Sir Robert Walpole was sojourning at Chelsea, and thinking of nothing less than of the demise of a king, when news was brought him, by a messenger from Lord Townshend, at three o’clock in the afternoon of the 14th of June 1727, that his late most sacred Majesty was then lying dead in the Westphalian palace of his serene highness the Bishop of Osnaburgh. Sir Robert immediately hurried to Richmond, in order to be the first to do homage to the new sovereigns, George and Caroline. George accepted the homage with much complacency, and on being asked by Sir Robert as to the person whom the King would select to draw up the usual address to the privy council, George II. mentioned the speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Spencer Compton.

This was a civil way of telling Sir Robert that his services as prime-minister were no longer required. He was not pleased at being supplanted, but neither was he wrathfully little-minded against his successor—a successor so incompetent for his task that he was obliged to have recourse to Sir Robert to assist him in drawing up the address above alluded to. Sir Robert rendered the assistance with much heartiness, but was not the less determined, if possible, to retain his office, in spite of the personal dislike of the King, and of that of the Queen, whom he had offended, when she was Princess of Wales, by speaking of her as ‘that fat beast, the prince’s wife.’ Sir Robert could easily make poor Sir Spencer communicative with regard to his future intentions. The latter was a stiff, gossiping, soft-hearted creature, and might very well have taken for his motto the words of Parmeno in the play of Terence:—‘Plenus rimarum sum.’ He intimated that on first meeting parliament he should propose an allowance of 60,000l. per annum to be made to the Queen. ‘I will make it 40,000l. more,’ said Sir Robert, subsequently, through a second party, to Queen Caroline, ‘if my office of minister be secured to me.’ Caroline was delighted at the idea, intimated that Sir Robert might be sure ‘the fat beast’ had friendly feelings towards him, and then hastening to the King, over whose weaker intellect her more masculine mind held rule, explained to her royal husband that as Compton considered Walpole the fittest man to be—what he had so long been with efficiency—prime-minister, it would be a foolish act to nominate Compton himself to the office. The King acquiesced, Sir Spencer was made president of the council, and Sir Robert not only persuaded parliament, without difficulty, to settle one hundred thousand a year on the Queen, but he also persuaded the august trustees of the people’s money to add the entire revenue of the civil list, about one hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year, to the annual sum of seven hundred thousand pounds, which had been settled as proper revenue for a king. Sir Robert had thus the wit to bribe King and Queen, out of the funds of the people, and we cannot be surprised that their Majesties looked upon him and his as true allies. Indeed Caroline did not wait for the success of the measure in order to show her confidence in Walpole. Their Majesties had removed from Richmond to their temporary palace in Leicester Fields, on the very evening of their receiving notice of their accession to the crown; and the next day all the nobility and gentry in town crowded to kiss their hands. ‘My mother,’ says Horace Walpole, ‘among the rest, who, Sir Spencer Compton’s designation and not his evaporation being known, could not make her way between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor could approach nearer to the Queen than the third or fourth row; but no sooner was she descried by her Majesty than the Queen said aloud: “There I am sure I see a friend!” The torrent divided and shrank to either side, “and as I came away,” said my mother, “I might have walked over their heads, had I pleased.”’

George I. had drawn up a will which he coolly thought his successor would respect. Perhaps he remembered that his son believed in ghosts and vampires, and would fulfil a dead man’s will out of mere terror of a dead man’s visitation. But George Augustus had no such fear, nor any such respect, as that noticed above.

At the first council held by George II., Dr. Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose hands George I. had deposited his last will and testament, produced that precious instrument, placed it before the King, and composed himself to hear the instructions of the deceased parent recited by his heir. The new King, however, put the paper in his pocket, walked out of the room, never uttered a word more upon the subject, and general rumour subsequently proclaimed that the royal will had been dropped into the fire by the testator’s son.

