Caroline the Illustrious_ vol. 2 (of 2) _ Queen-Consort of George II. and sometime Queen-Regent_ a study of her life and time W. H. Wilkins 1155 downloads.pdf

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Title: Caroline the Illustrious, vol. 2 (of 2)
Queen-Consort of George II. and sometime Queen-Regent; a
study of her life and time

Author: W. H. Wilkins

Release date: June 5, 2023 [eBook #70914]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Longmans, Green, and Co.,
1901

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70914

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Transcriber’s Note
Larger versions of most illustrations may be seen by right-
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is granted to the Public Domain.

CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

Queen Caroline,
and the Duke of Cumberland.
Walter L. Colls Ph. Sc.

Caroline the Illustrious
Queen-Consort of George II. and

sometime Queen-Regent

A Study of her Life and Time
BY

W. H. WILKINS, M.A., F.S.A.
AUTHOR OF “THE LOVE OF AN UNCROWNED QUEEN”

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1901

CONTENTS.

BOOK III. Queen Consort and Queen Regent.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The New Reign 3

CHAPTER II.
The Queen and Walpole 29

CHAPTER III.
The Court of Queen Caroline 53

CHAPTER IV.
The Royal Family 83

CHAPTER V.
Caroline’s First Regency 112

CHAPTER VI.
The Queen and the Nation 136

CHAPTER VII.
The Queen and Literature 156

CHAPTER VIII.
The Excise Scheme 184

CHAPTER IX.
Frederick, Prince of Wales 203

CHAPTER X.
Caroline and the Church 223

CHAPTER XI.
The Marriage of the Princess Royal 249

CHAPTER XII.
The Marriage of the Prince of Wales 269

CHAPTER XIII.
Caroline’s Last Regency 296

CHAPTER XIV.
The Prince and the Patriots 325

CHAPTER XV.
The Queen’s Illness and Death 344

CHAPTER XVI.
Illustrissima Carolina 361

Appendix 369

Index 373

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Queen Caroline and the Duke of Cumberland
Frontispiece
to face page
King George II. From the painting by John Shackleton in the
National Portrait Gallery 14
The Coronation Banquet of George II. and Queen Caroline 34
Sir Robert Walpole. From the painting by J. B. Van Loo in the
National Portrait Gallery 46
Hampton Court, temp. George II. 60
Henrietta Howard (Countess of Suffolk) 78
The Princess Amelia (Second Daughter of George II.) 96
Letter of Queen Caroline to the King of France 114
The Altstadt, Hanover 130
The Princess Clementina (Consort of Prince James Francis
Edward Stuart). From the painting in the National Portrait
Gallery 146
Mrs. Clayton (Viscountess Sundon) 162
John, Lord Hervey 178
Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield. From the painting in
the National Portrait Gallery 194
Frederick, Prince of Wales 214
Benjamin Hoadley, Bishop of Winchester. From a painting by
Mrs. Hoadley in the National Portrait Gallery 238
Anne, Princess Royal, and the Prince of Orange 256

Augusta, Princess of Wales, at the Time of Her Marriage 284
The Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh, temp. 1736. From an old print 308
The Princesses Mary and Louisa (Daughters of George II.) 328
The Princess Caroline (Third Daughter of George II.) 348
Henry VII.’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey, temp. 1737 364

BOOK III.

QUEEN CONSORT AND QUEEN
REGENT.

CHAPTER I.

THE NEW REIGN.

1737.

The news of George the First’s death reached England four days after he
had breathed his last at Osnabrück. A messenger, bearing sealed despatches
from Lord Townshend, arrived at Sir Robert Walpole’s house in Arlington
Street at noon on Wednesday, June 14th. He was told that the Prime
Minister was at Chelsea, and he at once repaired thither. He found the great
man at dinner. Walpole was thunderstruck at the news, for the old King was
of so strong a constitution that, despite his occasional fainting fits, every
one expected him to live to a green old age, as his mother had done before
him. His sudden death, too, might mean the end of the Prime Minister’s
political career. But there was no time for vain regrets—the King was dead,
long live the King. So ordering his horse to be saddled, Walpole rode off at
full speed to Richmond, where George Augustus then was, to announce the
tidings and pay homage to his new Sovereign. The day was hot, and so
furiously did he ride that he killed, his son tells us, two horses between
Chelsea and Richmond; but then his son was given to exaggeration.
Walpole arrived at Richmond Lodge about three o’clock, and requested
to be shown at once into the royal presence. The Duchess of Dorset, who
was in waiting, said it was impossible, as the Prince had undressed and
gone to bed after dinner according to his custom, and the Princess was
resting also, and no one dared disturb them. But Walpole explained that his
business brooked of no delay, and the duchess went to wake them. The
King (as he must now be called), very irate at being disturbed, came into
the ante-chamber in haste with his breeches in his hand—he was one of
those princes who are fated to appear ridiculous even at the greatest
moments of their lives. Walpole fell on one knee, kissed the hand holding

the breeches, and told his Majesty that his royal sire was dead, and he was
King of England. “Dat is von big lie,” shouted King George the Second, as
he had shouted at the Duke of Roxburgh on a memorable occasion some
time before. But Walpole, unlike the duke, showed no resentment at being
given the lie, and for all answer produced Townshend’s despatch, which
gave particulars of the late King’s death. George snatched the letter from
him and eagerly conned it; but his face did not relax as he read, nor did his
manner unbend towards the Prime Minister. Walpole uttered some words of
formal condolence, but they were ungraciously ignored. After an awkward
pause, he asked the King his pleasure with regard to the Accession Council,
the Proclamation, and other matters necessary to be done at once, naturally
expecting that he should be commanded to attend to them. “Go to
Chiswick, and take your directions from Sir Spencer Compton,” said the
King curtly, and turned his back as an intimation that the interview was at
an end. George the Second then went to tell the great news to his Queen,
and the crestfallen Minister withdrew, to go, as ordered, to Compton.
Walpole’s reflections on his ride to Chiswick must have been bitter
indeed. Well might he exclaim, as his fallen rival, Bolingbroke, had done
under a similar reverse: “What a world is this and how does Fortune banter
us!” For years he had been Prime Minister with almost absolute power,
enjoying to the full the confidence of his Sovereign. Suddenly he was
stripped of every shred of authority, and dismissed (for the King’s bidding
him go to Compton was tantamount to a dismissal) without the slightest
consideration, like a dishonest servant. Walpole knew that George the
Second owed him a grudge for not having kept his promises at the
reconciliation, and disliked him, as he disliked all who enjoyed the late
King’s favour. But the Prime Minister hoped that time and Caroline’s
influence would put things right. He did not know that Pulteney had
repeated certain remarks he had incautiously made soon after the
reconciliation, when Pulteney asked him what terms he had got for the
Prince of Wales. Walpole answered with a sneer: “Why, he is to go to court
again, and he will have his drums and guards, and such fine things”. “But,”
said Pulteney, “is the Prince to be left Regent as he was when the King first
left England?” Walpole replied, “Certainly not, he does not deserve it, we
have done more than enough for him; and if it were to be done again, we

