his double taste for his Electorate and the ladies

there was caricatured in various ways. Pasquinades intimated that his

Hanoverian Majesty would condescend to visit his British dominions at a

future stated period. A lame, blind, and aged horse, with a saddle, and

a pillion behind it, was sent to wander through the streets, with an

inscription on the forehead, which begged that nobody would stop him,

as he was ‘the King’s Hanoverian equipage, going to fetch his Majesty

and his----to England.’ The most stinging satire of all was boldly

affixed to the walls of St. James’s Palace, and was to this effect:

‘Lost or strayed, out of this house, a man who has left a wife and six

children on the parish. Whoever will give any tidings of him to the

churchwardens of St. James’s parish, so as he may be got again, shall

receive _four shillings and sixpence_ reward. N.B. This reward will not

be increased, nobody judging him to deserve a crown.’

The King himself was rather gratified than otherwise with satires

which imputed to him a gallantry (as it is erroneously called) of

disposition. He was only vexed when censure was gravely directed

against him which had reference to the incompatibility of his pursuits

with his position, his age, and his infirmities. He preferred being

reproved as profligate, rather than being considered past the period

when profligacy would be venial.

Previous to his return to England, he expressed a wish to the Queen

that she would remove from Kensington to St. James’s, on the ground

that it would be better for her health, and she would be easier of

access to the ministers. The road between London and the suburban

locality, which may now be said to be a part of it, was at the period

alluded to in so wretched a condition, that Kensington Palace was

more remote from the metropolis than Windsor Castle is now. Caroline

understood her husband too well to obey. She continued, as regent, to

live in retirement, and this affectation of disregard for the outward

splendour of her office was not unfavourably looked upon by the King.

The Queen’s rule of conduct was not, however, that which best pleased

her son. Frederick declared his intention of leaving the suburban

palace for London. Caroline was vexed at the announcement of an

intention which amounted, in other words, to the setting up of a rival

court; particularly after the orders which had been communicated from

the King to the Prince of Wales, through the Duke of Grafton. Frederick

wrote a note in reply, like that of his mother’s, in French, in which

he intimated his willingness to remain at Kensington as long as the

Queen Regent made it her residence. The note was probably written

for the prince by Lord Chesterfield. Caroline inflicted considerable

annoyance on her son by refusing to consider him as the author of

the note; which, by the way, Lord Hervey thought might have been

written by ‘young Pitt,’ but certainly _not_ by Lord Chesterfield.

The note itself is only quoted from memory by Lord Hervey, who says

that Lord Chesterfield would have written better French, as well as

with more turns and points. It closely resembles the character of Lord

Chesterfield’s letters in French, which were never so purely French but

there could be detected in them phrases which were mere translations

of English idioms; and it was precisely because of such a fault that

Caroline had suspected that the note was written by an Englishman born.

The fact remains to be noticed that, in spite of the promise made by

the prince to remain at Kensington, he really removed to London; but,

as his suite was left in the suburbs, he considered that his pledge was

honourably maintained.

Frederick’s conduct seems to have arisen from a fear of its being

supposed that he was governed by others. Had it been the Queen’s

interest to rule him by letting him suppose that he was free from the

influence of others, she would have done it as readily and as easily as

in the case of the King. The Queen considered him so far unambitious

that he did not long for his father’s death; but Lord Hervey showed her

that if _he_ did not, the creditors who had lent him money, payable

with interest at the King’s decease, were less delicate in this

matter; and that the demise of the King might be so profitable to many

as to make the monarch’s speedy death a consummation devoutly to be

wished. The life of the Sovereign was thus put in present peril, and

Lord Hervey suggested to the Queen that it would be well were a bill

brought into parliament, making it a capital offence for any man to

lend money for a premium at the King’s death. ‘To be sure,’ replied

the Queen, ‘it ought to be so; and pray talk a little with Sir Robert

Walpole about it.’ Meanwhile, Frederick Prince of Wales exhibited

a liberality which charmed the public generally, rather than his

creditors in particular, by forwarding 500_l._ to the Lord Mayor for

the purpose of releasing poor freemen of the City from prison. The act

placed the prince in strong contrast with his father, who had been

squandering large sums in Germany.

The King’s departure from Hanover for England took place in the night

of the 7th to the 8th of December, after one of those brilliant and

festive farewell suppers which were now given on such occasions by the

Circe or the Cynthia of the hour. Wine and tears, no doubt, flowed

abundantly; but, as soon as the scene could be decently brought to an

end, the royal lover departed, and arrived on the 11th at Helvoetsluys.

