THE BANISHED PRINCE.
[Sidenote: 1737--An important affair]
The conduct of the Prince of Wales was becoming more and more insolent
to the King and Queen every day. Perhaps King George was right in his
belief that Walpole's policy of compromise had made Frederick think
himself of some real account in public affairs. It is certain that he
began to act as if he were determined the whole nation should know how
thoroughly independent he was of the authority of his father and
mother. He had soon a peculiar opportunity of making a display of this
ferocious independence.
The Princess of Wales was about to have her first child. For some
reason, which no one could well explain, the news of the coming event
was not made known to the King and Queen until the hour of its coming
was very near. Even then there seems to have been some conscious or
unconscious misleading of the King and Queen as to the actual time when
according to calculations the child was to be born. The King and Queen
were left under the impression that it was a good deal further off than
it really proved to be. The Queen, with all her natural goodness of
heart, was painfully suspicious. She was suspicious sometimes even of
those she loved and trusted; and she hated both the Prince and the
Princess of Wales. She had taken it into her head that the Princess of
Wales was not likely to have a child. She persisted in asserting to
those around her that the princess was not pregnant and never would be.
Naturally when she allowed her mind to be filled with this idea, the
next conclusion for her to jump at was the conviction that a
supposititious infant was about to be palmed off on the Palace and the
{105} country. This idea took full possession of her mind, and she
kept constantly telling those around her that, no matter when or where
the event might take place, she was determined to be in at that birth.
In the most explicit and emphatic way she told people that she would
make sure for herself that no child was imported in a warming-pan this
time.
The King and Queen were now in Hampton Court Palace; the Prince and
Princess of Wales were also living there. Nothing would have been
easier for the Queen than to carry out her purpose if the princess were
allowed to remain in the palace until after her confinement. It was
reported to her that the prince had said he was anxious that his wife
should be confined in London--in St. James's Palace. This the Queen
was determined to prevent if she could. The Princess Caroline fully
shared her mother's belief that the Prince of Wales was quite capable
of palming off a spurious child on the country; and indeed the King
became after a while as well convinced of it as his wife and his
daughter. It was resolved that a message should be sent from the King
to the Prince of Wales, giving a sort of Royal command that the
princess should remain at Hampton Court until after her confinement.
Lord Hervey shook his head at all this. He did not believe in the
warming-pan fantasy; and he felt sure that in any case the Prince of
Wales would contrive to get his wife out of Hampton Court if he wished
to do so. What was to prevent the princess going up to London a little
before her time, and then affecting to fall suddenly ill there, and
declaring that she could not endure the pain and danger of removal?
Lord Hervey had seen a good deal of the prince in old days. They had
had friendships and quarrels and final estrangement, and he knew his
prince pretty well.
What Hervey had predicted came to pass, but in a worse way than he had
ventured to predict. The Queen kept urging Walpole to send the King's
order to the prince. Walpole kept putting it off. For one reason, the
{106} minister had been told the confinement was to be expected in
October, and this was only July. It is very likely, too, that he
shared Hervey's scepticism alike as to the supposititious child and the
possibility of keeping the prince's wife at Hampton Court against the
prince's will. The Royal command was never sent.
[Sidenote: 1737--Neighbors requisitioned]
On Sunday, July 31, 1737, the Prince of Wales and the princess dined
publicly with the King and Queen in Hampton Court Palace. Not a word
was said to any one about an early approach of the confinement. The
princess seemed in her usual condition. The two sets of royal
personages did not talk with each other at this time, although they
thus had ceremonial meetings in public. The Queen called the attention
of some one near her to the princess's appearance, and insisted that
she was not going to have a child at all. When dinner was over, the
prince and princess went back to their own apartments, and later that
evening the princess was taken with the pains of labor. Then followed
what has hardly ever happened in the story of the life of a poor
washer-woman or a peasant's wife. The unfortunate princess was far
gone in her agony before any one had time to think; and before those
around them had much time to think the Prince of Wales had determined
to carry her off, groaning in labor as she was, and take her ten miles
to London. The whole story is a shocking one; and we shall put it into
a very narrow compass. But it has to be told somehow. By the help of
an equerry and a dancing-master, the writhing princess was hoisted
down-stairs and got into a carriage. The dancing-master, Dunoyer, was
a hanger-on and favorite of the prince; and, being employed to teach
dancing to the younger children of George the Second, acted as a kind
of licensed spy, so Hervey says, on the one family and the other. In
the carriage with the prince and princess came Lady Archibald Hamilton,
who was understood to be the prince's mistress. No royal movement in
those days would seem to be thought quite complete without the presence
of some mistress of the {107} King or prince. The carriage reached
London about ten o'clock. It had been driven at full gallop, the poor
princess writhing and screaming all the time, and the prince scolding
at her and telling her it was nonsense to cry and groan about pain
which would so soon be over. When they got to St. James's Palace there
were naturally no preparations made for a lying-in. The prince and
Lady Archibald Hamilton set to work to get some things in readiness,
and found they had to send round the neighborhood to collect some of
the most necessary appliances for such an occasion. So pitifully
unprovided was the palace that no clean sheets could be found, and the
prince and his mistress put the princess to bed between two
table-cloths. At a quarter before eleven the birth took place. A tiny
baby was born; "a little rat of a girl," Lord Hervey says, "about the
bigness of a good large tooth-pick." The little rat of a girl grew up,
however, to be a handsome woman. She was seen by John Wilson Croker in
1809 and had still the remains of beauty. The Lords of the Council had
been hurriedly sent for to be present at the birth; but the event was
so sudden and so unexpected that only Lord Wilmington, the President of
the Council, and Lord Godolphin, the Privy Seal, arrived in time to be
able to testify that no warming-pan operation was accomplished.