1
would not do so much”. George the Second’s little mind resented slights of
this kind more than greater wrongs, and he now took his revenge.
Sir Spencer Compton, to whom the disconcerted Minister sadly made
his way, had been Speaker of the House of Commons, Treasurer of the
Prince of Wales’s Household, and Paymaster of the Army. Compton was
much more of a courtier than a politician. He was a man of the mediocre
order of ability that often makes a good and safe official; he knew all about
forms, procedure, and precedents, but he was not a leader of men, and he
was quite unprepared for, and quite unequal to, the great position now thrust
upon him. Walpole, who knew the man with whom he had to deal, felt
towards Compton no personal resentment. He acquainted him briefly with
George the First’s death, gave him the new King’s commands, and added on
his own behalf: “Everything is in your hands; I neither could shake your
power if I would, nor would if I could. My time has been, yours is
beginning; but as we all must depend in some degree upon our successors,
and as it is always prudent for these successors, by way of example, to have
some regard for their predecessors, that the measure they mete out may be
measured to them again—for this reason I put myself under your protection,
and for this reason I expect you will give it. I desire no share of power or
2
business, one of your white sticks, or any employment of that sort, is all I
ask, as a mark from the Crown that I am not abandoned to the enmity of
3
those whose envy is the only source of their hate.”
Though Compton was astonished at the news, he did not conceal his
delight at the unexpected honour that had fallen upon him. Walpole’s
speech flattered his vanity, and perhaps also touched his heart; he
grandiloquently promised him his protection, and, thinking he had nothing
to fear from the fallen statesman, took him into his confidence and
consulted him as to how he should proceed. The two Ministers then drove
together to Devonshire House to see the Duke of Devonshire, President of
the Council, and arrange for an immediate meeting of the Privy Council. At
forms Compton was an adept, but when it came to the speech that had to be
put into the King’s mouth he was nonplussed. He took Walpole aside, and
asked him, as he had composed all the speeches of the late King, to
compose this one also. Walpole pretended to demur, but as Compton
persisted, he consented and withdrew to a private room in Devonshire

House to draft the speech, while Compton set off to do homage to the King
and Queen. Walpole must have chuckled over his task, for if the precedent-
loving Compton had only consulted the back folios of the Gazette he would
have found plenty of models for the King’s speech; but he was so fussed
with forms and ceremonies, and so elated with the sense of his new
importance, that he was incapable of thinking coherently.
The King and Queen had driven up from Richmond in the afternoon,
and were now arrived at Leicester House. The great news had spread
abroad, and all London was flocking to Leicester Fields. When Compton
arrived there, the square was so thronged with people who had assembled to
cheer their Majesties that the coaches and chairs of the mighty, who were
hurrying to pay their court, could scarce make way through the crowd.
Inside Leicester House the walls were already hung with purple and black,
and the Queen appeared in “black bombazine”; but these were the only
signs of mourning, all else wore an aspect of rejoicing and congratulation.
The new King and Queen held a court, the rooms were thronged with the
great nobility and high officials, and persons of divers parties and creeds
struggled up and down the stairs, all anxious to kiss their Majesties’ hands,
and to profess their loyalty and devotion. The Queen, who had a keen sense
of irony, must have smiled to herself when she contrasted the crowded
rooms before her with the thinly attended receptions which Leicester House
(except on great occasions such as birthdays) had witnessed during the past
few years.
This was the proudest hour of Caroline’s life. She had reached the
summit of her ambition, she had become Queen. But the mere show of
sovereignty did not content her, she was determined to be the power behind
the throne greater than the throne. It was not enough for her that she had
become Queen through her husband, she was determined to rule through
him also. Did this inscrutable woman, we wonder, in this her hour of glory,
recall the parallel Leibniz had drawn long before, when the prospects of the
House of Hanover were darkest, between her and England’s greatest Queen,
Elizabeth? May-be, for, like Elizabeth, Caroline determined to have her
Cecil. She knew there was but one man in England capable of maintaining
the Hanoverian dynasty upon the throne in peace, and that one was
Walpole. She had been dismayed when the King told her that he had sent
for Compton, for she knew Compton’s weakness. But, like a wise woman

she did not attempt to thwart her husband in the first heat of his resentment
against his father’s favourite minister, who had been, willingly or
unwillingly, the late King’s mouthpiece for many slights to him, and
perhaps, too, she thought it would be good for Walpole to be taught a
lesson. She bided her time.
Compton at once had audience of the King. When he came out from the
royal closet he walked across the courtyard to his coach between lines of
bowing and fawning courtiers, all anxious to bask in the rays of the rising
sun. They knew full well what this audience portended. Compton, greatly
flattered by this homage, drove back to Devonshire House, where he found
that the man whom he had superseded had finished the King’s speech.
Compton was graciously pleased to approve the draft; he took it and copied
it in his own handwriting. He then again repaired to Leicester House to
present it to the King. On this occasion he was accompanied by the Duke of
Devonshire and other privy councillors, including Walpole, who were to be
present at the Accession Council. George the Second liked the speech well
enough, but found fault with one paragraph and desired that it should be
altered. Compton wished it to stand, for he knew not how to change it, but
the King was obdurate and very testy at being opposed. Compton was then
so incredibly foolish, from the point of view of his own interest, as to ask
Walpole to go to the King’s closet and see what he could do. Walpole went,
nothing loath, and improved the occasion by declaring to the King his
willingness to serve him either in or out of office. This was the Queen’s
opportunity. According to some, it was she who suggested that Walpole
should be sent for; she certainly suggested to the King that perhaps he had
been a little hasty, and it would be bad for his affairs to employ a man like
Compton, who had already shown himself inferior in ability to the Minister
whom he was to succeed. But Caroline could do no more at this juncture
than suggest, and leave the leaven to work in the King’s mind.
George the Second held his Accession Council that same night at
Leicester House. He read his speech to his faithful councillors in which he
lamented “the sudden and unexpected death of the King, my dearest father,”
he spoke of his “love and affection” for England and declared his intention
of preserving the laws and liberties of the kingdom, and upholding the
constitution as it stood. If he felt any relenting towards Walpole it was not
visible in his manner. Compton took the first place, and the man who had

hitherto dominated the councils of the King, and was still nominally Prime
Minister, was completely ignored by the new Sovereign. The office-seekers
were not slow to follow the lead. For the next few days Leicester House
was crowded every day, but whenever Walpole appeared the courtiers
shrank away from him as though he had the plague. Walpole himself,
though he knew the utter weakness of Compton, had no hope of being
continued in office, and hourly expected to receive the King’s command to
give up the seals. “I shall certainly go out,” he said to his friend Sir William
Yonge, after the Council, “but let me advise you not to go into violent
opposition, as we must soon come in again.” Yonge quickly had experience
of going out, for he was dismissed the next day, the King had always hated
him and called him “stinking Yonge”; Lord Malpas, Walpole’s son-in-law,
was dismissed also. But the public announcement of the Prime Minister’s
dismissal tarried unaccountably—unaccountably that is to those who were
not behind the scenes.
The Queen’s influence was now beginning to tell. At first she
persuaded the King to delay, for she knew that if he delayed he would
reflect, and if he reflected he would change his mind. She reminded him of
the trouble a change of Ministers would involve before he was comfortably
seated on the throne, and she knew the King hated trouble. The King
objected to Walpole’s notorious greed for gold, but the Queen met this by
saying that, with so many opportunities of amassing wealth, he must by this
time have become so rich that he would want no more, and this, in a lesser
degree, applied to his colleagues. “The old leeches,” she cynically added,
“will not be so hungry as the new ones, and will know their business much
better.” The critical situation of foreign affairs was another of the arguments
used by the Queen in favour of Walpole, for no one had the same grasp of
the tangled skeins of foreign policy as he. The European courts, which did
not understand the working of the English Constitution, might become
alarmed at a sudden change of Ministry and imagine that it foretold a
change in England’s foreign policy, thus creating a general distrust, which
would be dangerous to the reigning dynasty, more especially as there was
always the fear of secret negotiations going on between James and the
Roman Catholic courts of Europe. This was particularly true of France, with
whom it was of the utmost importance to maintain good relations at the
present juncture. Whilst Caroline was thus arguing, as luck would have it,
Horace Walpole, the Prime Minister’s brother, who was ambassador to

