CHAPTER VIII.
THE ‘FIRST GENTLEMAN’ AND HIS PRINCIPLES.
Inconsistency of the Whigs—The Tories become radical reformers—Party spirit—A restricted Regency scorned by the Prince—Compelled to accept it—The King’s rapid recovery—Incredulity of the Princes in regard to the King’s recovery—A family scene at Kew—Ball at White’s Club on the King’s recovery, and unbecoming conduct of the Princes—Thanksgiving at St. Paul’s—Indecent conduct of the Princes—Grief of the King—Expectations of the Prince disappointed—Caricatures and satires.
When the Queen first changed her apartments at Windsor, her exclamation, as she entered her new abode, was an assertion of her desolate helplessness, and a deploring hesitation as to what course she was bound to take. She was soon stirred to action. Her eldest son was active in the field against her, and her spirit was speedily aroused to protect and further her own interests. The Parliament had been made acquainted with the condition of the King, by a report from the privy council. With this the legislature was not satisfied. Parliamentary committees sat, before which bodies the King’s physicians made detailed depositions, whereby the King’s existing incapacity to transact public business was established beyond doubt. Upon this the Whigs, with Fox at their head (he had hurried home from Italy, deplorably ill, to perform this service for the Prince of Wales), declared that the royal incapacity caused the government of the kingdom to fall, as a matter of right, upon the heir-apparent. This assertion, which is a full and complete embracing of the law of divine right, and a trampling under foot of the authority of the parliament, was made in 1788, just one hundred years after the grandfathers of these very Whigs had established the authority of the people in parliament above that of the crown, and made the King who reigned and did not govern, merely the first magistrate of a free people.
On the other hand the Tories, with Pitt for their leader, declared that thus to annihilate the sovereignty of the people in parliament was treason against the constitution, which, in a juncture like the present, bestowed on the people’s representatives the right of naming by whom they would be governed. Thus the Tories were in truth radical reformers; and, in truth, quite as serious, both parties being equally insincere, fighting only for place, and caring little for aught beyond.
The whole country, upon this, became Tory in spirit—as Toryism had now developed itself. Fox in vain explained that he meant that the administration of the government belonged to the Prince of Wales, only if Parliament sanctioned it. In vain the Prince of Wales, through his brother the Duke of York, proclaimed in the House of Lords that he made no claim whatever, but was, in fact, the very humble and obedient servant of the people.
It was precisely because he did assert this claim that the Queen and her friends were alarmed. Should the Prince be endowed with the powers of regent, without restriction, the Queen would be reduced to a cypher, Pitt would lose his place, the ministry would be overthrown with him, and, should the King recover, difficulties might arise in the way of the recovery also of his authority.
Party spirit ran high on this matter, but there was little patriotism to give it dignity. Among the ministry, even, waverers were to be found, who were on the Prince’s side when the King’s case seemed desperate, and who veered round to the Sovereign’s party as soon as there appeared a hope of his recovery.
A restricted regency the Prince of Wales affected to look upon with ineffable scorn. His royal brothers manifested more fraternal sympathy than filial affection, by pretending to think their brother’s scorn well-founded. They all changed their minds as soon as they saw, by Pitt’s parliamentary majorities, that they could not help themselves. Ultimately, the Prince consented, with a very ill grace, to the terms which Pitt and the Parliament were disposed to force upon him. Never did man submit to terms which he loathed with such bitterness of disappointed spirit as the Prince did to the following conditions; namely:—
That the King’s person was to be entrusted to the Queen; her Majesty was to be also invested with the control of the royal household, and with the consequent patronage of the four hundred places connected therewith, including the appointments of lord-steward, lord-chamberlain, and master of the horse. The Prince, as regent, was further to be debarred from granting any office, reversion, or pension, except during the King’s pleasure; and the privilege of conferring the peerage was not to be allowed to him at all.
With a fiercely savage heart did he accept these terms; and when the Irish Parliament, in its eagerness to encourage dissension in England, invited him to take upon himself the unrestricted administration of the Irish government during the royal incapacity, the warmth and ardent gratitude expressed by the Prince in his reply, showed how willingly he would have accepted the invitation if he had only dared.
And now the day was appointed for bringing the Regency Bill regularly before Parliament—the 3rd of February—and the clauses were already under discussion when, a fortnight later, the lord chancellor (Thurlow) announced to the house that the King was declared by his medical attendants to be in a state of convalescence.
