Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover, volume 1 (of 2)

CHAPTER I.
BEFORE THE ACCESSION.

Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea was the daughter of John Frederick, Marquis of Brandenburg Anspach, and of Eleanor Erdmuth Louisa, his second wife, daughter of John George, Duke of Saxe Eisenach. She was born in 1683, and married the Electoral Prince of Hanover, afterwards George II., in the year 1705. Her mother having re-married, after her father’s death, when Caroline was very young, the latter left the court of her step-father, George IV., Elector of Saxony, for that of her guardian, Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg, afterwards King of Prussia. The Electress of Brandenburg was the daughter of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and sister of George I. The young Caroline was considered fortunate in being placed under the care of a lady, who, it was said at the time, would assuredly give her a ‘tincture of her own politeness.’

Notice has already been taken of the suitors who early offered themselves for the hand of the youthful princess; and for what excellent reason she selected the son of Sophia Dorothea. It was said, when she came to share the throne of England with her husband, that Heaven had especially reserved her in order to make Great Britain happy. Her early married life was one of some gaiety, if not of felicity; and Baron Pilnitz says in his Memoir, that when the Electoral family of Hanover was called to the throne of this country, she showed more cool carelessness for the additional grandeur than any of the family, whose outward indifference was a matter of admiration, in the old sense of that word, to all who beheld it. The Princess Caroline, according to the baron, particularly demonstrated that she was thoroughly satisfied in her mind that she could be happy without a crown, and that ‘both her father-in-law and her husband were already kings in her eyes, because they highly deserved that title.’ Of her conduct during the period she was Princess of Wales, the same writer says that she favoured neither political party, and was equally esteemed by each. This, however, is somewhat beside the truth.

The poets were as much concerned with the Princess of Wales as the politicians. Some abused, and some adored her. Addison, in 1714, assured her that the Muse waited on her person, and that she herself was

The same writer could not contemplate the daughter of Caroline, but that his prophetic eye professed to—

Frederick (Duke of Gloucester), the elder and less loved son of Caroline, was not yet in England, but her favourite boy, William, was at her side; and of him Addison said, that he had ‘the mother’s sweetness and the father’s fire.’ The poet went on, less to prophesy than to speculate with a ‘perhaps’ on the future destiny of William of Cumberland; and it was well he put in the saving word, for nothing could be less like fact than the ‘fortune’ alluded to in the following lines:—

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

And he adds, that the stage, growing refined, will draw its finished heroines from her, who was herself known to be ‘skill’d in the labours of the deathless muse.’ In short, Parnassus was made to echo with eulogies of or epigrams upon this royal lady. George I., for years together, never addressed a word to the Prince of Wales, but the princess would compel him, as Count Broglie, the French ambassador writes, to answer the remarks which she addressed to him when she encountered him ‘in public.’ ‘But even then,’ says the count, ‘he only speaks to her on these occasions for the sake of decorum.’ She-devil was the appellation commonly employed by the amiable King to designate his high-spirited daughter-in-law.

The Prince and Princess of Wales, on withdrawing from St. James’s, established their court in ‘Leicester Fields.’ Of this court, Walpole draws a pleasant picture. It must have been a far livelier locality than that of the King, whose ministers were the older Whig politicians. ‘The most promising,’ says Walpole, ‘of the young lords and gentlemen of that party, and the prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the new court of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The apartment of the bedchamber-women in waiting became the fashionable evening rendezvous of the most distinguished wits and beauties: Lord Chesterfield, Lord Stanhope, Lord Scarborough, Carr (Lord Hervey), elder brother of the more known John Lord Hervey, and reckoned to have superior parts; General (at that time only Colonel) Charles Churchill, and others, not necessary to mention, were constant attendants; Miss Lepell, afterwards Lady Hervey, my mother, Lady Walpole, Mrs. Selwyn, mother of the famous George, and herself of much vivacity, and pretty; Mrs. Howard, and, above all, for universal admiration, Miss Bellenden, one of the maids of honour. Her face and person were charming; lively she was almost to étourderie; and so agreeable she was, that I never heard her mentioned afterwards by one of her contemporaries who did not prefer her as the most perfect creature they ever knew.’

