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

The report rendered by the gentlemen who formed the Milan Commission to inquire secretly into the conduct of the Princess of Wales was so unfavourable to the latter that the Regent would have taken immediate steps to have procured a divorce, but for the assurance of his legal advisers that, even in the case of the Princess becoming Queen-consort, she would never return to this country, provided only that the income assigned to her by parliament as Princess of Wales were secured to her after she was Queen. There had been some negotiation to this effect in 1819, when it was understood that the title of Queen would never be assumed by the Princess if the payment of the annuity was punctually observed. Her most intimate friends, therefore, did not reckon upon her appearance in this country after the accession of her husband to the throne.

Lord Liverpool addressed a letter to Mr. Brougham, adverting to this arrangement as having been originally proposed by Queen Caroline—a conclusion against which she protested with great indignation. Her first step was to pass through France to St. Omer, where she awaited the arrival of her legal advisers. The then reigning French monarch had in the time of his own adversity received substantial aid and continual courtesy from the Queen’s father; but now, in the hour of the distresses of his former benefactor’s daughter, he beset her passage through France with difficulties, and commanded her to be treated with studied neglect. However mortified, she was a woman of too much spirit to allow her mortification to be visible, and for the lack of official honours she found consolation in the sympathy of the people. On the first intimation of the omission of her name from the Liturgy, the Queen wrote thus, without consulting any one: ‘The Queen of this Relams wishes to be informed, through the medium of Lord Liverpool, First Minister to the King of this Relams, for which reason or motife the Queen name has been left out of the general Prayer-books in England, and especially to prevent all her subjects to pay her such respect which is due to the Queen. It is equally a great omittance towards the King that his Consort Queen should be obliged to soummit to such great neglect, or rather araisin from a perfect ignorance of the Archbishops of the real existence of the Queen Caroline of England.’ It was finely remarked by Mr. Denman, after he became the Solicitor-General (at Brougham’s recommendation), that the Queen was included in the Liturgy, in the prayer ‘for all who are desolate and oppressed.’

At the inn of St. Omer she was met by Mr. Brougham and Lord Hutchinson. The latter came as the representative of the ministry, with no credentials, however, nor even with the ministerial proposition reduced to writing. The Queen refused to receive it in any other form. Lord Hutchinson obeyed, and made a written proposal to the effect that, as she was now without income by the demise of George III., the King would grant her 50,000l. per annum, on the special condition that she remained on the continent, surrendered the title of Queen, adopted no title belonging to the royal family of England, and never even visited the latter country under any pretext. It was further stated that, if she set foot in England, the negotiation would be at an end, the terms violated, and proceedings be commenced against her Majesty forthwith.

It has been said that the Queen’s immediate and decided rejection of these proposals, and her resolution to proceed to England at once, were undoubted proofs of her innocence. The truth, however, is, that the acceptance of such terms would have been a tacit confession of her guilt, and, had she been as criminal as her accusers endeavoured to prove her, her safest course would have been that which she so spiritedly adopted. The infamy here was undoubtedly on the part of the ministry. Here was a woman in whom they asserted was to be found the most profligate of her sex, and to her they made an offer of 50,000l. per annum, on condition that she laid down the title of Queen of England, of which they said she was entirely unworthy; and this sum was to be paid to her out of the taxes of a people the majority of whom believed that she had been ‘more sinned against than sinning.’

It has been believed, or at least has been reported, that the Queen was counselled to the refusal of the compromise annuity of 50,000l. by Alderman Wood. The city dignitary, in such case, got little thanks for his advice at the hands of Baron Bergami. The latter individual, on hearing that Queen Caroline had declined to accept the offer, and that the alderman was her adviser on the occasion, declared that if he ever encountered the ex-mayor in Italy he would kill him. The courier-baron’s ground of offence was, that, had the Queen received the money, a great portion of it would have fallen to his share, and that he considered himself as robbed by the alderman, whom he would punish accordingly.