That testator, however, had been a destroyer of wills himself. He had burnt that of the poor old Duke of Zell, and he had treated in like manner the last will of Sophia Dorothea. The latter document favoured both his children more than he approved, and the King, who could do no wrong, committed a felonious act, which for a common criminal would have purchased a halter. Being given to this sort of iniquity himself, he naturally thought ill of the heir whom he looked upon as bound to respect the will of his father. To bind him the more securely to such observance, he left two duplicates of his will; one of which was deposited with the Duke of Wolfenbüttel, the other with another German prince, whose name has not been revealed, and both were given up by the depositaries, for fee and reward duly paid for the service. The copies were destroyed in the same way as the original. What instruction was set down in this document has never been ascertained. Walpole speaks of a reported legacy of forty thousand pounds to the King’s surviving mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, and of a subsequent compromise made with the husband of the duchess’s ‘niece’ and heiress, Lady Walsingham—a compromise which followed upon a threatened action at law. Something similar is said to have taken place with the King of Prussia, to whose wife, the daughter of George I., the latter monarch was reported to have bequeathed a considerable legacy.

However this may be, the surprise of the council and the consternation of the primate were excessive. The latter dignitary was the last man, however, who could with propriety have blamed a fellow-man for acting contrary to what was expected of him. He himself had been the warmest advocate of religious toleration, until he reached the primacy and had an opportunity for the exercise of a little harshness towards dissenters. The latter were as much astonished at their ex-advocate as the latter was astounded by the act of the King.

We will not further allude to the coronation of George and Caroline than by saying that, on the occasion in question, these Sovereigns displayed a gorgeousness of taste of a somewhat barbarous quality. The coronation was the most splendid which had been seen for years. George, despite his low stature and fair hair, which heightened the weakness of his expression at this period, was said to be on this occasion ‘every inch a king.’ He enjoyed the splendour of the scene and of himself, and thought it cheaply purchased at the cost of much fatigue.

Caroline was not inferior to her lord. It is true that of crown jewels she had none, save a pearl necklace, the solitary spoil left of all the gems, ‘rich and rare,’ which had belonged to Queen Anne, and which had, for the most part, been distributed by the late King among his favourites of every degree. Caroline wore on the occasion of her crowning, not only the pearl necklace of Queen Anne, but ‘she had on her head and shoulders all the pearls and necklaces which she could borrow from the ladies of quality at one end of the town, and on her petticoat all the diamonds she could hire of the Jews and jewellers at the other; so,’ adds Lord Hervey, from whom this detail is taken, ‘the appearance and the truth of her finery was a mixture of magnificence and meanness, not unlike the éclat of royalty in many other particulars, when it comes to be nicely examined and its sources traced to what money hires and flattery lends.’

The Queen dressed for the grand ceremony in a private room at Westminster. Early in the morning she put on ‘an undress’ at St. James’s, of which we are told that ‘everything was new.’ She was carried across St. James’s Park privately in a chair, bearing no distinctive mark upon it, and preceded, at a short distance, by the Lord Chancellor and Mrs. Howard, both of whom were in ‘hack sedans.’ She was dressed by that lady. Mrs. Herbert, another bed-chamber woman, would fain have shared in the honour, but as she was herself in full dress for the ceremony, she was pronounced incapable of attiring her who was to be the heroine of it. At the conclusion of the august affair the Queen unrobed in an adjacent apartment, and, as in the morning, was smuggled back to St. James’s in a private chair.

Magnificent as Caroline was in borrowed finery at her coronation, she was excelled in point of show by Mrs. Oldfield, on the stage at Drury Lane. The theatre was closed on the night of the real event—the government had no idea then of dividing a multitude; but the management expended a thousand pounds in getting up the pageant of the crowning of Anne Boleyn, at the close of ‘Henry VIII.’ In this piece, Booth made Henry the principal character, and Cibber’s Wolsey sank to a second-rate part. The pageant, however, was so attractive, that it was often played, detached from the piece, at the conclusion of a comedy or any other play. Caroline went more than once with her royal consort to witness this representation, an honour which was refused to the more vulgar show, which had but indifferent success, at Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields.