The unsuspecting King and Queen had gone to bed, according to their
usual quiet custom, at eleven o'clock. Their feelings, as a certain
class of writers are in the habit of saying, may be more easily
imagined than described when they were roused from sleep about two in
the morning by the couriers, who came to tell them that the princess
had become the mother of a girl, and that the prince and princess were
at St. James's Palace, London. There was racing and chasing. Within
half an hour the Queen was on the road to London with the two eldest
princesses, Lord Hervey, and others. The Queen comported herself with
some patience and dignity when she saw the prince and princess. The
child was shown to her. {108} No clothes had yet been found for it but
some napkins and an old red cloak. "The good God bless you, poor
little creature," said the Queen in French; "you have come into a very
disagreeable world!"
[Sidenote: 1737--Applying a precedent]
The King and Queen consented to become the godfather and godmother of
the poor little creature who had been brought thus disagreeably into
this disagreeable world. But the conduct of the prince was regarded as
unpardonable, and he was banished by Royal letter from the King's
palace, whether at Hampton Court or St. James's. The prince's own
party, Pulteney and his colleagues, utterly refused to give their
sanction to the extraordinary course which Frederick had taken.
Bolingbroke wrote from France, angrily and scornfully condemning it.
But the Patriots were willing, and resolved to stand the prince's
friends all the same, and they had not even the courage to advise him
to make a frank and full apology for his conduct. Indeed the action of
the prince seems to suggest an approach to insanity rather than
deliberate and reasoned perverseness. He had forced his wife to run
the risk of losing her own life and her child's life, he had grossly
and wantonly offended his father and mother, and he had thrown a
secrecy and mystery round the birth of the infant which, if ever there
came to be a dispute about the succession, would give his enemies the
most plausible excuse for proclaiming that a spurious child had been
imposed upon the country. As a friend of the Queen said at the time,
if ever the Crown came to be fought for again, the only question could
be whether the people would rather have the Whig bastard or the Tory
bastard.
The whole business, as might be expected, caused a terrible scandal.
Not merely was the prince banished from the palace, not merely did the
King refuse to see him or to hold further communication with him, but
it was formally announced by the Secretaries of State to all the
foreign ministers that it would be considered a mark of respect to the
Sovereign if they would abstain from visiting the prince. Furthermore,
a message was sent in {109} writing to all peers, peeresses, and privy
councillors, declaring that no one who went to the prince's court would
be admitted into the King's presence. Never probably was domestic
dirty linen more publicly washed. Nevertheless, it very soon was made
apparent that the course taken by the King was in strict accordance
with a precedent which at one time had a very direct application to
himself. Some of the prince's friends thought it a clever stroke of
policy just then to print and publish the letters which passed between
the late King and the present Sovereign when the latter was Prince of
Wales and got into a quarrel with his father. The late King sent his
vice-chamberlain to order his son "that he and his domestics must leave
my house." A copy was also published of a circular letter signed by
the honored name of Joseph Addison, then Secretary of State, addressed
to the English ministers at foreign courts, giving the King's version
of the whole quarrel, in order that they might report him and his cause
aright to the unsatisfied.
Lord Hervey is inclined to think that it was not the friends of the
prince, but rather Walpole himself, who got these letters printed.
Hervey does not see what good the publication could do to the prince
and the prince's cause, but suggests that it might be a distinct
service to Walpole and Walpole's master to show that the reigning king
in his early days had been treated with even more harshness than he had
just shown to his own son, and with far less cause to justify the
harshness. Still it seems to us natural for the prince's friends to
believe it would strengthen him in popular sympathy if it were brought
before men's minds that the very same sort of treatment of which George
the Second complained when it was visited on him by his own father he
now had not scrupled nor shamed to visit upon his son. Among other
discoveries made at this time with regard to the more secret history of
the late reign, it was found out that George the First actually
entertained and encouraged a project for having the Prince of Wales,
now George the Second, put on board {110} some war-vessel and "carried
off to any part of the world that your Majesty may be pleased to
order." This fact--for a fact it seems to be--did not get to the
public knowledge; but it came to the knowledge of Lord Hervey, who
probably had it from the Queen herself, and it is confirmed by other
and different testimony. A Prince of Wales kidnapped and carried out
of civilization by the command of his royal father would have made a
piquant chapter in modern English history.