France, arrived in England with a letter which his diplomacy had obtained
from Cardinal de Fleury, pledging his master to maintain the treaties France
had entered into with the late King, and to show goodwill towards George
and ill-will to James. All these considerations told. But the most cogent
argument which the Queen urged, and the one which had undoubtedly the
most weight with the King, was the settlement of the Civil List. The new
Civil List, Caroline reminded the King, was pressing, but a change of
Ministers was not. There was nobody so able as Walpole to secure for them
a handsome increase of the Civil List, for, as the old King said, he “could
turn stones into gold”. Why then let private resentment lead to personal
inconvenience?
Nothing was done during the King’s stay at Leicester House, and in the
eyes of the world Compton was still first in the King’s favour. At the end of
the week the Court moved to Kensington, and by that time the Queen had
worked so well that the King sent for Walpole, and asked him about the
Civil List. The new monarch mentioned a sum so large that Walpole was
staggered, accustomed though he was to Hanoverian rapacity; but he
showed nothing of his feeling in his face, and promised to do his utmost to
serve his Majesty. He then had an audience of the Queen, who confided to
him that Compton’s estimate had by no means satisfied the King’s
demands, and he had proposed that she should have only a poor £60,000 a
year. Walpole at once grasped the situation. He declared that he would
obtain a jointure for her Majesty of £100,000 a year, which was £40,000
more than Compton had proposed, and he would force Parliament to meet
the King’s wishes. It was said that Walpole bought his influence with the
Queen for this extra £40,000 a year, but that was not wholly true. Quite
apart from money, Caroline had wit enough to see that the interests of the
House of Hanover could best be served by Walpole, and of all English
statesmen he was the one who could most be trusted to frustrate the
Jacobites—for the rival claims of the Stuarts were an ever present danger to
the Hanoverian family until 1745. She was, of course, not averse to
receiving something in return for her support, and Walpole, it must be
admitted, paid, or rather made the nation pay, for it handsomely. In addition
to the Queen’s £100,000 a year, Somerset House and Richmond Lodge
were made over to her. Her income was double what any queen-consort had
enjoyed before, and more than any has been granted since.

KING GEORGE II.
From the Painting by John Shackleton in the National Portrait Gallery.

Walpole now realised that all that lay between him and power was a
question of money. He therefore went next morning to the King with
carefully prepared estimates. He proposed that his Majesty’s Civil List
should consist primarily of the £700,000 a year paid to the late King;
£100,000 more, which had been paid directly to the Prince of Wales in the
last reign, but which would now be vested in the King to make what
allowance he pleased to his eldest son; and a further increase of £130,000 a
year arising out of certain funds. In all, therefore, the King would receive
the enormous sum of more than £900,000 a year. This George agreed to, for
though he would have liked more, he had the sense to see that it was
impossible to get it. The Queen had impressed upon him that Walpole was
the only man who could carry such a large increase through the House of
Commons. Pulteney and other Opposition politicians were ready to promise
more to gain office, but their promises were nothing worth, for they had
neither the ability nor the power to carry a large grant through Parliament.
The King therefore took Walpole by the hand, and said that he had
considered the matter, and intended to continue him in office on the
understanding that he would carry through the Civil List, at the sum named.
He added significantly: “Consider, Sir Robert, what makes me easy in this
matter will prove for your ease too; it is for my life it is to be fixed, and it is
for your life”.
Matters thus being settled, the Queen that night at the drawing-room
made known her approval of Walpole in a characteristic manner. Lady
Walpole had come to court to pay her respects to the King and Queen, but
she could not make her way to the royal daïs, for the lords and ladies turned
their backs on the wife of the fallen Minister (as they considered him), and
refused to yield her place. By dint of much struggling she managed to reach
the third row, where she was espied by the Queen, who, beckoning to her,
called out: “There, I am sure, I see a friend.” The crowd in front
immediately divided, and Lady Walpole performed her obeisance in the
sight of the wondering court. The King and Queen smiled, and chatted with
her some little time. All the courtiers noted it, and, “as I came away,” said
Lady Walpole afterwards, “I might have walked over their heads had I
pleased”. Thus Compton’s brief dream of authority vanished, and Walpole’s
tenure in power was assured. The crowd of placemen who had surrounded
Compton transferred their attentions once more to Walpole, and the former
was now as much deserted as the latter had been. The most extraordinary

part of the whole affair was that, though Compton’s friends, chief among
whom were Mrs. Howard, the Duke of Argyll and Lord Chesterfield, were
plunged into despondency by his fall, Compton himself heeded little these
vicissitudes, and was content to be given, by way of compensation, a place
about the court, the garter, and a peerage under the title of Earl of
Wilmington. If the man had not been such a fool, he might almost have
passed for a philosopher.
When Parliament met a week later it was seen by all the world that
Walpole retained his old place. It was Walpole who proposed and carried
through Parliament the bloated Civil List. Such was the Minister’s power
that no one in the House of Commons dared raise his voice against it except
Shippen the Jacobite, who was known as “Downright Shippen” for his
outspokenness. He had been sent to the Tower in 1717 for proclaiming in
the House of Commons the obvious truth that George the First “was a
stranger to our language and constitution”; yet, avowed Jacobite though
Shippen remained, Walpole never repeated this error. Walpole had a great
respect for him and used to say he was the only man in Parliament whose
price he did not know. Shippen on his part declared: “Robin and I are two
honest men, he is for King George and I am for King James, but these men
in long cravats only desire place under King George or King James”.
Parliament, having duly passed the Civil List, was dissolved by the King in
person, who had one great advantage over his father in that he was able to
read his speeches in English, albeit with a broad German accent. Walpole
now had it all his own way. All the old King’s Ministers were kept in office,
even the Duke of Newcastle whom the King had especially hated—all, that
is, except Lord Berkeley, who was forced to resign in consequence of the
Queen having found in the late King’s cabinet a paper (of which mention
has already been made) containing a plan to kidnap the Prince of Wales and
send him off to America. Berkeley, who had drawn up the document, found
it convenient to withdraw to the Continent. No other changes of importance
were made. Malpas was reinstated; Yonge had to remain out of office for a
little time longer, but was eventually given a small post.
The Jacobites had always expected that the death of George the First
would, in some way, benefit the Stuart cause—in what way it is not clear,
for George the Second when Prince of Wales was less unpopular than his
father. But the Jacobites hugged the hope that the death of the first