To this pleasant party in this pleasant resort, the Prince of Wales often came—his chief attraction being, not the wit or worth of the party, but the mere beauty of one of the party forming it. This was Miss Bellenden, who, on the other hand, saw nothing in the fair-haired and little prince that could attract her admiration. The prince was never famous for much delicacy either of expression or sentiment, but he could exhibit a species of wit in its way. He had probably been contemplating the engraving of the visit of Jupiter to the nymph Danae in a shower of gold, when he took to pouring the guineas from his purse in Miss Bellenden’s presence. He seemed to her, if we may judge by the comment she made upon his conduct, much more like a villainous little bashaw offering to purchase a Circassian slave; and on one occasion, as he went on counting the glittering coin, she exclaimed, ‘Sir, I cannot bear it; if you count your money any more I will go out of the room.’ She did even better, by marrying the man of her heart, Colonel John Campbell—a step at which the prince, when it came to his knowledge, affected to be extremely indignant; and never forgave her for an offence, which indeed was no offence and required no forgiveness. The prince, like that young Duke of Orleans who thought he would suffer in reputation if he had not a ‘favourite’ in his train, let his regard stop at Mrs. Howard, another of his wife’s bedchamber-women, who was but too happy to receive such regard, and to return it with all required attachment and service.

The Princess of Wales, during the reign of her father-in-law, maintained a brilliant court, and presided over a gay round of pleasures. In this career she gained that which she sought after—popularity. What she did from policy, her husband the prince did from taste; and the encouragement and promotion of pleasure were followed by the one as a means to an end, by the other for the sake of the pleasure itself. Every morning there was a drawing-room at the princess’s, and twice a week the same splendid reunion in her apartments, at night. This gave the fashion to a very wide circle; crowded assemblies, balls, masquerades, and ridottos became the ‘rage;’ and from the fatigues incident thereto, the votaries of fashion found relaxation in plays and operas.

Quiet people were struck by the change which had come over court circles since the days of ‘Queen Anne, who had always been decent, chaste, and formal.’ The change indeed was great, but diverse of aspect. Thus the court of pleasure at which Caroline reigned supreme was a court where decency was respected; respected, at least, as much as it well could be at a time when no superabundance of respect for decency was exhibited in any quarter. Still, there was not the intolerable grossness in the house of the prince which was to be met with in the very presence of his sire. Lord Chesterfield said of that sire that ‘he had nothing bad in him as a man,’ and yet he records of him that he had no respect for women—but some liking, it may be added, for those who had little principle and much fat. ‘He brought over with him,’ says Chesterfield, ‘two considerable samples of his bad taste and good stomach—the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Darlington; leaving at Hanover, because she happened to be a Papist, the Countess von Platen, whose weight and circumference was little inferior to theirs. These standards of his Majesty’s tastes made all those ladies who aspired to his favour, and who were near the statutable size, strain and swell themselves, like the frogs in the fable, to rival the bulk and dignity of the ox. Some succeeded and others burst.’ If the house of the son was not the abode of all the virtues, it at least was not the stye wherein wallowed his father. Upon the change of fashion, Chesterfield writes to Bubb Dodington, in 1716, the year when Caroline began to be looked up to as the arbitress of fashion:—‘As for the gay part of the town, you would find it much more flourishing than when you left it. Balls, assemblies, and masquerades have taken the place of dull, formal, visiting days, and the women are much more agreeable trifles than they were designed. Puns are extremely in vogue, and the license very great. The variation of three or four letters in a word breaks no squares, insomuch that an indifferent punster may make a very good figure in the best companies.’ The gaiety at the town residence of the prince and princess did not, however, accompany them to Richmond Lodge. There Caroline enjoyed the quiet beauties of her pretty retreat, which was, however, shared with her husband’s favourite, ‘Mrs. Howard.’

‘Leicester Fields’ was, nevertheless, not always such a bower of bliss as Walpole has described it, from hearsay. If the prince and ladies were on very pleasant terms, the princess and the ladies were sometimes at loggerheads, with as little regard for bienséance as if they had been very vulgar people; indeed, they often were exceedingly vulgar people themselves.

