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

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 600,000l. 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 500l. 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 50,000l. 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 900l., in divisions of 500l. to one member and 400l. 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.

Let us do the prince the justice to say, that, in asking that his income might be doubled, he did not ask that the money should be drawn from the public purse. When Bubb Dodington first advised him to apply to parliament for a grant, his answer was spirited enough. ‘The people have done quite enough for my family already, and I would rather beg my bread from door to door than be a charge to them.’ What he asked for was, that out of his father’s civil list of nearly a million sterling per annum, he might be provided with a more decent revenue than a beggarly fifty thousand a-year, paid at his father’s pleasure. Pulteney’s motion was denounced by ministers as an infraction of the King’s prerogative. Well, Frederick could not get the cash he coveted from the King, and he would not take it from the public. Bubb Dodington had advised him to apply to parliament, and he rewarded Bubb for the hint by easing him occasionally of a few thousands at play. He exulted in winning. ‘I have just nicked Dodington,’ said he on one occasion, ‘out of 5,000l., and Bubb has no chance of ever getting it again!’

The battle, however, was not yet concluded. The prince’s party resolved to make the same motion in the Lords which had been made in the Commons. The King and Queen meanwhile considered that they were released from their engagement, whereby the prince’s revenue was to be placed entirely in his own power. They were also anxious to eject their son from St. James’s. Good counsel, nevertheless, prevailed over them to some extent, and they did not proceed to any of the extremities threatened by them. In the meantime, the scene within the palace was one to make a very stoic sigh. The son had daily intercourse with one or both of his parents. He led the Queen by the hand to dinner, and she could have stabbed him on the way; for her wrath was more bitter than ever against him, for the reason that he had introduced her name, through his friends, in the parliamentary debate, in a way which she considered must compromise her reputation with the people of England. He had himself declared to the councillors who had brought him the terms of the King’s offer, that he had frequently applied through the Queen for an interview with the King, at which an amicable arrangement of their differences might be made; but that she had prevented such an interview, by neglecting to make the prince’s wishes known to his father. This story was repeated by the prince’s friends in parliament, and Caroline called heaven and earth to witness that her son had grossly and deliberately lied. In this temper the two often sat down to dinner at the same table. As for the King, although Frederick attended the royal levées, and stood near his royal sire, the latter never affected to behold or to consider him as present, and he invariably spoke of him as a brainless, impertinent puppy and scoundrel.28

The motion for the address to the King, praying him to confer a jointure on the princess, and to settle 100,000l. a-year out of the civil list on the prince, was brought before the House of Peers by Lord Carteret. That nobleman so well served his royal client that, before bringing forward the motion, he made an apology to the Queen, declaring that office had been forced on him. The exercise thereof was a decided failure. The Lords rejected the motion, on a division of 103 to 40, the minority making strong protest against the division of the House, and in very remarkable language. The latter did not trouble their Majesties, and this settling of the question helped to restore Walpole to the royal favour, from which he had temporarily fallen.

There was another public affair which gave the Queen as much perplexity as any of her domestic troubles. This was the investigation into the matter of the Porteous riot at Edinburgh, with the object of punishing those who were most to blame. It is not necessary to detail this matter at any length, or indeed further than the Queen was personally connected with it. She was exceedingly desirous that it should be decided on its merits, and that it should not be made a national matter of. On this account, she was especially angry with the Duke of Newcastle, on whom she laid the blame of having very unnecessarily dragged up to London such respectable men as the Scotch judges; and she asked him ‘What the devil he meant by it?’ While the affair was still pending, but after the judges had been permitted to go back again, the Queen remarked to Lord Hervey, ‘she should be glad to know the truth, but believed she should never come at it—whether the Scotch judges had been really to blame or not in the trial of Captain Porteous: for, between you and the Bishop of Salisbury’ (Sherlock), said she, ‘who each of you convinced me by turns, I am as much in the dark as if I knew nothing at all of the matter. He comes and tells me that they are all as black as devils; you, that they are as white as snow; and whoever speaks last, I believe. I am like that judge you talk of so often in the play (Gripus,29 I think you call him), who, after one side had spoken, begged t’others might hold their tongue, for fear of puzzling what was clear to him. I am Queen Gripus; and since the more I hear the more I am puzzled, I am resolved I will hear no more about it; but let them be in the right or the wrong, I own to you I am glad they are gone.’

The city of Edinburgh was ultimately punished by the deposition of its provost, Mr. Wilson, who was declared incapable of ever serving his Majesty, and by the imposition of a fine of two thousand pounds sterling. The ‘mulct’ was to go to the ‘cook-maid widow of Captain Porteous, and make her, with most unconjugal joy, bless the hour in which her husband was hanged.’30