Hanoverian king would plunge the country into confusion, and so it might
have done, if George the First had not been so inconsiderate as to die at a
moment when the Jacobites were in great confusion themselves. For the last
two or three years James’s little court had been distracted by internal
jealousies and intrigues. Lord Mar, who superseded Bolingbroke, had,
notwithstanding all his services, been superseded by Hay, whom James
appointed his Secretary of State and created Earl of Inverness. Hay had a
wife, who shared in these barren honours, which, it was said, she had done
much to win. Her brother, Murray, James created Earl of Dunbar. This trio,
of whom the lady was the most arrogant, entirely governed James, who, like
a true Stuart, was swayed by favourites. They created great dissatisfaction
at his court. It was not long before his consort, Clementina, who was a
princess of great beauty and virtue, but extremely high-spirited, had cause
to complain of the insolence of Inverness and his wife. It was said that Lady
Inverness was James’s mistress, and colour was lent to the rumour by the
fact that Clementina insisted upon her dismissal from her court. James
refused, and she withdrew from her husband’s palace and retired to the
convent of St. Cecilia at Rome. A long correspondence ensued between
James and Clementina, but she declined to return unless Lady Inverness
was dismissed, and so brought about a virtual separation. This domestic
scandal did great harm to the Stuart cause among the Roman Catholic
princes of Europe, all of whom warmly espoused Clementina’s side. The
Emperor, who was her kinsman, was highly displeased, the Queen of Spain,
who was her friend, was indignant, the Jacobites in England were divided
amongst themselves, and in Scotland James’s followers fell off everywhere
in numbers and in zeal. The strongest representations were made to James
from every side, but for a long time he turned a deaf ear to them all. At last,
after protracted negotiations, he accepted Inverness’s resignation and Lady
Inverness went with her husband. Clementina agreed to leave her convent
and rejoin her husband who was then at Bologna. She was actually on the
road when the news arrived of George the First’s death. Immediately all
domestic considerations were swallowed up in the political necessities of
the moment.
Seeing the advisability of being nearer England at this crisis, James set
out from Bologna on the pretext of meeting his consort, but turning back
half-way, he posted with all speed to Lorraine. As soon as he arrived at
Nancy in Lorraine he sent a messenger to Atterbury, who was acting as his

agent in Paris, another to Lord Orrery, his agent in London, and a third to
Lockhart at Liège, who was acting as his agent for Scotland. James had no
lack of courage, and was anxious to set out for the Highlands at once,
though he had neither a settled scheme nor promise of foreign aid. But the
news he received from the north of the Tweed was discouraging, and the
4
despatches from England were worse. Lord Strafford wrote to him saying
that the tide in favour of the “Prince and Princess of Hanover,” as he called
them, was too strong at present for the Jacobites to resist, and it would be
better to wait until dissatisfaction broke out again, which he anticipated
would not be long. “I am convinced,” he wrote, “that the same violent and
corrupt measures taken by the father will be pursued by the son, who is
passionate, proud, and peevish, and though he talks of ruling by himself, he
will just be governed as his father was. But his declarations that he will
make no distinction of parties, and his turning off the Germans make him
popular at present.” Strafford, like many others, made the mistake of
leaving Queen Caroline out of his calculations.
It was impossible for James to stay in Lorraine, for the French
Government, at the instigation of Walpole, ordered the Duke of Lorraine to
expel the “Pretender” from his territory. The duke, who was only a vassal of
France, was forced to obey, and urged his unwelcome guest to leave
Lorraine within three days. So James withdrew under protest. “In my
present situation,” he wrote to Atterbury, “I cannot pretend to do anything
essential for my interest, and all that remains is that the world should see
5
that I have done my part.” It must be admitted that he was ready to do it
bravely.
James first sought refuge in the Papal State of Avignon, but here again
the relentless English Government, acting through the French, managed to
hunt him out, and the following year the heir of our Stuart Kings was forced
to return a fugitive to Italy. He was joined by Clementina and afterwards
lived harmoniously with her. Unfortunate in all else, James was at least
fortunate in his consort, for all authorities unite in praising her grace and
goodness, her talents and charity.
The immediate danger of a Jacobite rising was thus warded off, but so
long as James and his two sons lived the House of Hanover could not enjoy
undisputed title to the throne of England. In these early days, as Caroline

knew well, it behoved the princes of the new dynasty to walk warily and
court the popular goodwill, for there was always an alternative king in
James, who by a turn of Fortune’s wheel might find himself upon the throne
of his fathers. Though the official world and most of those in high places
were all for the Hanoverian succession, and though Walpole had the means
to corrupt members of Parliament and buy constituencies as he would, yet
the heart of the people remained very tender towards the exiled royal family
and felt a profound compassion for their misfortunes.
The excitement consequent on the new reign continued for some
months, and the King, not having had time to make himself enemies, was,
to outward semblance, popular. A good deal was due to interested motives.
The court was crowded with personages struggling for place. Lord Orrery
wrote to James inveighing bitterly against “the civility, ignorance and poor
spirit of our nobility and gentry, striving who shall sell themselves at the
best price to the court, but resolved to sell themselves at any”. Yet he is
6
constrained to add: “There do not appear to be many discontented people”.
Pope, too, who was now quite out of favour at court, wrote to a friend that
the new reign “has put the whole world into a new state; but,” he adds
enviously, “the only use I have, shall, or wish to make of it, is to observe
the disparity of men from themselves in a week’s time; desultory leaping
and catching of new modes, new manners and that strong spirit of life with
which men, broken and disappointed, resume their hopes, their solicitations,
their ambitions”. The political Jeremiahs of the time bewailed the wholesale
trafficking in places, and the universal corruption. The King himself did not
set a high example of public or private honesty; he had wrung the highest
sum he could from Parliament for his Civil List, and at one of his early
Councils he distinguished himself by an act which can only be described as
dishonest. The timid and time-serving Archbishop of Canterbury, old Dr.
Wake, produced the late King’s will, which had been entrusted to him, and
handed it to George, fully expecting him to open it and read it to the
Council. The King took it without a word, put it into his pocket, and walked
out of the room. The Archbishop was so taken aback at this proceeding, that
neither he nor the other privy councillors present raised a word in protest.
George probably burnt the will after reading it, in any case it was never
seen again. But the old King, who probably feared that some such fate
would befall his testament, had taken the precaution to make a second copy,