Caroline refused the proposals with scorn. In one of her characteristic letters she said: ‘The 30th of April I shall be at Calais for certain; my health is good, and my spirit is perfect. I have seen no personnes of any kind who could give me any advice different to my feelings and my sentiments of duty relatif of my present situation and rank of life.’ Fearful of further obstacle on the part of the French government, she proceeded at once to Calais, dismissed her Italian court, and with Alderman Wood and Lady Anne Hamilton she went on board the ‘Leopold’ sailing packet, then lying in the mud in the harbour. No facilities were afforded her by the authorities; the English inhabitants of Calais were even menaced with penalties if they infringed the orders which had been given, and no compliment was paid her, except by the master of the packet, who hoisted the royal standard as soon as her Majesty set foot upon the humble deck of his little vessel. She sat there as evening closed in, without an attendant saving the lady already named and the alderman, who not only gave her his escort now but offered her a home. She had solicited from the government that a house might be provided for her, but the application had been received with silent contempt.

Her progress from Dover to London was a perfect ovation. Mr. Brougham had given her good advice at St. Omer. ‘If,’ he said, ‘your Majesty shall determine to go to England before any new offer can be made, I earnestly implore your Majesty to proceed in the most private and secret manner possible. It may be very well for a candidate at an election to be drawn into towns by the population, and they will mean nothing but good in showing this attention to your Majesty; but a Queen of England may well dispense with such marks of popular favour, and my duty to your Majesty binds me to say very plainly that I shall consider any such exhibition as both hurtful to your Majesty’s real dignity and full of danger in its probable consequences.’ ‘That Brougham is afraid,’ said the Queen; and so he was—afraid of her, afraid of some scandal, unknown to him then, coming out after her arrival. If he could have had his way he would not have consented to her coming to England at all. The people saw in her a victim of persecution, and for such there is generally a ready sympathy. They were convinced, too, that she was a woman of spirit, and for such there is ever abundant admiration. There was not a town through which she passed upon her way that did not give her a hearty welcome, and wish her well through the fiery ordeal which awaited her. She reached London on the evening of the 7th of June, 1820, and the popular procession of which she was the chief portion passed Carlton House on its route to the residence of Alderman Wood, in South Audley Street. There Alderman Wood used to spread a rug for her Majesty to tread upon, when, to satisfy the loud-tongued mob, she appeared twenty times a day on the little balcony. The Attorney-General would not allow his wife to call on her; and Mrs. Denman received a similar prohibition from Mr. Denman, who, subsequently, regretted the course he had taken.

The Queen had scarcely found refuge beneath the alderman’s hospitable roof when Lord Liverpool in the House of Peers, and Lord Castlereagh in the House of Commons, conveyed a message from the King to the parliament, the subject of which was that, her Majesty having thought proper to come to this country, some information would be laid before them, on which they would have to come to an ulterior decision, of vast importance to the peace and well-being of the United Kingdom. Each minister bore a ‘green bag,’ which was supposed and perhaps did contain minutes of the report made by the Milan commissioners touching her Majesty’s conduct abroad. The ministerial communications were made in the spirit and tone of men who, if not ashamed of the message which they bore, were very uncertain and infinitely afraid as to its ultimate consequences.

Not that they were wanting in an outward show of boldness. The soldiers quartered at the King’s Mews, Charing Cross, had been so disorderly some days previous, allegedly because they had not sufficient accommodation, that they were drafted in two divisions to Portsmouth. When the Queen was approaching London a mob assembled in front of the guard-house, and called upon the soldiers still remaining there to join them in a demonstration in favour of the Queen. Lord Sidmouth, who was passing on his way to the House of Lords, seeing what was going on, proceeded to the Horse Guards, called out the troops there, and stood by while they roughly dispersed the people. It was called putting a bold face upon the matter, but less provocation on the part of a government has been followed by revolution.