The conduct of Caroline, when Sir John Bernard proposed to reduce the interest on the National Debt from four to three per cent., again presents her to us in a very unfavourable light. Not only the Queen, but the King also was most energetically opposed to the passing of the bill. People conjectured that their Majesties were large fundholders, and were reluctant to lose a quarter of the income thence arising, for the good of the nation. The bill was ultimately thrown out, chiefly through the opposition of Walpole. By this decision, the House stultified its own previously accorded permission (by 220 to 157) for the introduction of the bill. Horace Walpole, the brother of Sir Robert, was one of those who voted first for and then against the bill—or first against and then for his brother. We must once more draw from Lord Hervey’s graphic pages to show what followed at court upon such a course:—‘Horace Walpole, though his brother made him vote against the three per cent., did it with so ill a grace, and talked against his own conduct so strongly and so frequently to the Queen, that her Majesty held him at present in little more esteem or favour than the Duke of Newcastle. She told him that because he had some practice in treaties, and was employed in foreign affairs, he began to think he understood everything better than anybody else; and that it was really quite new his setting himself up to understand the revenue, money matters, and the House of Commons better than his brother! “Oh, what are you all but a rope of sand, that would crumble away in little grains, one after another, if it was not for him?” And whenever Horace had been with her, speaking on these subjects, besides telling Lord Hervey, when he came to see her, how like an opinionative fool Horace had talked before them, she used to complain of his silly laugh hurting her ears, and his dirty body offending her nose, as if she had never had the two senses of hearing and smelling, in all her acquaintance with poor Horace, till he had talked for three per cent. Sometimes she used to cough and pretend to retch with talking of his dirt; and would often bid Lord Hervey open the window to purify the room of the stink Horace had left behind him, and call the pages to burn sweets to get it out of the hangings. She told Lord Hervey she believed Horace had a hand in the “Craftsman,” for that once, warmed in disputing on this three-per-cent. affair, he had more than hinted to her that he guessed her reason for being so zealous against this scheme was her having money in the stocks.’

When such coarseness was common at court, we need not be surprised that dramatic authors, whose office it is to hold the mirror up to nature, should have attempted to make some reflection thereon, or to take license therefrom, and give additional coarseness to the stage. Walpole’s virtuous indignation was excited at this liberty—a liberty taken only because people in his station, and far above his station, by their vices and coarseness, justified the license. It was this vice, and not the vices of dramatic authors, which first fettered the drama and established a censorship. The latter was set up, not because the stage was wicked, but in order that it should not satirise the wickedness of those in high station. The Queen was exceedingly delighted to see a gag put upon both Thalia and Melpomene.

The vice was hideous. They who care to stir the offensive mass will find proof enough of this hideousness in the account given by Lady Deloraine, the wife of Mr. Windham, of the King’s courtship of her, and his consequent temporary oblivion of Madame Walmoden. This new rival of the Queen, a charming doll of thirty-five years of age, was wooed by the King in a strain which the stage would hardly have reproduced; and his suit was commented upon by the lady, in common conversation with lords and ladies, with an unctuousness of phrase, a licentiousness of manner, and a coolness of calculation such as would have disgraced the most immodest of women. This coarseness of sentiment and expression was equally common. When it was said that Lord Carteret was writing a history of his times, and that noble author himself alleged that he was engaged in ‘giving fame to the Queen,’ the latter, one morning, noticed the alleged fact to Lord Hervey. The King was present, and his Majesty remarked:—‘I dare say he will paint you in fine colours, the dirty liar.’ ‘Why not?’ asked Caroline; ‘good things come out of dirt sometimes. I have ate very good asparagus raised out of dung?’ When it was said that not only Lord Carteret, but that Lords Bolingbroke and Chesterfield were also engaged in writing the history of their times, the Queen critically anticipated ‘that all the three histories would be three heaps of lies; but lies of very different kinds: she said Bolingbroke’s would be great lies; Chesterfield’s little lies; and Carteret’s lies of both sorts.’31 It may be added, that where there were vice and coarseness there was little respect for justice or for independence of conduct. The placeman who voted according to his conscience, when he found his conscience in antagonism against the court, was invariably removed from his place.

In concluding this chapter, it may be stated that when Frederick was about to bring forward the question of his revenue, the Queen would fain have had an interview with the son she alternately despised and feared, to persuade him against pursuing this measure—the carrying out of which she dreaded as prejudicial to the King’s health in his present enfeebled state. Caroline, however, would not see her son, for the reason, as the mother alleged, that he was such an incorrigible liar that he was capable of making any mendacious report of the interview, even of her designing to murder him. She had, in an interview with him, at the time of the agitation connected with the Excise bill, been compelled to place the Princess Caroline, concealed, within hearing, that she might be a witness in case of the prince, her brother, misrepresenting what had really taken place.

When the King learned the prince’s intentions, he took the matter much more coolly than the Queen. Several messengers, however, passed between the principal parties, but nothing was done in the way of turning the prince from his purpose. It was an innocent purpose enough, indeed, as he represented it. The parliament had entrusted to the King a certain annual sum for the prince’s use. The King and Queen did not so understand it, and he simply applied to parliament to solicit that august body to put an interpretation on its own act.

The supposed debilitated condition of the King’s health gave increased hopes to the prince’s party. The Queen, therefore, induced him to hold levées and appear more frequently in public. His improvement in health and good humour was a matter of disappointment to those who wished him dying, and feared to see him grow popular.

The animosity of the Queen and her daughter, Caroline, against the Prince of Wales was ferocious.32 The mother cursed the day on which she had borne the son who was for ever destroying her peace, and would end, she said, by destroying her life. There was no opprobrious epithet which she did not cast at him; and they who surrounded the Queen and princess had the honour of daily hearing them hope that God would strike the son and brother dead with apoplexy. Such enmity seems incredible. The gentle Princess Caroline’s gentlest name for her brother was ‘that nauseous beast;’ and in running over the catalogue of crimes of which she declared him capable, if not actually guilty, she did not hesitate to say that he was capable of murdering even those whom he caressed. Never was family circle so cursed by dissension as this royal circle; in which the parents hated the son, the son the parents; the parents deceived one another, the husband betrayed the wife, the wife deluded the husband, the children were at mutual antagonism, and truth was a stranger to all.