which he entrusted to the safe keeping of his cousin, the Duke of
Wolfenbüttel. The duke soon intimated this fact to the new King of
England, and at the same time hinted that he had no wish to make matters
disagreeable (which he could easily do if he wished, for the King and
Queen of Prussia were furious), if his silence were made worth his while.
George took the hint, and despatched a messenger to Wolfenbüttel
promising the duke a subsidy. In return the messenger brought back the
duplicate of the will, and this too was destroyed.
The only excuse that can be urged for the King’s conduct, which
probably defrauded among others his sister, the Queen of Prussia, and his
son Prince Frederick, was that George the First had treated the will of his
consort, Sophie Dorothea of Celle, in the same way, to the detriment, it was
suspected, of both his son and his daughter. George the Second also, when
Electoral Prince of Hanover, had reason to believe that his father had
unjustly deprived him of a substantial inheritance which had been left him
by his maternal grandfather, the Duke of Celle. The burning of wills seems
to have been a peculiarity of the Hanoverian family at this time, for a year
or two later, Frederick, Prince of Wales, accused his father of destroying the
will of his uncle Ernest Augustus Duke of York and Bishop of Osnabrück.
He died a year after his brother, George the First, and both Prince Frederick
and the Queen of Prussia declared that they would have largely benefited by
his death had it not been for the chicanery of George the Second. Queen
Caroline always stoutly denied this imputation, and maintained that the
Duke of York had nothing to leave, except £50,000 which he left to his
nephew King George, and his jewels which he bequeathed to his niece the
Queen of Prussia, to whom they were immediately sent. But neither the
King nor the Queen of Prussia were satisfied with this explanation, and they
also had a further dispute with George about the French possessions of his
mother, Sophie Dorothea, which she had inherited through her mother,
Eléonore d’Olbreuse, who was descended from an ancient Huguenot family
of Poitou.
The person who probably lost most by the destruction of George the
First’s will was the Duchess of Kendal, but she did not venture to lift her
voice in protest. George the Second no doubt felt that she had amassed
more than she deserved during the late King’s lifetime, and if he allowed
her to remain in peaceable possession of her plunder it was as much as she

had any right to expect. The duchess seems to have thought so too, but her
daughter, Lady Walsingham, who was also the late King’s daughter, was not
so complaisant. When a few years later Lord Chesterfield married her in the
belief that she was a great heiress (in which hope he was disappointed), she
confided to him that George the First had left her £40,000 in his will, which
had never been paid. Lord Chesterfield, who was then out of favour at court
and had no hope of regaining it, instituted, or threatened to institute, legal
proceedings to recover the legacy. The case never came into court, for half
the sum, £20,000, was offered, and accepted, as a compromise.
The aged Duchess of Kendal was the only person in the world who
really mourned the late King. Within a week of his death George the First
was as completely forgotten as though he had never been; the only reminder
of his reign was the official mourning. The Duchess of Kendal had
accompanied him on his last journey, but, being indisposed by the sea
voyage, she had tarried at the Hague a day to recover, and, like Lord
Townshend, was following the King on the road to Hanover, when a
messenger rode up to her coach with the tidings of his death. The duchess
was overwhelmed with grief; she beat her breast, tore her hair, and rent the
air with her cries. But her sorrow did not get the better of her prudence, for,
not being sure of the reception that awaited her from the new King, she
resolved to remove herself from his Hanoverian dominions, and repaired to
the neighbouring territory of Wolfenbüttel. Her fears proved to be
groundless, for Queen Caroline harboured towards the ex-mistress no
feelings of ill-will, and it followed that the King did not either. On the
contrary, Caroline had liked the duchess, who, unlike Lady Darlington, was
no mischief-maker, and had personally interceded with George the First,
though unsuccessfully, to restore her children to the Princess. Moreover she
was such an old-established institution that Caroline had come to look upon
her almost in the light of the late King’s wife. The Queen wrote the
following letter to her within a fortnight of George the First’s death:—

“Kensington, June 25th, 1727.
“My first thought, my dear Duchess, has been of you in the
misfortune that has befallen us; I know well your devotion and love for
the late King, and I fear for your health; only the resignation which you
have always shown to the divine will can sustain you under such a loss.

I wish I could convey to you how much I feel for you, and how anxious
I am about your health, but it is impossible for me to do so adequately.
I cannot tell you how greatly this trouble has affected me. I had the
honour of knowing the late King, you know that to know him was
sufficient to make one love him also. I know that you always tried to
render good service to the King (George II.); he knows it too, and will
remember it himself to you by letter. I hope you realise that I am your
friend, it is my pleasure and my duty to remind you of the fact and to
tell you that I and the King will always be glad to do all we can to help
you. Write to me, I pray you, and give me an opportunity to show how
much I love you.—Caroline.”

It is impossible to accept literally these expressions of affection.
Allowing for exaggeration they do credit to Caroline’s heart, but the letter
was probably dictated as much by prudence as by sympathy, for the
Duchess of Kendal was then at Wolfenbüttel, and the Duke of Wolfenbüttel
had the duplicate of the late King’s will. Caroline was anxious to avoid a
family scandal, for she knew by experience how bad these things were for
the dynasty, and in the negotiations which passed between George the
Second and the duke it is probable that the Duchess of Kendal played a part,
though it is improbable that she received any portion of the subsidy. That
matters were amicably arranged is shown by the fact that a few months later
the duchess returned to England, and took up her abode at Kendal House,
Twickenham, where she lived in comfortable retirement until the end of her
days. She no longer appeared at court, but the King and Queen would never
permit her to be molested in any way—so she may be said to have enjoyed
their protection. She made a cult of her George’s memory, dressing always
as a widow and wearing the deepest weeds. She was of a pious, not to say
superstitious, turn of mind, and declared that George the First had told her
that his devotion was so great that he would return to her even after death.
So one day when a raven hopped in at the window the bereaved duchess
took it into her head that this was the reincarnation of the dead King. She
captured the bird, put it into a golden cage, kept it always by her, and
provided for it in her will. Her death took place in 1743, at the advanced
age of eighty-five years. Her wealth was divided among her German
relations, and Kendal House was converted into a tea garden and afterwards
pulled down.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER I:
1
Pulteney’s Answer to an infamous Libel.
2
The officers of the Royal Household carried white wands.
3
Hervey’s Memoirs.
4
The Earl of Strafford to James, 21st June, 1727.
5
James to Atterbury, 9th August, 1727.
6
Lord Orrery to James, August, 1727.

CHAPTER II.

THE QUEEN AND WALPOLE.

George the First was buried at Herrenhausen in accordance with his
expressed wish. His funeral did not take place until some three months after
his death, and the new King was represented at it by his uncle the Duke of
York. His decision not to go to Hanover for his father’s obsequies gave rise
to much satisfaction in England, and this combined with his summary
dismissal of the Hanoverian favourites was quoted as a proof of his English
predilections.
The court mourning came to an end soon after the funeral, and
preparations were pushed forward with all speed for the coronation. George
the Second determined that it should be a pageant from which no splendid
detail was missing. The King and Queen ordered robes of extraordinary
richness, but Caroline was badly off for jewels. Queen Anne had possessed
a great number of beautiful gems, but Schulemburg, Kielmansegge, and the
other German favourites had so despoiled Anne’s jewel-chest, that nothing
was left for the new Queen but a solitary pearl necklace. Caroline, however,
rose to the occasion and gathered together for the coronation not only all
her personal jewels which went to make her crown, but many more. When
the great day arrived she appeared, we are told, wearing “on her head and
shoulders all the pearls she could borrow from ladies of quality from one
end of the town, and on her petticoat all the diamonds she could hire of the
Jews and jewellers at the other”.
The coronation of King George the Second and Queen Caroline took
place on October 11th, 1727, with all the solemnity suitable for the
occasion, and more than the usual magnificence. The day was gloriously
fine, and multitudes of people lined the gaily decorated streets. Caroline
was the first Queen Consort to be crowned at Westminster Abbey since
Anne of Denmark, consort of James the First, from whose daughter