It was with Lord Chesterfield that Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea was most frequently at very disgraceful issue. Lord Chesterfield was one of the prince’s court, and he was possessed of an uncontrollable inclination to turn the princess into ridicule. Of course she was made acquainted with this propensity of the refined Chesterfield by some amiable friend, who had the regard which friends, with less judgment than what they call amiability, generally have for one’s failings.

Caroline, perhaps half afraid of the peer, whom she held to be a more annoying joker than a genuine wit, took a middle course by way of correcting Chesterfield. It was not the course which a woman of dignity and refinement would have adopted; but it must be remembered that, at the period in question, the princess was anxious to keep as many friends around her husband as she could muster. She consequently told Lord Chesterfield, half in jest and half in earnest, that he had better not provoke her, for though he had a wittier, he had not so bitter a tongue as she had, and any outlay of his wit, at her cost, she was determined to pay, in her way, with an exorbitant addition of interest upon the debt he made her incur.

The noble lord had, among the other qualifications of the fine gentleman of the period, an alacrity in lying. He would gravely assure the princess that her royal highness was in error; that he could never presume to mimic her; and thereupon he would only watch for a turn of her head to find an opportunity for repeating the offence which he had protested could not possibly be laid to his charge.

Caroline was correct in asserting that she had a bitter tongue. It was under control, indeed; but when she gave it unrestricted freedom, its eloquence was not well savoured. Indeed her mind was far less refined than has been generally imagined. Many circumstances might be cited in proof of this assertion; but perhaps none is more satisfactory, or conclusive rather, than the fact that she was the correspondent of the Duchess of Orleans, whose gross epistles can be patiently read only by grossly inclined persons; but which, nevertheless, tell so much that is really worth knowing that students of history read, blush, and are delighted.

The Prince of Wales, dissatisfied with his residences, entered into negotiations for the purchase of Buckingham House. That mansion was then occupied by the Dowager-duchess of Buckingham, she whose mother was Catherine Sedley, and whose father was James II. She was the mad duchess, who always went into mourning and shut up Buckingham House on the anniversary of the death of her grandfather, Charles I. The duchess thus writes of the negotiation, in a letter to Mrs. Howard:—

‘If their royal highnesses will have everything stand as it is, furniture and pictures, I will have 3,000l. per annum. Both run hazard of being spoiled; and the last, to be sure, will be all to be new bought, whenever my son is of age. The quantity the rooms take cannot be well furnished under 10,000l. But if their highnesses will permit all the pictures to be removed, and buy the furniture as it will be valued by different people, the house shall go at 2,000l. If the prince or princess prefer much the buying outright, under 60,000l. it will not be parted with as it now stands; and all his Majesty’s revenue cannot purchase a place so fit for them, nor for less a sum. The princess asked me at the drawing-room if I would not sell my fine house. I answered her, smiling, that I was under no necessity to part with it; yet, when what I thought was the value of it should be offered, perhaps my prudence might overcome my inclination.’

At the period when Caroline expressed some inclination to possess this residence, on the site of the old mulberry garden, there was a mulberry garden at Chelsea, the owner of which was a Mrs. Gale. In these gardens some very rich and beautiful satin was made, from English silkworms, for the Princess of Wales, who took an extraordinary interest in the success of ‘the native worm.’ The experiments, however, patronised as they were by Caroline, did not promise a realisation of sufficient profit to warrant their being pursued any further.

The town residence of the prince and princess lacked, of course, the real charms, the quieter pleasures, of the lodge at Richmond. The estate on which the latter was built formed part of the forfeited property of the Jacobite Duke of Ormond.

The prince and princess kept a court at Richmond, which must have been one of the most pleasant resorts at which royalty has ever presided over fashion, wit, and talent. At this court the young (John) Lord Hervey was a frequent visitor, at a time when his mother, Lady Bristol, was in waiting on the princess, and his brother, Lord Carr Hervey, held the post of groom of the bedchamber to the prince. Of the personages at this ‘young court,’ the right honourable John Wilson Croker thus speaks:—

‘At this period Pope and his literary friends were in great favour at this “young court,” of which, in addition to the handsome and clever princess herself, Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Selwyn, Miss Howe, Miss Bellenden, and Miss Lepell, with Lords Chesterfield, Bathurst, Scarborough, and Hervey, were the chief ornaments. Above all, for beauty and wit, were Miss Bellenden and Miss Lepell, who seem to have treated Pope, and been in return treated by him, with a familiarity that appears strange in our more decorous days. These young ladies probably considered him as no more than what Aaron Hill described him—

Mr. Croker notices that Miss Lepell was called Mrs. according to the fashion of the time. It was the custom so to designate every single lady who was old enough to be married.