The King’s revenue, as settled upon him by the Whig parliament, was larger than any of our Kings had before enjoyed. Caroline’s jointure, 100,000l. a year, with Somerset House and Richmond Lodge, was double that which had been granted previously to any Queen. This success had been so notoriously the result of Walpole’s exertions, that the husband of Caroline, who dealt in very strong terms, began to look complacently on the ‘rogue and rascal,’ thought his brother Horace bearable, in spite of his being, as George used to call him, ‘scoundrel,’ ‘fool,’ and ‘dirty buffoon,’ and he even felt less averse than usual to the two secretaries of state of Walpole’s administration, the Duke of Newcastle, the ‘impertinent fool,’ whom he had threatened at the christening of William, Duke of Cumberland, and Lord Townshend, whom he was wont to designate as a ‘choleric blockhead.’ The issue of the affair was, that of Walpole’s cabinet no one went out but the minister’s son-in-law, Lord Malpas, roughly ejected from the Mastership of the Robes, and ‘Stinking Yonge,’ as the King used elegantly to designate Sir William, who was turned out of the Commission of Treasury, and whose sole little failings were, that he was ‘pitiful, corrupt, contemptible, and a great liar,’ though, as Lord Hervey says, ‘rather a mean than a vicious one,’ which does not seem to mend the matter, and which is a distinction without a difference. After all, Sir William only dived to come up fresh again. And Lord Malpas performed the same feat.

Henceforth, it was understood by every lady, says Lord Hervey, ‘that Sir Robert was the Queen’s minister; that whoever he favoured she distinguished, and whoever she distinguished the King employed.’ The Queen ruled, without seeming to rule. She was mistress by power of suggestion. A word from her in public, addressed to the King, generally earned for her a rebuke. Her consort so pertinaciously declared that he was independent, and that she never meddled with public business of any kind, that every one, even the early dupes of the assertion, ceased at last to put any faith in it. Caroline ‘not only meddled with business, but directed everything which came under that name, either at home or abroad.’ It is too much, perhaps, to say that her power was unrivalled and unbounded, but it was doubtless great, and purchased at great cost. That she could induce her husband to employ a man whom he had not yet learned to like was in itself no small proof of her power, considering the peculiarly obstinate disposition of the monarch.

Her recommendation of Walpole was not based, it is believed, upon any very exalted motives. Walpole himself, in his official connections with the Sovereign, was certainly likely to take every advantage of the opportunity to create favourable convictions of his ability. Caroline, in praising his ability to the King, suggested that Sir Robert was rich enough to be honest, and had so little private business of his own that he had all the more leisure to devote to that of the King. ‘New leeches would be not the less hungry;’ and with this very indifferent sort of testimony to her favourite’s worth, Caroline secured a servant for the King and a minister for herself.

The tact of the Queen was so admirable that the husband, who followed her counsel in all things, never even himself suspected but that he was leading her. This was the very triumph of the Queen’s art, and the crowning proof of the simplicity and silliness of the King. It is said that he sneered at Charles I. for being governed by his wife; at Charles II. for being governed by his mistresses; at James led by priests; at William duped by men; at Queen Anne deceived by her favourites; and at his father, who allowed himself to be ruled by any one who could approach him. And he finished his catalogue of scorn by proudly asking, ‘Who governs now?’ The courtiers probably smiled behind their jaunty hats. The wits, and some of them were courtiers too, answered the query more roughly, and they remarked, in rugged rhyme and bad grammar—

The two were otherwise described by other poetasters, as—

It is a fact, at which we need not be surprised, that the most cutting satires against the King, as led by his wife, were from the pens of female writers—or said to be so. And this is likely enough; for in no quarter is there so much contempt for a man who leans upon, rather than supports, his wife. The court certainly offered good opportunity for the satirists to make merry with. At the court of Caroline, it must be confessed, there was not much female delicacy, and still less manly dignity—even in the presence of the Queen herself. Thus we hear, for instance, of Caroline, one evening, at Windsor, asking Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Townshend where they had dined that day? My lord replied that he had dined with Lord and Lady Trevor, an aged couple, and the lady remarkable for her more than ordinary plainness. Whereupon Sir Robert, with considerable latitude of expression, intimated, jokingly, that his friend was paying political court to the lord, in order to veil a court of another kind addressed to the lady. Lord Townshend, not understanding raillery on such a topic, grew angry, and in defending himself against the charge of seducing old Lady Trevor, was not content with employing phrases of honest indignation alone, but used illustrations that no ‘lord’ would ever think of using before a lady. Caroline grew uneasy, not at the growing indelicacy of phrase, but at the angry feelings of the Peachum and Lockit of the court; and ‘to prevent Lord Townshend’s replying, or the thing being pushed any further, only laughed, and began immediately to talk on some other subject.’4

The mention of the heroes in Gay’s opera serves to remind me that, in 1729, the influence of the Queen was again exerted to lead the King to do what he had not himself dreamed of doing.