Elizabeth the House of Hanover derived its title to the British Crown. The
coincidence was hailed as a propitious omen. The Queens-Consort
subsequent to Anne of Denmark had been Roman Catholics, and Anne and
Mary the Second were Queens-Regnant. Caroline was determined that she
would not be relegated to the background, and, so far as circumstances
permitted, the ceremonial at this coronation followed more closely that of
William and Mary than of James the First and Anne of Denmark. Yet Mary
was a Queen-Regnant who placed all her power in her husband’s hands;
Caroline was a Queen-Consort who took all her power from her husband’s
hands. No two women could be more unlike.
On the day of the coronation the King and Queen set out from St.
James’s Palace before nine o’clock in the morning. The King went to
Westminster Hall direct. The Queen, who put on everything new for the
occasion “even to her shift,” was carried down through St. James’s Park in
her chair to Black Rod’s Room in the House of Lords. There she was vested
in her state robes, and waited until the officials came to escort her to
Westminster Hall. She took her place there by the King’s side at the upper
end of the hall, seated like him in a chair of state under a golden canopy; the
Queen’s chair was to the left of the King’s. The ceremony of presenting the
sword and spurs was then gone through, and the Dean and Canons of
Westminster arrived from the Abbey bearing the Bible and part of the
regalia. The King’s regalia was St. Edward’s crown, borne upon a cushion
of cloth of gold, the orb with the cross, the sceptre with the dove, the
sceptre with the cross, and St. Edward’s staff. The Queen’s regalia consisted
of her crown, her sceptre with the cross, and the ivory rod with the dove.
All these were severally presented to their Majesties, and then delivered to
the lords who were commissioned to bear them.
At noon a procession on foot was formed from Westminster Hall to the
Abbey. A way had been raised for the purpose, floored with boards, covered
with blue cloth, and railed on either side. The procession was headed by a
military band, and began with the King’s herbwoman and her maids who
strewed flowers and sweet herbs. It was composed in order of precedence
from the smallest officials (even the organ blower was not forgotten) up to
the great officers of state. The peers and peeresses wearing their robes of
state and carrying their coronets in their hands walked in this procession in
order mete, from the barons and baronesses up to the dukes and duchesses.

The Lord Privy Seal, the Archbishop of York and the Lord High Chancellor
followed. Then, after an interval of a few paces came the Queen, preceded
by her crown which was borne by the Duke of St. Albans. The Queen was
supported on either side by the Bishops of Winchester and London, and she
majestically walked alone “in her royal robes of purple velvet, richly furred
with ermine, having a circle of gold set with large jewels upon her
Majesty’s head, going under a canopy borne by the Barons of the Cinque
Ports, forty gentlemen pensioners going on the outsides of the canopy, and
7
the Serjeants of arms attending”. The Queen’s train was borne by the
Princess Royal and the Princesses Amelia and Caroline, who were vested in
purple robes of state, with circles on their heads; their coronets were borne
behind them by three peers. The princesses were followed by the four ladies
of the Queen’s Household, the Duchess of Dorset, the Countess of Sussex,
Mrs. Herbert and Mrs. Howard. Immediately after the Queen’s procession
came the Bishop of Coventry bearing the Holy Bible on a velvet cushion.
Then, under a canopy of cloth of gold, walked “His Sacred Majesty, King
George II., in his royal robes of crimson velvet, furred with ermine and
bordered with gold lace, wearing on his head a cap of estate of crimson
velvet, adorned with large jewels, and turned up with ermine”. The King
was supported on either side by bishops, and his train was borne by four
eldest sons of noblemen and the Master of the Robes, and he was followed
by a numerous and splendid company of officials. At the great west door of
the Abbey the procession was met by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
Dean of Westminster and other ecclesiastical dignitaries. It moved slowly
up the nave to the singing of an anthem.
The King and Queen seated themselves on chairs of state, facing the
altar, and the coronation service, which is really an interpolation in the
office of Holy Communion, began. The Archbishop proceeded with the
Communion service until the Nicene Creed, after which a special sermon
was preached by the Bishop of Oxford. The sermon over, the King
subscribed the Declaration against Transubstantiation and took the
Coronation Oath.
The King then approached the altar, and knelt to be crowned. He was
anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury upon his head, his breast, and the
palms of his hands. He was presented with the spurs, girt with the sword,
and vested with the armills and the imperial pall; the orb with the cross was

placed in his left hand, and the ring was put upon the fourth finger of his
right hand. The Archbishop also delivered to the kneeling King the sceptre
with the cross, and the rod with the dove, and, assisted by the other bishops
present, “put the crown reverently upon His Majesty’s head, at which sight
all the spectators repeated their loud shouts, the trumpets sounded, and upon
a signal given the great guns in the Park and the Tower were fired. The
peers then put on their coronets.” When the shouts ceased the Archbishop
proceeded with the divine office. He delivered the Bible to the King and
read the benedictions. “His Majesty was thereupon pleased to kiss the
Archbishops and Bishops as they knelt before him one after another.” Then
the Te Deum was sung and the King was lifted upon his throne and the
peers did their homage. During this ceremony medals of gold were given to
the peers and peeresses, and medals of silver were thrown among the
congregation.

THE CORONATION BANQUET OF GEORGE II. AND
QUEEN CAROLINE.
The Queen now advanced for her coronation. “Her Majesty, supported
by the Bishops of London and Winchester, knelt at the steps of the altar,
and, being anointed with the holy oil on the head and breasts, and receiving
the ring, the Archbishop reverently set the crown upon her Majesty’s head,
whereupon the three princesses and the peeresses put on their coronets, and
her Majesty having received the sceptre with the cross and the ivory rod
with the dove, was conducted to her throne.”

The King and Queen then made their oblations and received the Holy
Communion.
When the long service was over their Majesties proceeded to St.
Edward’s Chapel, where the King was arrayed in a vesture of purple velvet,
but the Queen retained her robes of state. Their Majesties, wearing their
crowns, then returned on foot to Westminster Hall, and the long train of
peers and peeresses, all wearing their coronets, followed.
In Westminster Hall the King and Queen took their seats on a daïs at a
high table across the upper end of the hall; the three princesses sat at one
end of this table. The nobility and other persons of quality bidden to the
feast seated themselves at tables running down the hall, and the coronation
banquet began. After the first course had been served, the King’s
Champion, who enjoyed that office by virtue of being Lord of the Manor of
Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire, entered. He was completely armed in a suit of
white armour and was mounted on a “goodly white horse richly
caparisoned”. The Champion carried a gauntlet in his right hand, and his
helmet was adorned with a plume of feathers—red, white, and blue.
Approaching their Majesties’ table the Champion proclaimed his challenge
in a loud voice:—
“If any person of what degree soever, high or low, shall deny or gainsay
Our Sovereign Lord King George II., King of Great Britain, France and
Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc., and next heir to Our Sovereign Lord
King George I., the last King deceased, to be the Right Heir to the Imperial
Crown of this Realm of Great Britain, or that he ought not to enjoy the
same; here is his Champion who saith that he lyeth and is a false Traytor,
being ready in person to combat with him and in this quarrel will adventure
his life against him on what day soever he shall be appointed.”
Then the Champion cast down his gauntlet, which, when it had lain
some few minutes, was picked up by a herald and re-delivered to him. The
Champion went through this performance three times, and after the third he
made a low obeisance to the King. Whereupon the cup bearer brought to the
King a gold bowl of wine with a cover, and his Majesty drank to the
Champion and sent him the bowl by the cup bearer. The Champion, still on
horseback, put on his gauntlet, received the bowl and drank from it, and
after making a second reverence to their Majesties, departed from the hall,