Upon Richmond Lodge Swift showered some of his most pungent verses. He was there more than once when it was the scene of the ‘young court.’ Of these occasions he sang, after the princess had become Queen, to the following tune:—

Other poets were occasionally more audacious than Swift in appropriating domestic incidents in the princess’s family for their subjects. Early in 1723 one of them thus addresses an expected member of that family:—

The gentle Princess Mary (subsequently the unhappy Princess of Hesse) cannot be said to have kept the linnets or the primroses waiting, the birth of this fourth daughter of the Prince and Princess of Wales having taken place on the 22nd of February 1723.

During a large portion of the married life of George Augustus and Caroline, each was supposed to be under the influence of a woman, whose real influence was, however, overrated, and whose importance, if great, was solely so because of the undue value attached to her imaginary influence. Both those persons were of the ‘young court,’ at Leicester House and Richmond Lodge.

The women in question were Mrs. Howard, the prince’s ‘favourite,’ and Mrs. Clayton, bedchamber-woman, like Mrs. Howard, to Caroline. The first lady was the daughter of a Knight of the Bath, Sir Henry Hobart. Early in life she married Mr. Howard, ‘the younger brother of more than one Earl of Suffolk, to which title he at last succeeded himself, and left a son by her, who was the last earl of that branch.’ The young couple were but slenderly dowered; the lady had little, and her husband less. The court of Queen Anne did not hold out to them any promise of improving their fortune, and accordingly they looked around for a locality where they might not only discern the promise, but hope for its realisation. Their views rested upon Hanover and ‘the rising sun’ there; and thither, accordingly, they took their way; and there they found a welcome at the hands of the old Electress Sophia, with scanty civility at those of her grandson, the Electoral Prince.

At this time, the fortunes of the young adventurers were so low, and their aspirations so high, that they were unable to give a dinner to the Hanoverian minister, till Mrs. Howard found the means by cutting off a very beautiful head of hair and selling it. If she did this in order that she might not incur a debt, she deserves some degree of praise, for a habit of prompt payment was not a fashion of the time. The sacrifice probably sufficed; for it was the era of full-bottomed wigs, which cost twenty or thirty guineas, and Mrs. Howard’s hair, to be applied to the purpose named, may have brought her a dozen pounds, with which a very recherché dinner might have been given, at the period, to even the most gastronomic of Hanoverian ministers, and half-a-dozen secretaries of legation to boot.

The fortune sought for was seized, although it came but in a questionable shape. After the lapse of some little time, the lady had made sufficient impression on the hitherto cold Prince George Augustus to induce him, on the accession of his father to the crown of England, to appoint her one of the bedchamber-women to his wife, Caroline, Princess of Wales.

When Mrs. Howard had won what was called the ‘regard’ of the prince, she separated from her husband. He, it is true, had little regard for, and merited no regard from, his wife; but he was resolved that she should attain not even a bad eminence unless he profited by it. He was a wretched, heartless, drunken, gambling profligate; too coarse, even, for the coarse fine gentlemen of the day. When he found himself deserted by his wife, therefore, and discovered that she had established her residence in the household of the prince, he went down to the palace, raised an uproar in the courtyard, before the guards and other persons present, and made vociferous demands for the restoration to him of a wife whom he really did not want. He was thrust out of the quadrangle without much ceremony, but he was not to be silenced. He even appears to have interested the Archbishop of Canterbury in the matter. The prelate affected to look upon the princess as the protectress of her bedchamber-woman and the cause of the latter living separate from her husband, to whom he recommended, by letter, that she should be restored. Walpole says, further, that the archbishop delivered an epistle from Mr. Howard himself, addressed through the Princess Caroline to his wife, and that the princess ‘had the malicious pleasure of delivering the letter to her rival.’

