The Queen’s trial, as the proceedings in the House of Lords were called, commenced on the 17th of August. ‘Now we are in for it, Mr. Denman,’ said her Majesty’s Attorney-General to her Solicitor-General. With what spirit Brougham went in for it has been left on record by Lord Denman himself, in the ‘Memoir’ edited by Sir Joseph Arnould.

‘Let me here state, once for all, that from this moment I am sure that Brougham thought of nothing but serving and saving his client. I, who saw him more nearly than any man, can bear witness that from the period in question his whole powers were devoted to her safety and welfare. He felt that the battle must be fought, and resolved to fight it manfully and “to the utterance.”’

The Queen had signified her intention of attending daily in the House during the proceedings, and suitable accommodation and attendance were provided for her. In the House, at all events, she was treated as Queen-consort, and she more than once adverted to the fact when about to take her seat on the throne-like chair and cushion placed at her disposal, near her counsel. Her usual course was to come up from Brandenburgh House early in the morning to the residence of Lady Francis in St. James’s Square. From the latter place she proceeded, in as much ‘state’ as could be got up with her diminished means, to the House of Lords. On these occasions she was attended by Lady Anne Hamilton, her chamberlains, Sir W. Gell and Mr. Keppel Craven, and Alderman Wood, who invariably endeavoured to have the honour of escorting the Queen into the House, but was as invariably forbidden to pass in that way by the local authorities. The alderman, being a member of parliament, was compelled to pass through the entrance allotted to the ‘Commons;’ and the Queen, who was received with military honours, was usually led into the House, or to the apartment assigned to her use, by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt and Mr. Brougham, each holding her by a hand.

The royal progress from St. James’s Square to the House of Peers and the return were daily witnessed by a dense multitude, and hailed with acclamations. The Queen thought the popular sympathy for her far stronger than it really was. It did not indeed want for earnestness, intensity, or honesty, but it did not go deep enough to urge the multitude to make any serious demonstration in her favour. They cheered her as she passed, cheered the soldiers who saluted her, and hissed those who failed to show her that mark of respect. They hissed or cheered the peers on their arrival according as they knew that they were opponents or supporters of the Queen. They were especially delighted when they succeeded in compelling a lordly adversary to shout, or seem to shout, for the Queen. They strove mightily to bring the Marquis of Anglesea to this; but on his assertion that rather than do a thing against his inclination they might run him through the body, they laughed, cheered, and let him pass on. The Duke of Wellington served those who assailed him quite as characteristically: he was violently hissed on his way to the House on the first day of the trial; he checked his horse for a moment, looked round with a half-smile, as if the people had been guilty of some absurd mistake, and then quietly walked his horse onward. On another occasion, as he was returning from the House, the mob insisted upon his crying ‘The Queen! the Queen!’ ‘Yes, yes!’ was his reply; but his persecutors were not content therewith, and continued to assail him as he rode slowly forward. At length, wearied with their importunity, he is said to have turned to his assailants and exclaimed, ‘Very well; the Queen then, and may all your wives be like her!’

Caroline was early in her attendance on the 17th of August. She entered the House at ten o’clock, while the names of the peers were being called over. She wore a black satin dress, with a white veil over a plain laced cap. The whole body of peers rose to receive her, and she acknowledged the courtesy with that dignity which she could well assume, and which she could so readily throw off.

It was not till the 19th of August that the case was actually opened by the Attorney-General. The preliminary proceedings were not, however, of much interest, save on the part of the Duke of Leinster, who attempted by motion to get rid of the bill at once, in which he failed, all parties being nearly agreed that there was now no possibility of retrocession. The second incident of interest was in the speech of Mr. Brougham against the bill, and the method by which it sought to crush his illustrious client. While praising her self-denying generosity, which induced her to refrain from all recrimination, he ably adverted to the anomaly of the accused person in a case of divorce being prevented from showing the guilt of her accuser.

On the 19th the Attorney-General opened his case. He professed his conviction that he should state nothing which he could not substantiate on proof, and, reviewing the general course of the Queen’s life abroad, he deduced from it that she had been guilty of conduct which stamped her with shame as Princess and as woman. Caroline entered the House towards the conclusion of his speech, shortly after which he introduced the first of the batch of Italian witnesses lodged near the House, in Cotton Garden, and whose presence there was sufficient to render uneasy the spirit of the philosopher who gave his name to the spot, and the wreck of whose library is among the richest treasures of the British Museum.