taking with him the bowl and cover as his fee. As soon as the Champion
had gone out, the heralds, after three obeisances to the King, proclaimed his
style as follows in Latin, French and English:
“Of the Most High, Most Mighty and Most Excellent Monarch George
II., by the Grace of God King of Great Britain, France and Ireland,
Defender of the Faith.”
These ceremonies over the King and Queen proceeded with their
dinner. “The whole solemnity,” we read, “was performed with the greatest
splendour and magnificence, and without any disorder; and what was most
admired in the hall were the chandeliers, branches and sconces, in which
were near two thousand wax candles, which being lighted at once, yielded
an exceeding fine prospect.” Their Majesties did not leave Westminster Hall
until eight o’clock in the evening, when they returned to St. James’s Palace
to rest after their labours. But their loyal subjects prolonged the rejoicings
far into the night with bonfires, illuminations, ringing of bells, and other
demonstrations of joy.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was present at the coronation, wrote
a lively account of the scene, though she was more concerned with the
deportment of her friends and acquaintances than with details of the
ceremonial. She comments on the “great variety of airs” of those present.
“Some languished and others strutted,” she writes, “but a visible
satisfaction was diffused over every countenance as soon as the coronet was
clapped on the head. But she that drew the greater number of eyes was
indisputably Lady Orkney. She exposed behind a mixture of fat and
wrinkles, and before a very considerable protuberance which preceded her.
Add to this the inestimable roll of her eyes, and her grey hairs, which by
good fortune stood directly upright, and ’tis impossible to imagine a more
delightful spectacle. She had embellished all this with considerable
magnificence, which made her look as big again as usual; and I should have
thought her one of the largest things of God’s making, if my Lady St. John
had not displayed all her charms in honour of the day. The poor Duchess of
Montrose crept along with a dozen black snakes playing round her face, and
8
my Lady Portland, who has fallen away since her dismissal from Court,
represented very finely an Egyptian mummy embroidered over with
9
hieroglyphics.”

The magnificence of the coronation was the talk of the town for a long
time. As London was very full of persons of quality who had come from far
and near to attend it, the theatre of Drury Lane seized the opportunity to
give a highly ornate performance of King Henry the Eighth, with the
coronation of Anne Boleyn at the end of the play, a scene on which £1,000
(an unheard of sum to spend upon mounting a scene in those days) was
expended. The scene at Drury Lane rivalled in mock splendour the
ceremonial at the Abbey. All the town flocked to see it, both those who had
been present at the real coronation and those who had not. The King and
Queen and the young princesses came more than once, and graciously
expressed their approval. “The Coronation” was repeated in the provinces
for a year or two later.
The City of London was not backward in showing its loyalty to George
the Second; an address was presented to the King, and the Lord Mayor’s
Show was conducted on a scale of unprecedented splendour. The King and
Queen attended in state the banquet at the Guildhall, and some idea of the
entertainment may be gathered from the fact that two hundred and seventy-
nine dishes adorned the feast, and the cost amounted to £5,000.
When the excitement and loyal emotions called forth by the coronation
had subsided the English people were better able to take the measure of
their second King from Hanover. The process of disillusion soon set in.
George the Second had even fewer good qualities than his father. On the
battlefield, like all princes of his house, he had shown physical courage,
though he had no claim to generalship. He had a certain shrewdness and a
vein of caution which kept him from committing any flagrant errors,
however foolishly he might talk. But this was the most that could be said in
his favour. He was vain and pompous, mean, spiteful and avaricious. All he
cared for, it was said, was “money and Hanover”. He neither spoke nor
acted like a King, and his small mind was incapable of rising to the height
of his position. If he were straightforward it was because he was too stupid
to dissemble, and if he seldom lied it was because it involved too great a
strain upon his narrow imagination. On the surface it would be impossible
to imagine two persons more unsympathetic than the King and Queen, yet
the fact remains that they were devoted to one another. George knew that
his consort was absolutely loyal to his interests, and in the great loneliness
that surrounds a throne he could appreciate the benefit of having one

disinterested person whom he could trust and in whom he could confide. In
his heart of hearts he knew that his Queen was infinitely his superior,
though he would never admit it to himself, to her, or least of all to the
world. Yet in public affairs she swayed him as she would.
From the time that Caroline became Queen, until her death, she
governed England with Walpole; she did not merely reign but she ruled, and
though she was only Queen Consort, admitted by the English Constitution
to no share in affairs of state, yet practically she was Queen Regnant, and a
more powerful one than any England had known except Elizabeth. Caroline
regarded Elizabeth as her great exemplar, and resembled her in many ways
—in her love of dominion, her jealousy of any rival near her throne, her
diplomatic abilities, her breadth of view in matters of religion, her contempt
for trivialities, and her superiority to mere convention. She differed from
Elizabeth in that she had a good heart, and though she loved to rule, she was
neither tyrannical nor despotic. Elizabeth exercised her power directly,
appropriating even the credit due to her Ministers; Caroline’s power was
indirect and found its way through tortuous channels. The extent of her
power, though suspected, was never fully realised during her lifetime,
except by a few persons such as Lord Hervey, who came into daily contact
with her, and of course Walpole. Caroline had to be careful not to arouse the
King’s jealousy, for, like many weak men, he loved the outward semblance
of authority, and this the Queen was more than ready to yield him. The King
could have all the show provided she had the substance.
The Queen and Walpole soon came to an understanding, and in the
governing of the King and the kingdom they worked in accord. The Prime
Minister discussed fully with her affairs of state, and together they planned
what should be done. When everything was settled between them, Caroline
undertook to bring the King round to their way of thinking. This process
generally took place in private, but sometimes, if the matter were urgent,
Caroline and Walpole would play into each other’s hands in another way.
The Prime Minister would have a conference with the Queen over-night,
and the next morning, when he was summoned by the King, Caroline
would, as if by accident, enter the royal closet. She would make a deep
obeisance and humbly offer to withdraw. The King would tell her to stay;
she would take a chair, occupy herself with knotting or something of the
kind, and apparently take no interest in the conversation. The King would