Mrs. Howard continued to reside under the roof of this strangely-assorted household. There was no scandal excited thereby at the period, and she was safe from conjugal importunity, whether at St. James’s Palace or Leicester House. ‘The case was altered,’ says Walpole, ‘when, on the arrival of summer, their royal highnesses were to remove to Richmond. Being only woman of the bedchamber, etiquette did not allow Mrs. Howard the entrée of the coach with the princess. She apprehended that Mr. Howard might seize her upon the road. To baffle such an attempt, her friends, John, Duke of Argyle, and his brother, the Earl of Islay, called for her in the coach of one of them, by eight o’clock in the morning of the day by noon of which the prince and princess were to remove, and lodged her safely in their house at Richmond.’ It would appear, that after this period the servant of Caroline and the favourite of George Augustus ceased to be molested by her husband; and, although there be no proof of that gentleman having been ‘bought off,’ he was of such character, tastes, and principles, that he cannot be thought to have been of too nice an honour to allow of his agreeing to terms of peace for pecuniary ‘consideration.’

George thought his show of regard for Mrs. Howard would stand for proof that he was not ‘led’ by his wife. The regard wore an outwardly Platonic aspect, and daily at the same hour the royal admirer resorted to the apartment of the lady, where an hour or two was spent in ‘small talk’ and conversation of a generally uninteresting character.

It is very illustrative of the peculiar character of George Augustus, that his periodical visits, every evening at nine, were regulated with such dull punctuality ‘that he frequently walked about his chamber for ten minutes, with his watch in his hand, if the stated minute was not arrived.’

Walpole also notices the more positive vexations Mrs. Howard received when Caroline became Queen, whose head she used to dress, until she acquired the title of Countess of Suffolk. The Queen, it is said, delighted in subjecting her to such servile offices, though always apologising to her good Howard. ‘Often,’ says Walpole, ‘her Majesty had more complete triumph. It happened more than once that the King, coming into the room while the Queen was dressing, has snatched off the handkerchief, and turning rudely to Mrs. Howard, has cried, ‘Because you have an ugly neck yourself, you hide the Queen’s.’

One other instance may be cited here of Caroline’s dislike of her good Howard. ‘The Queen had an obscure window at St. James’s that looked into a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at night, which looked upon Mrs. Howard’s apartment. Lord Chesterfield, one Twelfth Night at court, had won so large a sum of money that he thought it not prudent to carry it home in the dark, and deposited it with the mistress. Thence the Queen inferred great intimacy, and thenceforwards Lord Chesterfield could obtain no favour from court; and, finding himself desperate, went into opposition.’ But this is anticipating events. Let us speak of the other bedchamber-woman of the Princess of Wales and subsequently of Queen Caroline, also a woman of considerable note in the quiet and princely circle at Leicester House, and the more brilliant réunions at St. James’s and Kensington. She was a woman of fairer reputation, of greater ability, and of worse temper than Mrs. Howard. Her maiden name was Dyves, her condition was of a humble character, but her marriage with Sir Robert Clayton, a clerk in the Treasury, gave her importance and position, and opportunity to improve both. Her husband, in addition to his Treasury clerkship, was one of the managers of the Marlborough estates in the duke’s absence, and this brought his wife to the knowledge and patronage of the duchess. The only favour ever asked by the latter of the House of Hanover was a post for her friend Mrs. Clayton, who soon afterwards was appointed one of the bedchamber-women to Caroline, Princess of Wales.

Mrs. Clayton has been as diversely painted by Lord Hervey and Horace Walpole as Chesterfield himself. It is not to be disputed, however, that she was a woman of many accomplishments; of not so many as her flatterers ascribe to her, but of more than were conceded to her by her enemies. The same may be said of her alleged virtues. Walpole describes her as a corrupt, pompous simpleton, and Lord Hervey as a woman of great intelligence and rather ill-regulated temper, the latter preventing her from concealing her thoughts, let them be what they might. The noble lord intimates, rather than asserts, that she was more resigned than desirous to live at court, for the dirty company of which she was too good, but whom she had the honesty to hate but not the hypocrisy to tell them they were good. Hervey adds, that she did good, for the mere luxury which the exercise of the virtue had in itself. Others describe her as corrupt as the meanest courtier that ever lived by bribes. She would take jewels with both hands, and wear them without shame, though they were the fees of offices performed to serve others and enrich herself. The Duchess of Marlborough was ashamed of her protegée in this respect, if there be truth in the story of her grace being indignant at seeing Mrs. Clayton wearing gems which she knew were the price of services rendered by her. Lady Wortley Montague apologises for her by the smart remark, that people would not know where wine was sold if the vendor did not hang out a bush.