When Prince Henry was detected in taking the crown from the head of his invalid and slumbering father, he met the reproof which ensued with tender expressions of sorrow and respect. There was little of similar depth of feeling when the Prince of Wales, with the Duke of York, saw his father for the first time after his recovery. Queen Charlotte alone was present with her husband and sons. The last entered the King’s room, and issued therefrom, without a trace of emotion upon their faces or in their bearing. The chagrin with which they saw the power which they had coveted slip from them, might have taught them wisdom, but it only drove them to wine, cards, masquerades, and the profligacy which goes in company therewith. They were not as men rejoicing that Heaven had been merciful to their father and King, but as men striving to forget, amid a hurricane of vicious pleasures, that their sire had really been the object of such mercy. The Prince had indeed some misgivings as to what George III. might think of his conduct during the King’s malady; but he affected to assert that it would meet with approbation, while that of Mr. Pitt, he thought, would receive from the monarch a strong reproof. The Duke of York was far less careful as to the paternal, and as little to the public, opinion. He ran up scores in open tennis-courts with well-known black-legs, and promised payment as soon as he had received from his father certain arrears of revenue due to him as Bishop of Osnaburg.
These princely sons were among the last to acquiesce in the opinion that their father was sane, and competent again to exercise his constitutional authority. Lord Grenville thus graphically describes a family scene at Kew:—‘The two Princes were at Kew yesterday, and saw the King in the Queen’s apartment. She was present the whole time, a precaution for which, God knows, there was but too much reason. They kept him waiting a considerable time before they arrived, and after they left him drove immediately to Mrs. Armistead’s in Park Street, in hopes of finding Fox there, to give him an account of what had passed. He not being in town, they amused themselves yesterday evening with spreading about a report that the King was still out of his mind, and with quoting phrases of his to which they gave that turn. It is certainly a decent and becoming thing, that when all the King’s physicians, all his attendants, and his two principal ministers agree in pronouncing him well, his two sons should deny it! And the reflection that the Prince of Wales was to have had the government, and the Duke of York the command of the army, during his illness, makes this representation of his actual state, when coming from them, more peculiarly proper and edifying! I bless God that it is some time before these matured and ripened virtues will be visited upon us in the form of a government.’6
In the meantime the monarch got so undeniably well and competent to govern, that even his nearest and most expectant heirs could no longer deny the, to them, most unwelcome truth. A ball was given by White’s Club to celebrate this event, and the Princes of course were present to show how they were gratified by it! The ball was announced to take place at the Pantheon, and the Prince of Wales, who had engaged to attend, previously did his wretched utmost to render the attendance of others as thin as possible, by canvassing all his friends and admirers to keep away. The club had transmitted to the Prince and the Duke of York a large number of tickets for the accommodation of themselves and the acquaintances to whom, it was presumed, they might be desirous to pay the compliment of presenting them with admissions. The brothers sent the whole of these tickets to Hookham’s in Bond Street for sale! The club, on hearing of this insulting proceeding, and to prevent the admission of improper persons at a fête which had a private and exclusive character, intimated by advertisement that no ticket would entitle its holder to admittance which did not bear on it the signature of a subscriber to the ball, or of the person to whom the committee had sent such ticket. This did not teach the Duke decency. He affixed his princely title to the tickets, to make them saleable and valid; and he himself attended a ball given expressly in his honour, at the Horse Guards.
The first, and graceful, feeling of the Monarch, that he was bound to make a public expression of his thanks to Heaven for his recovery, caused his ministers and friends, and particularly the Queen, much embarrassment. They were afraid of the excitement and its probable consequences. But George III. was now in the condition once noticed by Hunter, the surgeon, in himself. ‘My mind,’ said the latter, ‘is still inclined to odd thoughts, and I am tempted to talk foolishly; but I can govern myself.’ The King was in better health than is here indicated, and he bore himself throughout the day—the 25th of June, 1789—as became a grateful man, abounding in piety, and not dispossessed of wisdom. The disgraceful rivalry of his eldest son had almost marred the day. The followers of the latter were posted along the first part of the route between the palace and St. Paul’s, and their cheers, associated with his name, put him in high good humour, which was however converted into as high displeasure when the running fire of cheers between Charing Cross and the cathedral was raised only in honour of his father. His conduct, and indeed that of his brothers York and Cumberland, as also of their cousin the Duke of Gloucester, in the cathedral, during service, disgusted all who witnessed it. They talked aloud to one another during the whole otherwise solemn proceeding; and it is only to be regretted that no man was present, with courage equal to his authority, to sternly reprove, or summarily remove, them.