The entrance of the first witness gave rise to an incident dramatic in its effect. He was the celebrated Theodore Majocchi, and he no sooner appeared at the bar than the Queen, overcome, as it would seem, at seeing one who owed her much gratitude arrayed against her, exclaimed ‘Oh, traditore! (oh, traitor!)’ and, hurrying from the scene, took refuge in her apartment, from which she did not again issue except to return home. The chief points supposed to have been established by Majocchi were that on the deck of the polacca Bergami slept at night beneath the tent wherein the Princess also slept, and that the same individual attended her when she was in the bath. The tent was partially open in the hot climate beneath which the wayfarers were travelling, and in the bath the Princess wore a bathing dress, so that, if the indiscretion was undoubtedly great, indecorum was not (it was suggested) very seriously injured. Of the remainder of Majocchi’s evidence it has been well remarked, by one who heard it, that ‘all his subsequent assertions did not, in consequence of what he implied by this statement, weigh the worth of two straws with me, for it was of the nature of inference, and deduced by the imagination. Besides, I do think he was a knowing rogue, who forgot to remember many things which perhaps might have changed the hue of his insinuations. I do not say that what he did say was not sufficient to induce a strong suspicion of guilt itself in the members of an English society; but this is the very thing complained of. The Queen was in foreign society, in peculiar circumstances, and yet our state Solomons judge of her conduct as if she had been among the English.’16 The remark is worth something, for even at so short a distance from town as Ramsgate Sands the law of modesty does not appear to be the same as it is in other parts of England; and as for the incident of the bath, our grandfathers and grandmothers, in the heyday of their youth, used to walk in couples in the ‘Baths of Bath,’ and no one presumed to take offence at the proceeding. The writer last quoted further remarks, as a matter worthy of observation, that Majocchi did not appear to be ‘at all shocked or shamefaced at what he said.’ The inference deduced is that the witness had been ‘taught to dwell so particularly on uncomely things by one who did know how much they would revolt the English.’

It would indeed be revolting to go through all the evidence: it must suffice to tread our way through it as lightly and as quickly as possible. All the government witnesses deposed to an ostentation of criminality in parties who, if guilty, must have been most deeply interested in concealing all evidences of guilt, and one of whom at least knew that she was constantly watched and daily reported of. This contradiction very soon struck Lord Eldon himself, who intimated that some measures should be taken to punish perjury, if it could be proved to have been committed. It is certain that the King’s case was materially damaged at a very early stage of the proceedings, not only by discrepancy in the evidence, but by the suspicious alacrity of the witnesses in tendering it.

A close watcher of Majocchi, when giving his evidence, says: ‘I cannot understand why so much importance is attached to the evidence of Majocchi. He did not state any one thing that indicated a remembrance of his having put a sense of indecorum on the conduct of the Queen at the time to which he referred; and in this, I think, the want of tact in those who arranged the case is glaringly obvious. As men they could not but have often seen that it is the nature of recollected transactions to affect the expression of the physiognomy, and particularly of those kinds of transactions which the traditore knew he was called to prove; yet in no one instance did Majocchi show that there was an image in his mind, even while uttering what were thought the most sensual demonstrations. In all the most particular instances that pointed to guilt he was as abstract as Euclid; a logarithmic transcendent could not have been more bodiless than the memory of his recollections. I do not say that he was taught by others, but I affirm that he spoke by rote.’17

Many of the servants examined swore positively to much unseemliness of demeanour between Bergami and the Princess, and some went very much further than this. Of these, several confessed to being hostile to the courier; some were jealous of him; but they all, despite some discrepancy of detail, kept to the leading points of their evidence, which was destructive to the reputation of the Princess.

Captain Briggs and Captain Pechell, with whom she had sailed, deposed to some folly, but no positive guilt. Something was attempted to be made out of the arrangement of the respective berths on board the ship commanded by the first officer, but with no remarkable success. The captain of the polacca gave evidence that was much more damaging, with reference to the unseemliness of sleeping on deck, beneath a tent—for which the heat of the atmosphere and the horses and mules that were below deck hardly offered sufficient authority. Again, there was testimony of such disgraceful conduct at inns that, if it be accepted, no other conclusion can be arrived at than that those guilty of it must not only have been lost to all sense of shame, but eager that their iniquity should be a spectacle to all beholders. ‘As the whole case now is,’ says a contemporary writer, ‘by making it more gross than in all human probability it could be, the evidence, where it might otherwise be trusted, is rendered unworthy of credit.’