His daughter Anne was lying sick, almost to death, at the Hague, where

her life had with difficulty been purchased by the sacrifice of that of

the little daughter she had borne. The King, however, had not leisure

for the demonstration of any parental affection, and he hurried on

without even enquiring after the condition of his child. Matter-of-fact

people are usually tender, and, if not tender, courteously decent

people. The King was a matter-of-fact person enough, but even in this

he acted like those highly refined and sentimental persons in whom

affection is ever on their lips and venom in their hearts.

The wind was fair, and all London was in expectation, but without

eagerness, of seeing once more their _gaillard_ of a King, with his

grave look, among them. But the wind veered, and a hurricane blew from

the west with such violence that every one concluded, if the King had

embarked, he must necessarily have gone down, and the royal convoy of

ships perished with him. Bets were laid upon the event, and speculation

was busy in every corner. The excitement was naturally great, for

the country had never been in such uncertainty about their monarch.

Wagers increased. Walpole began to discuss the prospects of the royal

family, the probable conduct of the possible new sovereign, the little

regard he would have for his mother, the faithless guardian he would

be over his brother and sisters, and the bully and dupe he would

prove, by turns, of all with whom he came in contact. Lord Hervey and

Queen Caroline discussed the same delicate question; and the latter,

fancying that her son already assumed, in public and in her presence,

the swagger of a new greatness, and that he was bidding for popularity,

would not listen to Lord Hervey’s assurances that she would be able

to rule him as easily as she had done his father. She ridiculed his

conduct, called him fool and ass, and averred that while the thought of

some things he did ‘made her feel sick,’ the idea of the _popularity_

of Fritz made her ‘vomit.’ As hour was added to hour, amid all this

speculation and trouble, and ‘still Cæsar came not,’ reports of loss

of life at sea became rife. At Harwich, guns had been heard at night

booming over the waters; people had come to the conclusion that they

were guns of distress fired from the royal fleet--the funeral dirge of

itself and the monarch. Communication of this gratifying conclusion

was made to Caroline. Prince Frederick kindly prepared her for the

worst; Lord Hervey added the expression of his fears that that worst

was not very far off; and the Princess Caroline began meditating upon

the hatred of her brother ‘for mamma,’ and the little chance there

would be of her obtaining a liberal provision from the new king. The

Queen was more concerned than she chose to acknowledge; but when

gloomy uncertainty was at its highest, a courier, whose life had been

risked, with those of the ship’s crew with whom he came over, in order

to inform Caroline that her consort had not risked his own, was flung

ashore ‘miraculously’ at Yarmouth; whence hastening to St. James’s,

he relieved all apprehensions and crushed all expiring hopes, by the

announcement that his Majesty had never embarked at all, and was still

at Helvoetsluys, awaiting fine weather and favouring gales.

The fine weather came, and the wind was fair for bringing the royal

wanderer home. It remained so just long enough to induce all the King’s

anxious subjects to conclude that he had embarked, and then wind and

weather became more tempestuous and adverse than they were before.

And now people set aside speculation, and confessed to a conviction

that his Majesty lived only in history. During the former season of

doubt, Caroline had solaced herself, or wiled away her time, by reading

‘Rollin’ and affecting to make light of all the gloomy reports which

were made in her hearing. There was now, however, more cause for alarm.

By ones, and twos, and fours, the ships which had left Helvoetsluys

with the King were flung upon the English coast, or succeeded in

making separate harbours in a miserably wrecked condition. All the

intelligence they brought was, that his Majesty had embarked, that they

had set sail in company, that an awful hurricane had arisen, that Sir

Charles Wager had made signal for every vessel to provide for its own

safety, and that the last seen of the royal yacht was that she was

tacking, and they only hoped that his Majesty _might_ have succeeded

in getting back to Helvoetsluys. Some in England echoed that loyally

expressed hope; others only desired that the danger intimated by it

might have been wrought out to its full end.

Christmas-day at St. James’s was the very gloomiest of festive times,

and the evening was solemnly spent in round games of cards. The

Queen, indeed, did not know of the disasters which had happened to

the royal fleet; but there was uncertainty enough touching the fate

of her royal husband to make even the reading of Rollin appear more

decent than playing at basset and cribbage. Meanwhile, the ministers

and court officials stood round the royal table, and discoursed on

trivial subjects, while their thoughts were directed towards their

storm-tost master. On the following morning, Sir Robert Walpole

informed her Majesty of the real and graver aspect of affairs. The

heart of the tender woman at once melted; and Caroline burst into

tears, unrestrainedly. The household of the heir-apparent, on the other

hand, began to wear an aspect as though the wished-for inheritance had

at last fallen upon it.