Sir Robert Walpole must have been more ‘thin-skinned’ than he is usually believed to have been, if he could really have felt wounded, as it would appear was the case, by the alleged satire of the ‘Beggars’ Opera.’ The public would seem to have been the authors of such satire rather than Gay, for they made application of many passages, to which the writer of them probably attached no personal meaning.

The origin of the piece was certainly not political. It was a mere Newgate pastoral put into an operatic form, and intended to ridicule, what it succeeded in overthrowing for a season, the newly introduced Italian Opera. The piece had been refused by Cibber, and was accepted by Rich, who brought it out at Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, on the 29th of January 1728, with such success, that it was said of it, that it made Gay rich, and Rich gay. Walker was the Macheath, and Miss Fenton, afterwards Duchess of Bolton, the Polly—a character in which she was not approached by either of her three immediate successors, Miss Warren, Miss Cantrell, or sweet Kitty Clive. Johnson says of the piece that it was plainly written only to divert—without any moral purpose, and therefore not likely to do good. This is the truth, no doubt; and if Gay put in a few strong passages just previous to representation, it was the public application which gave them double force. Perhaps the application would have been stronger if Quin had originally played, as was intended, the part of Macheath. To step from Macbeth to the highwayman might have had a political signification given to it; and indeed Quin did play, and sing, the captain one night for his benefit—-just as another great tragedian, Young, did, within our own recollection. However, never had piece such success. It was played at every theatre in the kingdom, and every audience was as keenly alive for passages which could be applied against the court and government as they were for mere ridicule against the Italian Opera.

Caroline herself was probably not opposed to the morale of the piece. Her own chairmen were suspected of being in league with highwaymen, and probably were; but on their being arrested and dismissed from her service by the master of her household, who suspected their guilt, she was indignant at the liberty taken and insisted on their being restored. She had no objection to be safely carried by suspected confederates of highwaymen.

The poverty of ‘Polly’ could not render it exempt from being made the scapegoat for the ‘Beggars’ Opera,’ in which Walpole, from whom Gay could not obtain a place, was said to be ‘shown-up,’ night after night, as a thief and the friend of thieves. The ‘Beggars’ Opera’ had a run before its satire was felt by him against whom it was chiefly directed. ‘Polly’ is very stupid and not satirical, but it was a favourite with the author. The latter, therefore, was especially annoyed at receiving an injunction from the lord chamberlain’s office, obtained at the request of Sir Robert, whereby the representation of ‘Polly’ was forbidden in every theatre. The poet determined to shame his enemies by printing the piece with a smart political supplement annexed.

Gay was the ‘spoiled child’ of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry. They espoused his cause; and the duchess was especially active, urgent, and successful in procuring subscriptions—compelling them, by gentle violence, even from the most reluctant. This zeal for the vexed poet went so far that the duchess solicited subscriptions even in the Queen’s apartment and in the royal drawing-room. There was something pleasant in making even the courtiers subscribe towards the circulating of a piece which royalty, through its official, had prohibited from being acted. The zealous duchess was thus busy with three or four gentlemen, in one corner of the room, when the King came upon them and enquired the nature of her business. ‘It is a matter of humanity and charity,’ said her grace, ‘and I do not despair but that your Majesty will contribute to it.’ The Monarch disappointed Gay’s patroness in this respect, but he exhibited no symptom whatever of displeasure, and left her to her levying occupation. Subsequently, however, in the Queen’s apartment, the subject was talked over between the royal pair, and not till then did George perceive that the conduct of the duchess was so impertinent that it was necessary to forbid her appearing again, at least for the present, at court.