Of another fact there is no dispute—the intense hatred with which Mrs. Howard and Mrs. Clayton regarded each other. The former was calm, cool, cutting, and contemptuous, but never unlady-like, always self-possessed and severe. The latter was hot, eager, and for ever rendering her position untenable for want of temper, and therefore lack of argument to maintain it. Mrs. Clayton, doubtless, possessed more influence with the Queen than her opponent with the King, but the influence has been vastly overrated. Caroline only allowed it in small matters, and exercised in small ways. Mrs. Clayton was, in some respects, only her authorised representative, or the medium between her and the objects whom she delighted to relieve or to honour. The lady had some influence in bringing about introductions, in directing the Queen’s notice to works of merit, or to petitions for relief; but on subjects of much higher importance Caroline would not submit to influence from the same quarter. On serious questions she had a better judgment of her own than she could be supplied with by the women of the bedchamber. The great power held by Mrs. Clayton was, that with her rested to decide whether the prayer of a petitioner should or should not reach the eye of Caroline. No wonder, then, that she was flattered, and that her good offices were asked for with showers of praise and compliment to herself, by favour-seekers of every conceivable class. Peers of every degree, and their wives, bishops and poor curates, philosophers well-to-do, and authors in shreds and patches; sages and sciolists; inventors, speculators, and a mob of ‘beggars’ which cannot be classed, sought to approach Caroline through Mrs. Clayton’s office, and humbly waited Mrs. Clayton’s leisure, while they profusely flattered her in order to tempt her to be active in their behalf.

Caroline not only ruled her husband without his being aware of it, but could laugh at him heartily, without hurting his feelings by allowing him to be conscious of it. Hereafter mention may be made of the sensitiveness of the court to satire; but before the death of George I., it seems to have been enjoyed—at least by Caroline, Princess of Wales—more than it was subsequently by the same illustrious lady when Queen of England. Dr. Arbuthnot, at the period alluded to, had occasion to write to Swift. The doctor had been publishing, by subscription, his ‘Tables of Ancient Coins,’ and was gaining very few modern specimens by his work. The dean, on the other hand, was then reaping a harvest of profit and popularity by his ‘Gulliver’s Travels’—that book of which the puzzled Bishop of Ferns said, on coming to the last page, that, all things considered, he did not believe a word of it!

Arbuthnot, writing to Swift on the subject of the two works, says (November 8, 1726) that his book had been out about a month, but that he had not yet got his subscribers’ names. ‘I will make over,’ he says, ‘all my profits to you for the property of “Gulliver’s Travels,” which, I believe, will have as great a run as John Bunyan. Gulliver is a happy man, that, at his age, can write such a book.’ Arbuthnot subsequently relates, that when he last saw the Princess of Wales ‘she was reading Gulliver, and was just come to the passage of the hobbling prince, which she laughed at.’ The laugh was at the cost of her husband, whom Swift represented in the satire as walking with one high and low heel, in allusion to the prince’s supposed vacillation between the Whigs and Tories.

The princess, however, had more regard, at all times, for sages than she had for satirists. It was at the request of Caroline that Newton drew up an abstract of a treatise on Ancient Chronology, first published in France, and subsequently in England. Her regard for Halley dates from an earlier period than Newton’s death or Caroline’s accession. She had, in 1721, pressed Halley to become the tutor of her favourite son, the Duke of Cumberland; but the great perfector of the theory of the moon’s motion was then too busy with his syzygies to be troubled with teaching the humanities to little princes. It was for the same reason that Halley resigned his post of secretary to the Royal Society.