A desire to compromise the unhappy dispute was no doubt sincerely entertained by ministers, and all hope was not abandoned, even after the arrival of the Queen. Mr. Rush, the United States ambassador to England at this period, permits us to see, in his journal, when this attempt at compromise or amicable arrangement of the affair was first entered upon by the respective parties. On the 15th of June that gentleman dined at Lord Castlereagh’s with all the foreign ambassadors. ‘A very few minutes,’ he says, ‘after the last course, Lord Castlereagh, looking to his chief guest for acquiescence, made the signal for rising, and the company all went to the drawing-room. So early a move was unusual: it seemed to cut short, unexpectedly, the time generally given to conversation at English dinners after the dinner ends. It was soon observed that his lordship had left the drawing-room. This was still more unusual; and now it came to be whispered that an extraordinary cause had produced this unusual scene. It was whispered by one or another of the corps that his lordship had retired into one of his own apartments to meet the Duke of Wellington, as his colleague in the administration, and also Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman, as counsel for the Queen in the disputes pending between the King and Queen.’ Mr. Rush, after mentioning that the proceedings in parliament were arrested for the moment by members purporting to be common friends of both King and Queen, proceeds to state that ‘the dinner at Lord Castlereagh’s was during this state of things, which explains the incident at its close, the disputes having pressed with anxiety on the King’s ministers. That his lordship did separate himself from his guests for the purpose of holding a conference in another part of his own house, in which the Duke of Wellington joined him as representing the King, with Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman as representing the Queen, was known from the former protocol, afterwards published, of what took place on that very evening. It was the first of the conferences held with a view to a compromise between the royal disputants.’ On the 28th of June the American ambassador was at the levée at Carlton House, where he learns that ‘the sensibilities of the King are intense, and nothing can ever reconcile him.’ The same diplomatist then presents to us the following graphic picture: ‘The day was hot, excessively so for England. The King seemed to suffer. He remarked upon the heat to me and others. It is possible that other heat may have aggravated in him that of the weather. Before he came into the entrée room, from his closet, —— of the diplomatic corps, taking me gently by the arm, led me a few steps with him, which brought us into the recess of a window. “Look!” said he. I looked, and saw nothing but the velvet lawn covered by trees in the palace gardens. “Look again!” said he. I did; and still my eye only took in another part of the same scene. “Try once more,” said he, cautiously raising a finger in the right direction. —— had a vein of drollery in him. I now for the first time beheld a peacock displaying his plumage. At one moment he was in full pride, and displayed it gloriously; at another he would halt, letting it drop, as if dejected. “Of what does that remind you?” said ——. “Of nothing,” said I; “Honi soit qui mal y pense!” for I threw the King’s motto at him, and then added that I was a republican, he a monarchist, and that if he dreamt of unholy comparisons where royalty was concerned I would certainly tell upon him, that it might be reported at his court. He quietly drew off from me, smiling, and I afterwards saw him slyly take another member of the corps to the same spot, to show him the same sight.’

Meanwhile, the contending parties in parliament wore about them the air of men who were called upon to do battle, and who, while resolved to accomplish their best, would have been glad to have effected a compromise which, at least, should save the honour of their principal. As Mr. Wilberforce remarked, there was a mutual desire to ‘avoid that fatal green bag.’ There were many difficulties in the way. The Queen, naturally enough, insisted on her name being restored in the Liturgy; and none of her friends would have consented for her, nor would she have done so for herself, that she should reside abroad without being introduced by the British ambassador to the court of the country in which she might take up her residence. The government manifested too clearly an intention not to help her in this respect, for they remarked that, though they might request the ambassador to present, they could not compel the court to receive her. They wanted her out of the way, bribed splendidly to endure an indelible disgrace. She was wise enough, at least, to perceive that to consent to such a course would be to strip her of every friend, and to shut against her the door of every court in Europe.