The King’s vice-chamberlain, Mr. Stanhope, was despatched with a verbal message to this effect. The manner and the matter equally enraged Gay’s patroness, and she delivered a note of acknowledgment to the vice-chamberlain, in which she stated that she was both surprised and gratified at the royal and agreeable command to stay away from court, seeing that she had never gone there but for her own diversion, and also from a desire of showing some civility to the King and Queen! The lively lady further intimated, that perhaps it was as well that they who dared to speak, or even think, truth, should be kept away from a court where it was unpalatable; although she had thought that in supporting truth and innocence in the palace, she was paying the very highest compliment possible to both their Majesties.

When the note was completed, the writer gave it to Mr. Stanhope to read. The stiff vice-chamberlain felt rather shocked at the tone, and politely advised the duchess to think better of the matter, and write another note. Her grace consented, but the second edition was so more highly spiced, and so more pungent than the first, that the officer preferred taking the latter, which he must have placed before King and Queen with a sort of decent horror, appropriate to a functionary of his polite vocation. The duchess lost the royal favour, and the duke, her husband, lost his posts.

After all, it seems singular, that while so stupid a piece as ‘Polly’ was prohibited, the representation of the ‘Beggars’ Opera’ still went on. The alleged offence was thus seemingly permitted, while visitation was made on an unoffending piece; and subscriptions for the printing of that piece were asked for, as we have seen, by the Duchess of Queensberry, in the very apartments of the Sovereign, who is said to have been most offended at the poet’s alleged presumption.

Other poets and the players advanced in the good will of Caroline and her house by producing pieces complimentary to the Brunswick family. Thus Rich, who had offended the royal family by getting up the ‘Beggars’ Opera,’ in January 1728, produced Mrs. Haywood’s tragedy of ‘Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lunenberg,’ in March 1729. The authoress dedicated her play to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and her object in writing it was to represent one of the ancestors of his royal highness as raised to the imperial throne in consequence of his virtues. It may be a question whether Caroline, or her husband, or son, could approve of a subject which exhibited the Brunswick monarch falling under the dagger of an assassin. However this may be, the public was indifferent to the piece and its object; and, after being represented three times, it disappeared for ever and left the stage to be again occupied by the ‘Beggars’ Opera:’ Peachum—Walpole, Lockit—Townshend, and Mat o’ the Mint, type of easy financiers, who gaily bid the public ‘stand and deliver!’

On the first occasion on which George I. left England to visit Hanover, he appointed the Prince of Wales regent of the kingdom during his absence. The prince, in spite of his limited powers—he was unable to act on the smallest point without the sanction of ministers—contrived to gain considerable and well-deserved popularity. George never again allowed him to hold the same honourable office; and the son and father hated each other ever after. In the May of this year, that son, now King, quitted England in order to visit the Electorate, but he did not appoint Frederick, Prince of Wales, as regent during his absence. He delegated that office to the Queen, and most probably by the Queen’s advice. Frederick had not been long in London before the opposition party made him, if not their chief, at least their rallying point. The prince hated his father heartily and openly, and he had as little regard for his mother. When application was made to parliament to pay some alleged deficiencies in the civil list, Frederick was particularly severe on the extravagance of his sire and the method adopted to remedy it. He talked loudly of what he would have done in a similar extremity, or rather of how he would never have allowed himself to fall into so extreme a difficulty. He was doubly in the wrong; ‘in the first place, for saying what he ought only to have thought; and, in the next, for not thinking what he ought not to have said.’ It was not likely, even if the King had been so disposed, that the Queen would have consented to an arrangement which would have materially diminished her own consequence. She was accordingly invested with the office of regent; and she performed its duties with a grace and an efficiency which caused universal congratulation that the post had not been confided to other, and necessarily weaker, hands. She had Sir Robert Walpole at her side to aid her with his counsel; and the presence of the baronet’s enemy, Lord Townshend, with the King had no effect in damaging the power effectively administered by Caroline and her great minister.

It was not merely during the absence of the King in Hanover that Caroline may be said to have ruled in England. The year 1730 affords us an illustration on this point.