The day was Sunday, and the Queen resolved upon attending chapel as

usual. Lord Hervey thought her weak in determining to sit up to be

stared at. He had no idea that a higher motive might influence a wife

in dread uncertainty as to the fate of her husband. Caroline, it is

true, was not influenced by any such high motive. She simply did not

wish that people should conclude, from her absence, that the Sovereign

had perished; and she would neglect no duty belonging to her position

till she was relieved from it by law. She accordingly appeared at

chapel as usual; and in the very midst of the service a letter was

delivered to her from the King, in which the much-vexed monarch told

her how he had set sail, how the fleet had been scattered, how he had

been driven back to Helvoetsluys after beating about for some twenty

hours, and how it was all the fault of Sir Charles Wager, who had

hurried him on board, on assurance of wind and tide being favourable,

and of there being no time to be lost.

The joy of Caroline was honest and unfeigned. She declared that her

heart had been heavier that day than ever it had been before; that she

was still, indeed, anxious touching the fate of one whose life was so

precious, not merely to his family, but to all Europe; and that, but

for the impatience and indiscretion of Sir Charles Wager, the past

great peril would never have been incurred.

The admiral was entirely blameless. The King had deliberately

misrepresented the circumstances. It was the royal impatience which

had caused all the subsequent peril. The Sovereign, weary of waiting

for a wind, declared that if the admiral would not sail, he would go

over in a packet-boat. Sir Charles maintained he could not. ‘Be the

weather what it may,’ said the King, ‘I am not afraid.’ ‘_I am_,’ was

the laconic remark of the seaman. George remarked that he ‘wanted to

see a storm, and would sooner be twelve hours in one than be shut up

for twenty-four hours more at Helvoetsluys.’ ‘Twelve hours in a storm!’

cried Sir Charles; ‘four hours would do your business for you.’ The

admiral would not sail till the wind was fair; and he remarked to the

King that although his Majesty could compel him to go, ‘I,’ said Sir

Charles, ‘can make you come back again.’ The storm which arose after

they _did_ set sail was most terrific in character, and the escape of

the voyagers was of the narrowest. The run back to the Dutch coast was

not effected without difficulty. On landing, Sir Charles observed,

‘Sir, you wished to see a storm; how does your Majesty like it?’ ‘So

well,’ said the King, ‘that I never wish to see another.’ The admiral

remarked, in one of his private letters, giving a description of the

event, ‘that his Majesty was at present _as tame_ as any about him;’

‘an epithet,’ says Lord Hervey, ‘that his Majesty, had he known it,

would, I fancy, have liked, next to the storm, the least of anything

that happened to him.’

‘How is the wind for the King?’ was the popular query at the time of

this voyage; and the popular answer was, ‘Like the nation--against

him.’ And when men who disliked him because of _his_ vices or of

_their_ political hopes remarked that the Sovereign had been saved from

drowning, they generally added the comment that ‘it was God’s mercy,

and a thousand pities!’ The anxiety of Caroline for the King’s safety

had, no doubt, been very great--so great, that in it she had forgotten

sympathy for her daughter in her hour of trial. Lord Hervey will not

allow that the Queen had any worthier motive for her anxiety than her

apprehension ‘of her son’s ascending the throne, as there were no

lengths she did not think him capable of going to pursue and ruin her.’

She comforted herself by declaring that, had the worst happened, she

still would have retained Lord Hervey in her service, and have given

him an apartment in her jointure house, (old) Somerset House. She

added, too, that she would have gone down on her knees to beg Sir

Robert Walpole to continue to serve the son as he had done the father.

All this is not so self-denying as it seems. In retaining Lord Hervey,

whom her son hated, she was securing one of her highest pleasures; and

by keeping Sir Robert in the service of the prince, she would have

governed the latter as she had done his father.

Gross as the King was in his acts, he was choice and refined, when he

chose, in his letters. The epistle which he wrote, in reply to the

congratulations of the Queen on his safety, is elegant, touching, warm,

and apparently sincere. ‘In spite of all the danger I have incurred

in this tempest, my dear Caroline, and notwithstanding all I have

suffered, having been ill to an excess which I thought the human body

could not bear, I assure you that I would expose myself to it again and

again to have the pleasure of hearing the testimonies of your affection

with which my position inspired you. This affection which you testify

for me, this friendship, this fidelity, the inexhaustible goodness

which you show for me, and the indulgence which you have for all my

weaknesses, are so many obligations, which I can never sufficiently

recompense, can never sufficiently merit, but which I also can never

forget.’ The original French runs more prettily than this, and adapts

itself well to the phrases which praised the Queen’s charms and

attractions with all the ardour of youthful swain for blushing nymph.