Mr. Wilberforce hoped to act the ‘Mr. Harmony’ of the crisis, by bringing forward a motion expressive of the regret of parliament that the two illustrious adversaries had not been able to complete an amicable arrangement of their difficulties, and declaring that the Queen would sacrifice nothing of her good name nor of the righteousness of her cause, nor be held as shrinking from inquiry, by consenting to accept the counsel of parliament, and forbearing to press further the adoption of those propositions on which any material difference of opinion is yet remaining. The Queen’s especial advocate, Mr. Brougham, felicitously contrasted the eager desire of ministers to get rid of her Majesty, by sending her out of the country with all the pomp, splendour, and ceremonies connected with royalty, with their meanness in allowing her to come over in a common packet, and to seek shelter in the house of a private individual. He added that the only basis on which any satisfactory negotiation could be carried on with her Majesty was the restoration of her name to the Liturgy. Mr. Denman, in alluding to the case of Sophia Dorothea, which had been cited by ministers as precedent wherein they found authority for omitting the Queen’s name from the Liturgy, remarked that, ‘As to the case of the Queen of George I., to which allusions had been made, it was not at all in point. She had been guilty of certain practices in Hanover which compromised her character, and was never considered Queen of England. On the continent she lived under the designation of Princess of Halle; and though the Prince of Wales had afterwards called her to this country for the purpose of embarrassing the government of his father, to which he happened to be opposed, still she was never recognised in any other character than Electress of Hanover.’ In this statement it will be seen that the speaker calls her Queen whom he denies to have been accounted as such, and he adds that the Prince of Wales called her to this country in his father’s lifetime, when he had no power to do so; whereas he simply expressed to his friends his determination to invite her over if she survived his father as Queen-dowager of England. This invitation he never had the power of making, for his mother’s demise preceded the decease of his father. Mr. Denman was far happier in his allusion to a ministerial assertion that the omission of the Queen’s name from the Liturgy was the act of the King in his closet. This assertion was at once a meanness and a falsehood, for, as Mr. Denman remarked, no one knew of any such thing in this country as ‘the King in his closet.’ Indeed the ministers were peculiarly unlucky in all they did; for while they asserted that the omission was never made out of disrespect towards the Queen, they acknowledged that it never would have been thought of but for the revelations contained in the fatal green bag as to her Majesty’s alleged conduct. Finally, the House agreed to Mr. Wilberforce’s motion.

The announcement of the resolution to which the House of Commons had come was made to her Majesty, now residing in Portman Street, in an address conveyed to her by Mr. Wilberforce and three other members of the Lower House. On this occasion all the forms of a court were observed. The bearers of the address appeared in full court dress. The Queen, in a dress of black satin, with a wreath of laurel shaded with emeralds around her head, surmounted by a ‘plume of feathers,’ stood in one portion of the little drawing-room; behind her stood all the ladies of her household, in the person of Lady Anne Hamilton, and on either side of her Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman, her Majesty’s Attorney and Solicitor Generals, in full-bottomed wigs and silk gowns. As the deputation approached, the folding doors which divided the members in the back drawing-room from the Queen and her court in the front apartment were then thrown open, and the four gentlemen from the House of Commons knelt on one knee and kissed her Majesty’s hand. Having communicated to her the resolutions of the House, the Queen, through the attorney-general, returned an answer of some length, the substance of which, however, was, that with all her respect for the House of Commons she could not bind herself to be governed by its counsel until she knew the purport of the advice. In short, she yielded nothing, but appealed to the nation. When the assembled crowd learned the character of the royal reply its delight was intense, and certainly public opinion was generally in favour of the Queen and of the course now adopted by her. There was one thing she and the public too supremely hated, and that was the formation of a secret committee, formed principally too of ministerial adherents, and charged with prosecuting the inquiry against her, without letting her know who were her accusers or of what crimes she was accused, and without affording her opportunity to procure evidence to rebut the testimony brought against her. Against such a proceeding she drew up a petition, which she requested the Lord Chancellor to present. That eminent official, however, asserting that he meant no disrespect, excused himself on the ground that he did not know how to present such a document to the House, and that there was nothing in the journals which could tend to enlighten him.

The petition, however, the chief prayer in which was that the Queen’s counsel might be heard at the bar of the House against an inquiry by secret committee, was presented by Lord Dacre, and the prayer in question was agreed to.

The request of Mr. Brougham was for a delay of two months, previous to the inquiry being further prosecuted, in order to leave time for the assembling of witnesses for the defence—witnesses whom the Queen was too poor to purchase, and too powerless to compel to repair to England. Her Majesty’s Attorney-General asked this the more earnestly as some of the witnesses on the King’s side were of tainted character, and one of them was an ex-domestic of the Queen’s, discharged from her service for robbing her of four hundred napoleons. The learned advocate concluded by expressing his confidence that the delay of two months would not be considered too great an indulgence for the purpose of furthering the ends of justice, and providing that a legal murder should not be committed on the character of the first subject of the realm. The best point in Mr. Denman’s speech in support of the request made by his leader was in the quotation from a judgment delivered by a former lord chancellor, and which was to this effect—it was delivered with the eyes of the speaker keenly fixed on those of Lord Eldon—‘A judge ought to prepare the way to a just sentence, as God useth to prepare His way, by raising valleys and taking down hills, so when there appeareth on either side a high hand, violent prosecutions, cunning advantages taken, combination, power, great counsel, then is the virtue of a judge seen to make inequality equal, that he may plant his judgment as upon an even ground.’