The dissenters, who had originally consented to the Test and Corporation Acts, upon a most unselfish ground—for they sacrificed their own interest in order that the Romanists might be prevented from being admitted to places of power and trust—now demanded the repeal of those Acts. The request perplexed the crown and ministry, especially when an election was pending. To promise the dissenters (and it was more especially the Presbyterians who moved in this matter) relief would be to deprive the crown of the votes of churchmen; and to reject the petition would be to set every dissenter against the government and its candidates. Sir Robert Walpole, in his perplexity, looked around for a good genius to rescue him from the dilemma in which he was placed. He paused, on considering Hoadly, Bishop of Salisbury. The bishop was the very deus ex machinâ most needed, but he had been shabbily treated on matters of preferment; and Walpole, who had face for most things, had not the face to ask help from a man whom he had ill-treated. The Queen stepped in and levelled the difficulty.

Caroline sent for Hoadly to come to her at Kensington. She received the prelate with affability, and overwhelmed him with flattery, compliments on his ability, and grateful expressions touching his zeal and the value of his services in the King’s cause. She had now, she said, a further service to ask at his hands; and, of course, it was one which demanded of him no sacrifice of opinion or consistency: the Queen would have been the last person to ask such a thing of the reverend prelate! The service was this. The dissenters required the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. The government did not dispute their right to have such a concession made to them, but it did feel that the moment was inconvenient; and, therefore, Bishop Hoadly, for whom the whole body of dissenters entertained the most profound respect, was solicited to make this opinion known to them, and to induce them to defer their petition to a more favourable opportunity.

The Queen supported her request by such close and cogent arguments, flattered the bishop so adroitly, and drew such a picture of the possibly deplorable results of an attempt to force the repeal of the Acts alluded to at the present moment, that Hoadly may be excused if he began to think that the stability of the House of Hanover depended on the course he should take in this conjuncture. He was not, however, to be cajoled out of his opinions or his independence; he pronounced the restrictive Acts unreasonable politically, and profane theologically. He added, that, as a friend to religious and civil liberty, he would vote for the repeal whenever and by whomsoever proposed. He should stultify himself if he did otherwise. All that was in his ‘little power,’ consistent with his honour and reputation, he would, nevertheless, willingly do. If he could be clearly convinced that the present moment was unpropitious for pressing the demand, and perilous to the stability of the government, he would not fail to urge upon the dissenters to postpone presenting their petition until the coming of a more favourable opportunity.

The out-of-door world no sooner heard of this interview between the Queen and the prelate, than a report arose that her Majesty had succeeded in convincing the right reverend father that the claims of the dissenters were unreasonable, and that the bishop, as a consequence of such conviction, would henceforth oppose them resolutely.

Hoadly became alarmed, for such a report damaged all parties. He was very anxious to maintain a character for consistency, and at the same time not to lose his little remnant of interest at court. He tried in vain to get a promise from Sir Robert, that, if the dissenters would defer preferring their claim until the meeting of a new parliament, it should then meet with the government support. Sir Robert was too wary to make such a promise, although he hinted his conviction of the reasonableness of the claim, and that it would be supported when so preferred. But the bishop, in his turn, was too cautious to allow himself to be caught by so flimsy an encouragement; and he was admitted to several subsequent consultations with the Queen; but, clever as she was, she could not move the bishop. Hoadly was resolved that the dissenters should know, that if he thought they might with propriety defer their petition, he would uphold its prayer whenever presented.

In the mean time, Sir Robert extricated himself and the government cleverly. Caroline doubtless enjoyed this exercise of his ability as well as its results. The dissenters, organising an agitation, had established a central committee in London, all the members of which were bound to Sir Robert; ‘all monied men, and scriveners, and chosen by his contrivance. They spoke only to be prompted, and acted only as he guided.’5 This committee had a solemnly farcical meeting with the administration, to hold a consultation in the matter. Sir Robert and the speakers confined themselves to the unseasonableness, but commended the reasonableness, of the petition. ‘My lord president looked wise, was dull, took snuff, and said nothing. Lord Harrington (the Mr. Stanhope who had waited on the Duchess of Queensberry) took the same silent, passive part. The Lord-Chancellor (King) and the Duke of Newcastle had done better had they followed that example too; but both spoke very plentifully, and were both equally unintelligible; the one (King) from having lost his understanding, and the other from never having had any.’6

The committee, after this interview, came to the resolution, that if a petition were presented to parliament now in favour of the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, ‘there was no prospect of success.’ This resolution saved the administration from the storm threatened by the Presbyterian party. That party considered itself betrayed by its own delegates, the Queen and Sir Robert were well satisfied with the result, and the bishop was looked upon by the dissenters as having supported their cause too little, and by the Queen’s cabinet as having supported it too much.