The Queen showed the letter to Walpole and Hervey, with the remark that

she was reasonably pleased with, but not unreasonably proud of, it. The

gentlemen came to the conclusion that the master whom they served was

the most incomprehensible master to whom service was ever rendered. He

was a mere old cajoler, deceiving the woman whom he affected to praise,

and only praising her because she let him have an unconstrained course

in vice while she enjoyed one in power.

At length, after a detention of five weeks at Helvoetsluys, the King

arrived at Lowestoft. The Queen received information of his coming at

four o’clock in the morning, after a sleepless night, caused by illness

both of mind and body. When Walpole repaired to her at nine, she was

still in bed; and the good Princess Caroline was at her side, trying

to read her to sleep. Walpole waited until her Majesty had taken some

repose; and meanwhile the Prince of Wales and the Princess Amelia (who

was distrusted by her brother and by her mother, because she affected

to serve each while she betrayed both) entered into a gossiping sort of

conference with him in the antechamber. The prince was all praise, the

minister all counsel. Walpole perhaps felt that the heir-apparent, who

boasted that, when he appeared in public, the people shouted, ‘_Crown

him! Crown him!_’ was engaging him to lead the first administration

under a new reign. The recent prospect of such a reign being near at

hand had been a source of deep alarm to Caroline, and also of distaste.

She would have infinitely preferred that Frederick should have been

disinherited, and his brother William advanced to his position as

heir-apparent.

The King arrived in town on the 15th of January 1737. He came in

sovereign good humour; greeted all kindly, was warmly received, and was

never tired of expatiating on the admirable qualities of his consort.

An observer, indifferently instructed, would not have thought that

this contemptible personage had a mistress, who was the object of more

ardent homage than he ever paid to that wife whom he declared to be

superior to all the women in the world. He was fervent in his eulogy

of her, not only to herself but to Sir Robert Walpole; and indeed was

only peevish with those who presumed to enquire after his health. The

storm had something shaken him, and he was not able to open parliament

in person; but nothing more sorely chafed him than an air of solicitude

and enquiry after his condition by loyal servitors--who got nothing for

their pains but the appellation of ‘puppies.’ He soon, however, had

more serious provocation to contend with.

The friends of the Prince of Wales compelled him, little reluctant, to

bring the question of his income before parliament. The threat to take

this step alarmed Walpole, by whose advice a message was sent from the

King, and delivered by the lords of the council to the prince, whereby

the proposal was made to settle upon him the 50,000_l._ a-year which he

now received in monthly payments at the King’s pleasure, and also to

settle a jointure, the amount of which was not named, upon the princess.

Both their Majesties were unwilling to make this proposition; but

Walpole assured them that the submitting it to the prince would place

his royal highness in considerable difficulty. If he accepted it, the

King would get credit for generosity; and if he rejected it, the prince

would incur the blame of undutifulness and ingratitude.

The offer was made, but it was neither accepted nor refused. The

prince expressed great gratitude, but declared his inability to

decide, as the conduct of the measure was in the hands of others,

and he could not prevent them from bringing the consideration of it

before parliament. The prince’s friends, and indeed others besides his

friends, saw clearly enough that the King offered no boon. His Majesty

simply proposed to settle upon his son an annual income, amounting to

only half of what parliament had granted on the understanding of its

being allotted to the prince. The King and Queen maintained with equal

energy, and not always in the most delicate manner, that the parliament

had no more right to interfere with the appropriation of this money

than that body had with the allowances made by any father to his son.

The rage of the Queen was more unrestrained than that of her husband;

and she was especially indignant against Walpole for having counselled

that an offer should be made which had failed in its object, and had

not prevented the matter being brought before parliament.

The making of it, however, had doubtless some influence upon the

members, and helped in a small way to increase the majority in favour

of the government. The excitement in the court circle was very great

when an address to the King was moved for by Pulteney, suggesting the

desirableness of the prince’s income being increased. The consequent

debate was one of considerable interest, and was skilfully maintained

by the respective adversaries. The prince’s advocates were broadly

accused of lying; and Caroline, at all times and seasons, in her

dressing-room with Lord Hervey, and in the drawing-room with a crowded

circle around her, openly and coarsely stigmatised her son as a liar

and his friends as ‘nasty’ Whigs. Great was her joy when, by a majority

of 234 to 204, the motion for the address was defeated. There was even

congratulation that the victory had cost the King so little in bribes

--only 900_l._, in divisions of 500_l._ to one member and 400_l._ to

another. And even this sum was not positive purchase-money of votes for

this especial occasion; but money promised to be paid at the end of

the session for general service, and only advanced now because of the

present particular and well-appreciated assistance rendered.