The scene at St. Paul’s, as regarded the King himself, was at once magnificent and touching. The internal arrangements were excellent, and the King was composed and devout throughout the service; attentive to the latter, and especially to the anthem, which he had himself selected. His air of sincerity and gratitude was most marked. The Queen was much affected at the solemnity of their first entrance; and the King, who looked reduced, scarcely less so. Lady Uxbridge, who was in attendance on the Queen, nearly fainted away. ‘As the King went out of the church,’ writes Mr. Bernard to the Marquis of Rockingham, ‘he seemed to be in good spirits, and talked much to the persons about him; but he stared and laughed less than I ever knew him on a public occasion.’ Mr. Fox and most of the Opposition party were there; and while the Queen returned thanks for the King’s recovery, as she looked upon the sons near her, who interrupted the solemnity of the scene by their talking, she might have felt that she had other things to be thankful for also. She must have known, by the conduct of the Prince of Wales, that, had the King’s illness lasted much longer, he would have accepted the invitation of the Irish Parliament, and assumed a regency in Ireland, with sovereign power. He would have accomplished then what O’Connell, so long after, failed in achieving—a government altogether independent of, and in antagonism with, England.
After the return of the procession the Prince of Wales and Duke of York entered Carlton House, where, having put on regimentals, they proceeded to the ground in front of Buckingham House, at the windows of which the royal family had stationed themselves, the King and Queen being most prominent; and there, heading the whole brigade of guards, fired a feu-de-joie in honour of the occasion. The grave Lord Bulkeley, a spectator of the scene, thus describes the remainder of the proceedings: ‘The Prince, before the King got into his carriage—which the whole line waited for before they filed off—went off on a sudden with one hundred of the common people, with Mr. Weltje in the middle of them, huzzaing him; and this was done evidently to lead if possible a greater number and to make it penetrate into Buckingham House. The breach,’ adds Lord Bulkeley, ‘is so very wide between the King and Prince, that it seems to me to be a great weakness to allow him any communication with him whatever; for, under the mask of attention to their father and mother, the Prince and Duke of York commit every possible outrage, and show every insult they can devise to them.... I believe the King’s mind is torn to pieces by his sons,’ adds the noble lord. And then, in allusion to the King’s expressed desire to visit Hanover, the writer remarks thereon: ‘He expects to relieve himself by a new scene, and by getting out of the way and hearing of the Prince of Wales, with the hope of being able to detach the Duke of York, whom he fondly and doatingly loves, and prevailing on him to marry on the Continent; of which there is no chance, for in my opinion he is just as bad as the Prince, and gives no hopes of any change or amendment whatever in thought, word, or deed.’
A very short time after the King’s recovery the first remark made by the sufferer, on growing convalescent, to Lord Thurlow, was—‘What has happened may happen again. For God’s sake! make some permanent and immediate provision for such a regency as may prevent the country from being involved in disputes and difficulties similar to those just over.’ Thurlow and Pitt agreed on the expediency of the measure, but were at issue relative to the details. When the measure did come before Parliament, Queen Charlotte was equally indignant against the Prince of Wales and against those who advocated his claims. It may be added here that the conduct of her three eldest sons continued to be of the most insulting nature to the Queen. They could not forgive her for allegedly standing between them and the power which they coveted. From congratulatory balls, at which she had announced her intention to be present, they kept away all persons over whom they had any influence; and at a ball given by the French ambassador on the 30th of May the Prince of Wales and the Dukes of York and Clarence would neither dance nor remain to supper, lest they should have the appearance of paying the smallest attention to her Majesty, who was present.
The assertion of the Prince of Wales that his royal father would approve of what he had done, and censure Pitt, proved to be totally unfounded. The King conveyed to the Parliament, through the lord chancellor, his approval of the measures taken by ministers, and expressed his gratitude that so much zeal had been manifested by them and Parliament for the public good and for the honour and interest of the crown. Following this came a sweep of all who held removeable offices under the crown, and who had opposed the Queen’s interests and the King’s cause by supporting the views of the Prince. Among the ejected were the Duke of Queensberry, the Marquis of Lothian, Lord Carteret, and Lord Malmesbury.
Mr. Wright, in his ‘History of England under the House of Hanover, illustrated from the caricatures and satires of the day,’ states that the popularity of the ministers did not increase in the same proportion as that of the King; for the reason that though the people approved of the constitutional measures they had adopted at the late crisis, the same people very well knew that they were as little impelled by patriotism as their adversaries. Mr. Wright notices ‘a rather celebrated caricature,’ by Gillray, entitled ‘Minions of the Moon,’ published a little later. It is dated the 23rd of December 1791, but is generally understood to refer to this affair. It is a parody on Fuseli’s picture of ‘The Weird Sisters,’ who are represented with the features of Dundas, Pitt, and Thurlow. They are contemplating the disk of the moon, which represents, on the bright side, the face of the Queen, and on the shrouded side that of the King, now overcast with mental darkness. The three minions are evidently directing their devotions to the brighter side.