In this case it may, perhaps, be fairly asserted that the Queen and the minister, while they punished the dissenters, caused the blame to fall upon the church. Their chief argument was, that the opposition of the clergy would be a source of the greatest embarrassment to the administration. It had long been the fashion to make the church suffer, at least in reputation, on every occasion when opportunity offered, and without any thought as to whether the establishment deserved it or not. It was in politics precisely as it was in Sir John Vanbrugh’s comedy of the ‘Provoked Wife.’ It will be remembered that, in that dramatic mirror, which represents nature as objects are seen reflected in flawed glass, when the tailor enters with a bundle, the elegant Lord Rake exclaims, ‘Let me see what’s in that bundle!’ ‘An’t please you,’ says the tailor, ‘it is the doctor of the parish’s gown.’ ‘The doctor’s gown!’ cries my lord; and then, turning to Sir John Brute, he exultingly enquires, or requires, ‘Hark you, knight; you won’t stick at abusing the clergy, will you?’ ‘No!’ shouts Brute, ‘I’m drunk, and I’ll abuse anything!’ ‘Then,’ says Lord Rake, ‘you shall wear this gown whilst you charge the watch; that though the blows fall upon you, the scandal may light upon the church!’ ‘A generous design, by all the Gods!’ is the ecstatic consent of the Pantheistic Brute—and it is one to which Amen! has been cried by many of the Brute family since first it was uttered by their illustrious predecessor.

Meanwhile, Caroline could be as earnest and interested upon trifles as she was upon questions of political importance. She loved both to plague and to talk about Mrs. Howard.

That the Queen was not more courteous to this lady than their respective positions demanded there is abundant evidence. In a very early period of the reign Mrs. Howard was required, as bedchamber-woman, to present a basin for the Queen to wash her hands in, and to perform the service kneeling. The etiquette was, for the basin and ewer to be set on the Queen’s table by a page of the back stairs: the office of the bedchamber-woman was then to take both, pour out the water, set it before the Queen, and remain kneeling while her Majesty washed, of which refreshing ceremony the kneeling attendant was the only one who dared be the ocular witness.

This service of genuflexion remained in courtly fashion till the death of Queen Charlotte. In the mean time, Mrs. Howard was by no means disposed to render it to Queen Caroline. The scene which ensued was highly amusing. On the service being demanded, said Caroline to Lord Hervey, ‘Mrs. Howard proceeded to tell me, with her little fierce eyes, and cheeks as red as your coat, that, positively, she would not do it; to which I made her no answer then in anger, but calmly, as I would have said to a naughty child:—“Yes, my dear Howard, I am sure you will. I know you will. Go, go; fie for shame! Go, my good Howard; we will talk of this another time.” Mrs. Howard did come round; and I told her,’ said Caroline, ‘I knew we should be good friends again; but could not help adding, in a little more serious voice, that I owned, of all my servants, I had least expected, as I had least deserved it, such treatment from her; when she knew I had held her up at a time when it was in my power, if I had pleased, any hour of the day, to let her drop through my fingers, thus——.’