While the Lords were deliberating on the request for postponement, Lord Castlereagh was inveighing in the Commons against the Queen herself, for daring to refuse to yield to the wishes of parliament, and rejecting the advice to be guided by its counsel. Such rejection he interpreted as being a sort of insult which no other member of the House of Brunswick would have ventured to commit. ‘That illustrious individual,’ he said, ‘might repent the step she had taken.’ Meanwhile, the Commons suspended proceedings till the course to be decided upon by the Lords was finally taken. In the latter assembly Earl Grey made a last effort to stay the proceedings altogether, by moving that the order for the meeting of the secret committee to consider the papers in the ‘green bag’ should be discharged. The motion was lost, but an incident in the debate which arose upon it deserves to be noticed. The omission of the Queen’s name from the Liturgy had been described as the act of the King in his closet. Lord Holland now charged the Archbishop of Canterbury as the adviser of the act; but Lord Liverpool accepted the responsibility of it for himself and colleagues, as having been adopted by the King in council, at the ministerial suggestion.

The Lords having resolved to commence proceedings by a preliminary secret inquiry, the Queen protested against such a course, but no reply was made to her protest. With the exception of appearing to return answers to the addresses forwarded to her from various parts of the country, she withdrew, as much as possible, from all publicity. Her personal friends, however, were busier than she required in drawing up projects for her which she could not sanction. One of these busy advocates thought that she might fittingly compromise the matter by gaining the restoration of her name in the Liturgy, being crowned, holding one drawing-room, yearly, at Kensington Palace, and having her permanent residence at Hampton Court, with 55,000l. a year to uphold her dignity. The terms were not illiberal; but if the Queen rejected them, it was, probably, because she knew they would never be offered. Her own remark upon them is said to have been, that she did not want a victory without a battle, but a victory after showing that she had deserved it.

She was the more eager for battle from the fact that the contents of the green bag were by no means unknown to her. At least, it has been asserted that she had long held duplicates of some of the evidence, if not of the report made by the Milan commissioners, and she was satisfied she could rebut both. She possessed one, and it was her solitary, advantage in this case. The ministers, if not in so many words, yet by their proceedings, had stigmatised her as utterly infamous, and yet they had considered it not beneath them to desire to enter into negotiations with one whom they considered guilty of all the implied infamy. The Queen’s rejection of the proposals to compound ‘the stupendous felony’ raised up for her many a friend in circles where she had been looked upon, if not as guilty, yet, at best, as open to very grave suspicion.

The Queen’s health required her not to confine herself within the narrow limits of her residence in Portman Street. She accordingly paid one public visit to Guildhall, and occasionally repaired to Blackheath. It was on her way back from one of these latter excursions that she honoured Alderman Waithman’s shop with a visit. The incident is perhaps as well worth noticing as that which tells of the trip made by the young Queen Mary to the shop of Lady Gresham, the lady mayoress, who appears to have dealt in millinery. The city progresses of the Queen did her infinite injury. The very lowest of the populace, who cared little more for her than as giving opportunity for a little excitement, were wont on these occasions to take the horses from her carriage, harness themselves to the vehicle, and literally drag the Queen of England through the mud of the metropolis. She could only suffer degradation and ridicule from such a proceeding, which a little spirit might have prevented. Her enemies bitterly derided her through their organs in the press. They expressed an eagerness to get rid of her, and added their indifference as to whether ‘the alien’ was finally disposed of as a martyr or as a criminal. On the other hand, her over-zealous partisans gave utterance to their convictions that there was a project on foot to murder the Queen. Party spirit never wore so assassin-like an aspect as it did at this moment. Caroline, it must be added, was not displeased with these popular ovations. ‘I have derived,’ she remarked in her reply to the City address, ‘unspeakable consolations from the zealous and constant attachment of this warm-hearted, just, and generous people, to live at home with and to cherish whom will be the chief happiness of the remainder of my days.’ But her chief occupation now was to look to her defence, for the time had arrived when her accusers were to speak openly.