This question of the education of the children of the Prince and Princess of Wales was one much discussed, and not without bitterness, by the disputants on both sides. In the same year that the Princess of Wales desired to secure Halley as the instructor of William of Cumberland (1721) George I. made an earl of that Thomas Parker who, from an attorney’s office, had steadily risen through the various grades of the law, had been entrusted with high commissions, and finally became Lord Chancellor. George I., on his accession, made him Baron of Macclesfield, and in 1721 raised him to the rank of earl. He paid for the honour by supporting the King against the Prince and Princess of Wales. The latter claimed an exclusive right of direction in the education of their children. Lord Macclesfield declared that, by law, they had no right at all to control the education of their offspring. Neither prince nor princess ever forgave him for this. They waited for the hour of repaying it; and the time soon came. The first ‘Brunswick Chancellor’ became notorious for his malpractices—selling places and trafficking with the funds of the suitors. His enemies resolved to impeach him. This resolution originated at Leicester House, and was carried out with such effect that the chancellor was condemned to pay a fine of 30,000l. George I., knowing that the son whom he hated was the cause of so grave, but just, a consequence, promised to repay to the ex-chancellor the amount of the fine which Lord Macclesfield had himself paid, a few days after the sentence, by the mortgage of a valuable estate. The King, however, was rather slow in acquitting himself of his promise. He forwarded one instalment of 1,000l., but he paid no more, death supervening and preventing the further performance of a promise only made to annoy his son and his son’s wife.

In one respect Lord Macclesfield and the Princess of Wales resembled each other—in entertaining a curious feeling of superstition. It will be seen, hereafter, how certain Caroline felt that she should die on a Wednesday, and for what reasons. So, like her, but with more accuracy, the fallen Macclesfield pointed out the day for his decease. In his disgrace he had devoted himself to science and religion. He was, however, distracted by a malady which was aggravated by grief, if not remorse. Dr. Pearce, his constant friend, called on him one day and found him very ill. Lord Macclesfield said: ‘My mother died of the same disorder on the eighth day, and so shall I.’ On the eighth day this prophecy was fulfilled; and the Leicester House party were fully avenged.

The feelings of both prince and princess were for ever in excess. Thus both appear to have entertained a strong sentiment of aversion against their eldest child, Frederick. Caroline did not bring him with her to this country when she herself first came over to take up her residence here. Frederick was born at Hanover, on the 20th of January 1707. He was early instructed in the English language; but he disliked study of every description and made but little progress in this particular branch. As a child, he was remarkable for his spitefulness and cunning. He was yet a youth when he drank like any German baron of old, played as deeply as he drank, and entered heart and soul into other vices, which not only corrupted both, but his body also. His tutor was scandalised by his conduct, and complained of it grievously. Caroline was, at that time, given to find excuses for conduct with which she did not care to be so far troubled as to censure it; and she remarked that the escapades complained of were mere page’s tricks. ‘Would to Heaven they were no more!’ exclaimed the worthy governor; ‘but in truth they are tricks of grooms and scoundrels.’ The Prince spared his friends as little as his foes, and his heart was as vicious as his head was weak.

Caroline had little affection for this child, whom she would have willingly defrauded of his birthright. At one time she appears to have been inclined to secure the Electorate of Hanover for William, and to allow Frederick to succeed to the English throne. At another time she was as desirous, it is believed, of advancing William to the crown of England and making over the Electorate to Frederick. How far these intrigues were carried on is hardly known, but that they existed is matter of notoriety. The law presented a barrier which could not, however, be broken down; but, nevertheless, Lord Chesterfield, in his character of the princess, intimated that she was busy with this project throughout her life.

Frederick was not permitted to come to England during any period of the time that his parents were Prince and Princess of Wales. An English title or two may be said to have been flung to him across the water. Thus, in 1717, he was called rather than created Duke of Gloucester. The Garter was sent to him the following year. In 1726 he became Duke of Edinburgh. He never occupied a place in the hearts of either his father or mother.