Caroline’s own account of the fracas between Mrs. Howard and her husband is too characteristic to be passed over. The curious in such matters will find it in full detail in ‘Lord Hervey’s Memoirs.’ In this place it will suffice to say, that, according to Lord Hervey, Mr. Howard had a personal interview with the Queen. Caroline described the circumstances of it with great graphic power. At this interview he had said that he would take his wife out of her Majesty’s coach if he met her in it. Caroline told him to ‘Do it, if he dare; though,’ she added, ‘I was horribly afraid of him (for we were tête à tête) all the time I was thus playing the bully. What added to my fear on this occasion,’ said the Queen, ‘was, that as I knew him to be so brutal, as well as a little mad, and seldom quite sober, so that I did not think it impossible but that he might throw me out of window (for it was in this very room our interview was, and that sash then open, as it is now); but as soon as I got near the door, and thought myself safe from being thrown out of the window, I resumed my grand tone of Queen, and said I would be glad to see who would dare to open my coach-door and take out one of my servants; knowing all the time that he might do so if he would, and that he could have his wife and I the affront. Then I told him that my resolution was positively, neither to force his wife to go to him if she had no mind to it, nor to keep her if she had. He then said he would complain to the King; upon which I again assumed my high tone, and said the King had nothing to do with my servants; and, for that reason, he might save himself the trouble, as I was sure the King would give him no answer but that it was none of his business to concern himself with my family; and after a good deal more conversation of this sort (I standing close to the door all the while to give me courage), Mr. Howard and I bade one another good morning, and he withdrew.’

Caroline proceeded to call Lord Trevor ‘an old fool’ for coming to her with thanks from Mrs. Howard, and suggestions that the Queen should give 1,200l. a-year to the husband for the consent of the latter to his wife’s being retained in the Queen’s household. Caroline replied to this suggestion with as high a tone as she could have used when addressing herself to Mr. Howard; but with a coarseness of spirit and sentiment which hardly became a queen, although they do not appear to have been considered unbecoming in a queen at that time. ‘I thought,’ said Caroline, ‘I had done full enough, and that it was a little too much, not only to keep the King’s “guenipes” (trollops) under my roof, but to pay them too. I pleaded poverty to my good Lord Trevor, and said I would do anything to keep so good a servant as Mrs. Howard about me; but that for the 1,200l. a-year, I really could not afford it.’ The King used to make presents to the Queen of fine Hanoverian horses, not that she might be gratified, but that he might, when he wanted them, have horses maintained out of her purse. So he gave her a bedchamber-woman in Mrs. Howard; but Caroline would not have her on the same terms as the horses, and the 1,200l. a-year were probably paid—-not by the King, after all, but by the people.

Lord Chesterfield describes the figure of Mrs. Howard as being above the middle size and well-shaped, with a face more pleasing than beautiful.7 She was remarkable for the extreme fairness and fineness of her hair. ‘Her arms were square and lean, that is, ugly. Her countenance was an undecided one, and announced neither good nor ill nature, neither sense nor the want of it, neither vivacity nor dulness.’ It is difficult to understand how such a face could be ‘pleasing;’ and the following is the characteristic of a common-place person. ‘She had good natural sense, not without art, but in her conversation dwelt tediously upon details and minuties.’ Of the man whom she had, when very young, hastily married for love, and heartily hated at leisure, Chesterfield says, ‘he was sour, dull, and sullen.’ The same writer sets it down as equally unaccountable that the lady should have loved such a man, or that the man should ever have loved anybody. The noble lord is also of opinion that only a Platonic friendship reigned between the King and the favourite; and that it was as innocent as that which was said to have existed between himself and Miss Bellenden.

Very early during the intercourse, ‘the busy and speculative politicians of the antechambers, who knew everything, but knew everything wrong,’ imagined that the lady’s influence must be all-powerful, seeing that her admirer paid to her the homage of devoting to her the best hours of his day. She did not reject solicitations, we are told, because she was unwilling to have it supposed that she was without power. She neither rejected solicitations nor bound herself by promises, but hinted at difficulties; and, in short, as Chesterfield well expresses it, she used ‘all that trite cant of those who with power will not, and of those who without power cannot, grant the requested favours.’ So far from being able to make peers, she was not even successful in a well-meant attempt to procure a place of 200l. a-year ‘for John Gay, a very poor and honest man, and no bad poet, only because he was a poet, which the King considered as a mechanic.’ Mrs. Howard had little influence, either in the house of the Prince, or, when she became Countess of Suffolk, in that of the King. Caroline, we are told, ‘had taken good care that Lady Suffolk’s apartment should not lead to power and favour; and from time to time made her feel her inferiority by hindering the King from going to her room for three or four days, representing it as the seat of a political faction.’