But there were incidents in the drama that were not all for the audience. ‘Nature,’ says the writer of the ‘Supplementary Letters’ annexed to the ‘Diary Illustrative of the Court of George IV.,’ ‘often mixes up the sublime and the ridiculous helplessly, as it would seem; and I met to-day with a curious instance of her indifference. I forget how it happened, but I was driven accidentally against a curtain, and saw, in consequence, behind it Lord Castlereagh, sitting on a stair by himself, holding his hand to his ear, to keep the sound and words of the evidence which the witness under examination at the bar was giving. Notwithstanding the moody wrath of my ruminations, I could not help laughing at the discovery, and his lordship looked equally amused, and was quite as much discomposed. He smiled, and I withdrew. I met him afterwards in the lobby of the House of Commons, when he again smiled.’

Masons, painters, whitewashers, and waiters vied, or seemed to vie, with each other in the dirty character of their depositions. Rastelli, a groom, but discarded as a thief, did not go further, but both sides evidently considered him as an unmitigated scoundrel, and he was somehow permitted to disappear, as if either side was anxious to be rid of him. Scarcely more respectable was the woman Dumont, who dwelt on the abominations to which she swore as if she loved thinking of them. She was worse than the boatmen, bakers, and others with aliases to their names, who, however, deposed to circumstances sufficiently gross in character, and drew dreadfully strong inferences from generally slender but occasionally very suspicious premises.

The loathsome mass was got through by the 7th of September, when the House adjourned till the 3rd of October. The members needed breathing time, and all parties, the public included, stood in urgent need of that peculiar civet whose virtue, according to the poet, lies in its power to sweeten the imagination.

The course of the trial exhibited more than one trait illustrative of the English Bar, and also of individuals. Thus, in the interim between the closing of the King’s case and the opening of the Queen’s defence by Mr. Brougham, the last-named gentleman went down to Yorkshire to attend the assizes there. The chief advocate of one Sovereign against another was there engaged in a cause on behalf of an old woman upon whose pig-cot a trespass had been committed. The tenement in question was on the border of a common of one hundred acres, upon five yards of which it was alleged to have unduly encroached, and was therefore pulled down by the landlord. The poor woman sought for damages, she having held occupation by a yearly rental of sixpence, and sixpence on entering. The learned counsel pleaded his poor client’s cause successfully, and, having procured for her the value of her levelled pig-cot, some forty shillings, he returned to town to endeavour to plead as successfully the cause of the Queen. The re-opening of the case took place on the 3rd of October. Before Mr. Brougham rose to speak, Lord Liverpool made severe introductory remarks, for the purpose of disavowing all improper dealing with the witnesses on the part of Government. He also expressed his readiness to exhibit an account of all moneys paid to the witnesses in support of the bill.

Mr. Brougham then entered on the Queen’s defence in a speech of great boldness and power. The sentiments put forth in that oration were probably not endorsed by Lord Brougham. He declared, too, that nothing should prevent him from fulfilling his duty, and that he would recriminate upon the King if he found it necessary to do so. The threat gave some uneasiness to ministers, but they trusted, nevertheless, to the learned counsel’s discretion. He would have been justified in the public mind if he had realised his promise. The popular opinion, however, hardly supported him in what followed, when he declared that an English advocate could look to nothing but the rights of his client, and that, even if the country itself should suffer, his feelings as a patriot must give way to his professional obligations. This was only one of many instances of the abuse of the very extensively abused and widely misunderstood maxim of Fiat justitia ruat cœlum.

Denman’s famous speech, which many peers thought superior to Brougham’s, was partly prepared, as to some of its points, at one of the ‘Sundays’ he used to spend at Holland House. There, Denman, after suggestions from Dr. Parr, resolved to draw a parallel between Caroline and Octavia, George and Nero. And this he did with such effect as regards George IV. that, veiled as the most personal allusion was, the King never forgot him who made it.

Mr. Denman, the Queen’s solicitor-general, was not less legally audacious, if one may so speak, than his great leader. In a voice of thunder, and in presence of the assembled peerage of the realm, he denounced one of the King’s brothers as a calumniator. Mr. Rush, who was present on the occasion, says, ‘the words were, “Come forth, THOU SLANDERER!”—a denunciation,’ he goes on to say, ‘the more severe from the sarcasm with which it was done, and the turn of his eye towards its object.’ That object was the Duke of Clarence; and in reference to the exclamation, and the fierce spirit of the hour generally, Mr. Rush says: ‘Even after the whole trial had ended, Sir Francis Burdett, just out of prison for one libel, proclaimed aloud to his constituents, and had it printed in all the papers, that the ministers ALL DESERVED TO BE HANGED. This tempest of abuse, incessantly directed against the King and all who stood by him, was borne during several months, without the slightest attempt to check or punish it; and it is too prominent a fact to be left unnoticed that the same advocate who so fearlessly uttered the above denunciation was made attorney-general when the prince of the blood who was the OBJECT OF IT sat upon the throne, and was subsequently raised to the still higher dignity of lord chief justice.’