[Sidenote: 1737--Bishop Hoadley and the Test Act]
The prince and princess went to Kew in the first instance, and then the
prince took Norfolk House, in St. James's Square, for his town
residence, and Cliefden for his country place. The prince put himself
forward more conspicuously than ever as the head of the Patriot party.
It was reported to Walpole that in Frederick's determination to make
himself popular he was resolved to have a Bill brought forward in the
coming session of Parliament to repeal the Test Act. The Test Act was
passed in the reign of Charles the Second, 1673, and it declared that
all officers, civil or military, of the Government must take the
sacrament according to the forms of the Church of England, and must
take the oaths against the doctrine of transubstantiation. This Act
was, of course, regarded as a serious grievance by the Dissenters of
all denominations. Some few eminent Churchmen, like Dr. Hoadley,
Bishop of Winchester, had always been opposed to the narrow-minded
policy of the Act. Hoadley, indeed, had made himself a sort of leader
of the dissenting communities on this subject. For that and other
reasons he had been described as the greatest Dissenter who ever wore a
mitre. When the report got about that an attempt was to be made to
have the Test Act repealed, Walpole, with his usual astuteness, sent
for the bishop, knowing very well that, if such a determination had
been come to, Dr. Hoadley would be among the very first men to be
consulted on the subject. Walpole expressed his mind very freely to
Hoadley. A coldness had long existed between them, which Walpole's
gift of the Bishopric of Winchester had not removed. {111} Hoadley had
thought Walpole slow, lukewarm, and indifferent about movements in
reform of Church and State, which Hoadley regarded as essential parts
of the programme of the Whig party. Walpole was perfectly frank with
him on this occasion, and explained to him the difficulty which would
come up in English affairs if the Prince of Wales were encouraged to
seek popularity at the expense of the King and Queen by making himself
the champion of the Dissenters' grievances. Hoadley met Walpole in a
spirit of similar frankness. He declared that he always had been and
always should be in favor of the repeal of the Test Act, but that he
disapproved altogether of the prince being set up in opposition to the
King; and he believed that even the repeal of the Test Act would be
bought at too dear a cost if it were the means of bringing the King
into a distressing family quarrel. Therefore the bishop declared that
he would give no encouragement to such a scheme, of which, he said, he
had lately heard nothing from the prince; and that, whatever kindnesses
he might receive from Frederick, he should never forget his duty to
George. Walpole was delighted with Hoadley's bearing and Hoadley's
answer, and seemed as if he never could praise him enough. No one can
question Hoadley's sincerity. We must only try to get ourselves back
into the framework and the spirit of an age when a sound patriot and a
high-minded ecclesiastic could be willing to postpone indefinitely an
act of justice to a whole section of the community in order to avoid
the risk of having the Sovereign brought into disadvantageous
comparison with the Sovereign's eldest son. Walpole approved of the
Test Act no more than Hoadley did, although the spirit of his objection
to it was far less positive and less exalted than that of Hoadley. But
Walpole was, of course, an avowed Opportunist; he never professed or
pretended to be anything better. There is nothing surprising in the
fact that he regarded an act of justice to the Dissenters as merely a
matter of public convenience, to be performed when it could be
performed without disturbing anybody of {112} importance. Hoadley must
have looked at the subject from an entirely different point of view; it
must have been to him a question of justice or injustice; yet he, too,
was quite ready to put it off indefinitely rather than allow it to be
made the means of obtaining a certain amount of popular favor for the
Prince of Wales as opposed to his father the King. We shall see such
things occurring again and again in the course of this history. The
agreement of Walpole and Hoadley did, indeed, put off the repeal of the
Test Act for a pretty long time. The brand and stigma on the
Protestant Dissenters as well as on the Roman Catholics was allowed to
remain in existence for nearly another century of English history. We
are now in 1737, and the Test Act was not repealed until 1828.
Historians are sometimes reproached for paying too much attention to
palace squabbles; yet a palace squabble becomes a matter of some
importance if it can postpone an act of national justice for by far the
greater part of a century.
[Sidenote: 1737--A question of price]
There was a good deal of talk about this time of the possibility of
adopting some arrangement for the separation of Hanover from the
English Crown. The fact of the Princess of Wales having given birth to
a daughter and not a son naturally led to a revival of this question.
The electorate of Hanover could not descend to a woman, and if the
Prince of Wales should have no son some new arrangement would have to
be made. The Queen was very anxious that Hanover should be secured for
her second son, to whom she was much attached, and the King was
understood to be in favor of this project. On the other hand, it was
given out that the Prince of Wales would be quite willing to renounce
his rights in favor of his younger brother on condition of his getting
the fifty thousand a year additional for which he had been clamoring in
Parliament. Nothing could be more popular with the country than any
arrangement which would sever the connection between the Crown of
England and the electorate of Hanover. If the prince were seeking
popularity, such a proposal coming from him would be popular indeed,
provided {113} it were not spoiled by the stipulation about the fifty
thousand a year. The Queen's comment upon the rumors as to the
prince's intention was that in her firm belief he would sell the
reversion of the Crown of England to the Pretender if only the
Pretender offered him money enough. Nothing came of the talk about
Hanover just then. The King and the Queen had soon something else to
think of.
{114}