It is but fair to the character of the Princess of Wales to say that, severe as was the feeling entertained by herself against Lord Macclesfield—a feeling shared in by her consort—neither of them ever after entertained any ill feeling against Philip Yorke, subsequently Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, who defended his friend Lord Macclesfield, with great fearlessness, at the period of his celebrated trial. Only once, in after life, did George II. visit Lord Hardwicke with a severe rebuff. The learned lord was avaricious, discouraging to those who sought to rise in their profession, and caring only for the advancement of his own relations. He was once seeking for a place for a distant relation, when the husband of Caroline exclaimed, ‘You are always asking favours, and I observe that it is invariably in behalf of some one of your family or kinsmen.’ We shall hereafter find Caroline making allusions to ‘Judge Gripus’ as a character in a play, but it was a name given to Lord Hardwicke, on account of his ‘meanness.’ This feeling was shared by his wife. The expensively embroidered velvet purse in which the great seal was carried was renewed every year during Lord Hardwicke’s time. Each year, Lady Hardwicke ordered that the velvet should be of the length of one of her state rooms at Wimpole. In course of time the prudent lady obtained enough to tapestry the room with the legal velvet, and to make curtains and hangings for a state bed which stood in the apartment. Well might Pope have said of these:—

But this is again anticipating the events of history. Let us go back to 1721, when Caroline and her husband exercised a courage which caused great admiration in the saloons of Leicester House and a doubtful sort of applause throughout the country. Lady Mary Wortley Montague had just reported the successful results of inoculation for the small-pox, which she had witnessed at Constantinople. Dr. Mead was ordered by the prince to inoculate six criminals who had been condemned to death, but whose lives were spared for this experiment. It succeeded admirably, and the patients were more satisfied by the result of the experiment than any one besides. In the year following, Caroline allowed Dr. Mead to inoculate her two daughters, and the doctor ultimately became physician-in-ordinary to her husband.

The medical appointments made by Caroline and her husband certainly had a political motive. Thus, the Princess of Wales persuaded her husband to name Freind his physician-in-ordinary just after the latter had been liberated from the Tower, where he had suffered incarceration for daring to defend Atterbury in the House of Commons when the bishop was accused of being guilty of treason. Caroline always had a high esteem for Freind, independently of his political opinions, and one of her first acts, on ceasing to be Princess of Wales, was to make Freind physician to the Queen.

It is said by Swift that the Princess of Wales sent for him to Leicester Fields no less than nine times before he would obey the reiterated summons. When he did appear before Caroline, he roughly remarked that he understood she liked to see odd persons; that she had lately inspected a wild boy from Germany, and that now she had the opportunity of seeing a wild parson from Ireland. Swift declares that the court in Leicester Fields was very anxious to settle him in England, but it may be doubted whether the anxiety was very sincere. Swift’s declaration that he had no anxiety to be patronised by the Princess of Wales was probably as little sincere. The patronage sometimes exercised there was mercilessly sneered at by Swift. Thus Caroline had expressed a desire to do honour to Gay; but when the post offered was only that of a gentleman usher to the little Princess Caroline, Swift was bitterly satirical on the Princess of Wales supposing that the poet Gay would be willing to act as a sort of male nurse to a little girl of two years of age.

The Prince of Wales was occasionally as cavalierly treated by the ladies as the princess by the men. One of the maids of honour of Caroline, the well-known Miss Bellenden, would boldly stand before him with her arms folded, and when asked why she did so, would toss her pretty head, and laughingly exclaim that she did so, not because she was cold, but that she chose to stand with her arms folded. When her own niece became maid of honour to Queen Caroline, and audacious Miss Bellenden was a grave married lady, she instructively warned her young relative not to be so imprudent a maid of honour as her aunt had been before her.

But strange things were done by princes and princesses in those days, as well as by those who waited on them. For instance, in 1725, it is reported by Miss Dyves, maid of honour to the Princess Amelia, daughter of the Princess of Wales, that ‘the Prince, and everybody but myself, went last Friday to Bartholomew Fair. It was a fine day, so he went by water; and I, being afraid, did not go; after the fair, they supped at the King’s Arms, and came home about four o’clock in the morning.’ An heir-apparent, and part of his family and consort, going by water from Richmond to ‘Bartlemy Fair,’ supping at a tavern, staying out all night, and returning home not long before honest men breakfasted, was not calculated to make royalty respectable.