By the end of the third day of the defence the testimony had assumed so favourable an aspect for the Queen that ministers began to deliberate upon the question of throwing up the bill altogether. During the following fortnight, however, the subsequent testimony was not so decidedly contradictory of what the witnesses on the other side had sworn to, and the government then decided that the bill should take its course. The first witness was a Mr. Lemann, clerk to the Queen’s solicitor. His deposition was to the effect that he had been sent to Baden to solicit the attendance of Baron Dante, the Grand Duke’s chamberlain. The baron, who was proprietor of an estate in Hanover, and who consulted his memoranda before answering the solicitation, finally, and under sanction, if not order, of his ducal master, refused to attend as a witness. Colonel St. Leger simply proved that he did not resign his appointment in the Queen’s household from any knowledge of her having conducted herself improperly, but on account of ill health. The Earl of Guildford spoke to the general propriety of the Queen’s conduct abroad while under his observation; and Lord Glenbervie showed that the royal reputation had not been dimmed, in his eyes at least, during his residence in Italy, or otherwise he would not have permitted Lady Glenbervie to act, even for a brief time, as lady-in-waiting to the Princess. Lady Charlotte Lindsay deposed to having heard reports unfavourably affecting that reputation, but she had never seen anything to confirm them. Persons of inferior rank, in attendance on the Princess, deposed to the same effect. The testimony of Dr. Holland and Mr. Mills was of a highly favourable character, exact and decisive. The evidence of other witnesses was equally favourable to the character and conduct of the courier chamberlain; and, partly in answer to the evidence which spoke of her Royal Highness receiving strangers in her sleeping apartments, the Earl of Llandaff, who had resided in Italy with his lady and family, showed that such a circumstance was a part of the custom of Italy. Mr. Keppel Craven, who had originally engaged Bergami for the service of the Princess, declared that the individual in question brought excellent testimonials with him, and that he was of respectable family and behaved with propriety. Mr. Craven added that he had heard much about spies, and that he had admonished the Princess touching the being seen with Bergami in attendance as a servant. This evidence was corroborated by that of Sir W. Gell. A writer, commenting upon the testimony of these witnesses and that given on the other side, remarks: that the witnesses on the King’s side ‘told improbable stories, and none of them had the look of speaking from recollection ... there is a visible difference between the expression of the countenance in telling a recollection and an imagination, especially such stories as they told.’18

It was further proved that, if Bergami kissed the Princess’s hand, he did no more than what was commonly done by respectable Italian servants by way of homage to their mistress.

This ‘plain sailing’ was, however, somewhat marred by the contradictory evidence of Lieutenant Flynn; and even that of Lieutenant Hownam was sufficient to show that the Princess, if not the most gross, was certainly the most indiscreet, of ladies. Other witnesses spoke to dresses and dances, which had been described as disgraceful in their character, being really harmless; and others again showed that certain unedifying sights could not have been seen by the witnesses who had sworn to having been spectators of them from the place in which they stood. Again, the evidence did not lack which proved the purchasing of testimony on the other side, and some excitement was raised when, on the presence of Rastelli being required, it was found that he had been permitted to leave the country. In the opinion of some, he had been conveyed away by the prosecuting party. A few thought he had disappeared with the connivance of both sides.

The entire evidence was closed on the 30th of October. Allusion has been already made to Mr. Denman’s speech, which was ably made, now, in summing up the evidence for the defence. It closed rather unaptly in terms, the remembrance of which embittered many years of the speaker’s life—for it seemed to undo all that had been previously said and done: ‘This, my Lords, is the highest tribunal on earth; it can only be exceeded by that where all the world shall be judged, and the secrets of all hearts laid open. I invoke you, my Lords, therefore, to imitate the wisdom, justice, and beneficence of that high and sacred Authority who said to the woman brought before him: “If no accuser come forward, neither will I condemn thee. Go in peace, and sin no more.”’

The Lords adjourned to the 2nd of November, from which day to the 6th the peers were engaged in debates upon the evidence, almost every member assigning reasons for the vote he intended to give. Mr. Rush describes the character of the debates as the case approached its close. It was ‘stormy’ in the extreme. ‘Earl Grey declared that, if their lordships passed the bill, it would prove the most disastrous step the House had ever taken. Earl Grosvenor said that, feeling as he did the evils which the erasure of the Queen’s name from the Liturgy (a measure taken before her trial came on) was likely to entail upon the nation, as well as its repugnance to law and justice, he would, had he been Archbishop of Canterbury, have thrown the Prayer-book in the King’s face sooner than have consented to it. On the other hand, the Duke of Montrose said, even after the ministers had abandoned the bill, that, so convinced was he of her guilt, whatever others might think to do, he, for one, would never acknowledge her as his Queen.’

The bill, however, was not yet abandoned. The House divided on the 6th of the month, on the second reading, which was carried by 123 to 95, giving ministers a majority of 28. The Queen immediately signed a protest against the nature of the proceeding. The document terminated with these words: ‘She now most deliberately, and before God, asserts that she is wholly innocent of the crime laid to her charge, and she awaits with unabated confidence the final result of this unparalleled investigation’—and as she signed the protest she exclaimed, with a dash of her pen, ‘there, “Caroline regina,” in spite of them.’

By a clever manœuvre of her friends the ministers were next cast into a minority. The House had gone into committee on the divorce clause. The clause was distasteful to some of the bishops. Dr. Howley, indeed, is said to have held that the King could do no wrong, even if he broke the seventh commandment. Others, however, thought that a man so notoriously guilty in that respect was not justified in seeking to destroy his wife, even if she were as guilty as he was. The clause was objected to by many peers, and popularly it was distasteful for something of the same reasons. The ministers, thinking to gain a point by abandoning a clause, moved the omission of this very clause of divorce. But the Queen’s friends immediately saw that, by the retaining of the clause, the bishops and others who preferred the bill without it would be less likely to vote for the passing of the bill itself. They accordingly voted that the divorce clause should be retained, and the ministers, in a minority on this point, proposed the third reading of the bill with the clause in question in the body of it. One hundred and eight voted for it, and ninety-nine against it. The ministry were thus only in a majority of nine—exactly the number of the peers who were members of the cabinet—and after a short delay Lord Liverpool made a merit of surrendering the measure as an offering to popular feeling, although they had carried the bill—with too small a majority, as he confessed, to enable ministers to act upon it.

The Queen was in her own apartment in the House of Lords when the intelligence was brought her by her excited counsel that the bill of Pains and Penalties had been abandoned. She received the intimation in perfect silence, hardly seeming to comprehend the fact, or perhaps scarcely knowing how it should be appreciated. The ministers had carried their bill, but even their withdrawing of it would not prove her guiltless. ‘I shall never forget,’ says one present, ‘what was my emotion when it was announced to me that the bill of Pains and Penalties was to be abandoned. I was walking towards the west end of the long corridor of the House of Lords, wrapt in reverie, when one of the door-keepers touched me on the shoulder and told me the news. I turned instantly to go back into the House, when I met the Queen coming out alone from her waiting-room, preceded by an usher. She had been there unknown to me. I stopped involuntarily. I could not, indeed, proceed, for she had a dazed look, more tragical than consternation: she passed me. The usher pushed open the folding doors of the great staircase; she began to descend, and I followed instinctively two or three steps behind her. She was evidently all shuddering, and she took hold of the bannisters, pausing for a moment. Oh, that sudden clutch with which she caught the railing! Never say again to me that any actor can feel like a principal. It was a visible manifestation of unspeakable grief—an echoing of the voice of the soul. Four or five persons came in from below before she reached the bottom of the stairs. I think Alderman Wood was one of them, but I was in indescribable confusion.... I rushed past, and out into the hastily-assembling crowd.... I knew not where I was; but in a moment a shouting in the balcony above, on which a number of gentlemen from the interior of the House were gathering, roused me. The multitude then began to cheer, but at first there was a kind of stupor. The sympathy, however, soon became general, and, winged by the voice, soon spread up the street. Every one instantly, between Charing Cross and Whitehall, turned and came rushing down, filling Old and New Palace Yards as if a deluge was unsluiced.’19

It was asked by many why Bergami himself had not been summoned to deny upon oath any charge of guilt with the Queen, but Mr. Denman had given sufficient reason in his speech. ‘If,’ he said, ‘any man guilty of the charge was examined he would deny it. I firmly believe the feeling among mankind in such a case would triumph over morality. It would be found better to violate the oath than betray the victim.’ This is, doubtless, true; but like the concluding sentence of Denman’s speech, already quoted, it seemed to some persons to damage as much as defend. The Queen had said, in her fear of her attorney-general, ‘If my head is placed on Temple Bar, it will be through Mr. Brougham.’ She stood in greater peril from the studied words of Denman than from the unpremeditated and impetuous utterances of Brougham. The Queen’s own utterances did not want for boldness. It is reported of her having said at the time of the trial that she was, perhaps, not altogether blameless, since she had certainly lived with Mrs. Fitzherbert’s husband!