ask her opinion. “I understand nothing of politics, your Majesty knows all,”
she would modestly answer. Delighted with this tribute to his powers
George would press for an answer to his question, and then the game of
hoodwink would begin. From certain secret signs agreed upon between her
and Walpole, the Queen spoke or was silent, gave a qualified opinion or
expressed herself plainly. It was all so well managed that neither the King
nor other ministers present, if there were any, noticed the least thing.
Walpole played with his hat, fidgeted with his sword, took snuff, pulled out
his pocket handkerchief or plaited his shirt frill: each detail of this dumb
show had its secret meaning. This farce was played not once but many
times, over and over again, and though the means were sorry enough, the
end was the good of the nation. The personal rule of the monarch as it had
existed in the days of the Stuarts was gone for ever; still the King was a
force to be reckoned with, and, in foreign politics especially, Walpole would
have found the choleric little George a terrible stumbling-block in his path
had it not been that the Queen bent him to her will. The King would often
announce his intention of doing something incredibly foolish, she would
apparently agree with him, yet before long she would bring him round to
her point of view, though it was in flat contradiction to his first declaration.
When the King set his face against a certain plan of the Prime Minister’s or
a certain appointment, Walpole would leave the matter in the Queen’s
hands, and by and by the King would suggest to him the very policy or
appointment he had opposed, as though it were an idea of his own. Caroline
talked her sentiments into her husband’s mind and he reproduced them as
faithfully as words talked into a phonograph.
In public the Queen was always obedient, and her manner to the King
was submission itself. “She managed this deified image,” says Lord Hervey,
“as the heathen priests used to do the oracles of old, when, kneeling and
prostrate before the altars of a pageant god, they received with the greatest
devotion and reverence those directions in public which they had before
instilled and regulated in private. And as these idols consequently were only
propitious to the favourites of the augurers, so nobody who had not
tampered with our chief priestess ever received a favourable answer from
our god; storms and thunder greeted every votary that entered the temple
without her protection; calms and sunshine those who obtained it.” The
most farcical thing about it was that the little domestic tyrant took all this
homage as his due, and to hear him talk his courtiers might think that he

was as despotic as the Cæsars and as autocratic as the Tsar. On one occasion
his mind ran back over English history (with which, by the way, he was
imperfectly acquainted), and he recalled his predecessors on the throne and
contrasted them unfavourably with himself. To quote the same authority:
“Charles I.,” he said, “was governed by his wife; Charles II. by his
mistresses; James II. by his priests; William III. by his men; and Queen
Anne by her women-favourites. His father, he added, had been by anyone
that could get at him. And at the end of this compendious history of our
great and wise monarchs, with a significant, satisfied, triumphant air, he
turned about smiling to one of his auditors, and asked him—‘And who do
they say governs now?’”
The courtier, we may be sure, was too discreet to say, but ill-affected
persons blurted out the truth, and the disaffected journals, from the
Craftsman downwards, railed at Walpole for having bought the Queen, and
at the King for being governed by her. This was repeated over and over
again in ribald verse of which the following will serve as a specimen:—

You may strut, dapper George, but ’twill all be in vain;
We know ’tis Queen Caroline, not you, that reign—
You govern no more than Don Philip of Spain.
Then if you would have us fall down and adore you,
Lock up your fat spouse, as your dad did before you.

The Queen and Walpole were always striving to keep these lampoons away
from the King, but some one about the court, probably in the apartments of
Mrs. Howard, told him of the existence of this one, and he was exceedingly
annoyed. He asked Lord Scarborough if he had seen it. Scarborough
admitted that he had. George then asked him who had shown it to him, but
he said he had pledged his honour not to tell. The King flew into a passion,
and said: “Had I been Lord Scarborough in this situation and you King, the
man would have shot me, or I him, who had dared to affront me, in the
person of my master, by showing me such insolent nonsense”. Scarborough
replied that he had not said it was a man who had shown it to him, which
made the King, who regarded this as a pitiful evasion, angrier than ever. By
way of showing his independence the King for some time after was more

than usually testy with the Queen, contradicting her flatly before all the
court whenever she ventured an opinion, snubbing her unmercifully, pooh-
poohing her wishes, and generally treating her with almost brutal rudeness.
The Queen received this with meekness, and abased herself before the King
more than ever. But all the while her power increased.
Soon after the coronation the country was plunged into a general
election. The Jacobites came off very badly at the polls, and the Tories little
better. Even with the aid of the malcontent Whigs, the Opposition made a
poor muster in point of numbers, and when the new Parliament met in
January, 1728, the Ministerial majority was even greater than in the last
reign. Walpole had won all along the line. The result no doubt was largely
due to the way in which the Government had bought owners of pocket
boroughs, and to the wholesale bribery wherewith its agents seduced the
voters; under such a system of corruption it was impossible for the voice of
the nation to make itself effectually heard. Even many of those members of
Parliament who were returned to the House of Commons in opposition to
Walpole were eventually bought by him. “Every man has his price” was his
cynical maxim, and he acted upon it so thoroughly that his name became a
byword for corruption. True, the standard of political morality was not high
in those days, the party in power, whether Whig or Tory, frequently abused
the public trust and misused the public money. But it remained for Walpole
to bring organised corruption to such a pitch that it paralysed popular
government, and placed the balance of power, neither in the Sovereign, nor
in the people, but in the hands of a Whig oligarchy. Such an oligarchy was
at this period synonymous with Walpole himself, for the great Minister
brooked no rivals in the King’s (or rather in the Queen’s) councils. “Sir
Robert,” said the shrewd old Sarah of Marlborough, “likes none but fools
and such as have lost all credit.” His earlier Administrations had included a
few strong men, but one by one they had to go, unable to work with so
jealous and domineering a chief. By bribery Walpole also reduced
Parliament to such a condition of impotence that it was hardly more to be
reckoned with than the King. The Prime Minister had really no one to
consider but the Queen, with whom he had a perfect understanding.

SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.
From the Painting by J. B. Van Loo in the National Portrait Gallery.

Thus did Caroline and Walpole rule England. The means whereby they
ruled were tainted at the source; the end may, or may not, have justified the
means, but at this distance of time, when the fierce controversies which
gathered around Walpole’s policy have passed into history, it must be
admitted that the results were good. England was sick unto death of internal
and external strife, what she needed was a strong hand at the helm and a
settled government, and under Caroline and Walpole she secured both, and
ten years of peace abroad and plenty at home in addition. This long peace

enabled England to recover herself within her borders; British credit, which
had sunk to zero, rose higher than it had been for years, trade and
commerce increased, land went up in value, wheat became cheaper, and
everywhere signs of prosperity were manifest. By degrees, and it was here
that Caroline’s tact came in, the different classes of the community were
reconciled to the Hanoverian dynasty; the Church and the country squires
held out the longest, but though they retained a tender sentiment for the
exiled Stuarts they came in some vague way to connect their material
prosperity with the maintenance of the Hanoverian régime. This result was
not achieved without some loss, chiefly to be found in the lowering of the
old ideals. The clergy, from causes on which we shall dwell more fully later,
became indifferent, and the Church sank into apathy; the country gentry
lost, together with their old passionate loyalty to the King, some of their
sense of personal responsibility towards their poorer neighbours, and took a
lower view of their duties to the State. Much of the grossness and
selfishness which disfigured the eighteenth century was due to an excess of
material prosperity, and a consequent lowering of ideals in our national life.
Very soon the King, who when Prince of Wales had always posed as
English in all his sentiments, began his father’s game of sacrificing English
interests to those of Hanover. So subservient was the new House of
Commons, and so unscrupulous were Walpole’s tactics, that only eighty-
four members were found to vote against a proposal to pay £280,000 to
maintain Hessian troops for the benefit of Hanover; and the subsidy of
£25,000 a year for four years to the Duke of Wolfenbüttel, in return for his
promise to furnish troops for a similar purpose, was passed with very little
opposition. The maintenance of the Hessian troops was part of the price
Walpole had to pay the King for preferring him to Compton, and the Duke
of Wolfenbüttel’s subsidy was hush-money pure and simple, paid for his
handing over the late King’s will.
Though the Opposition was weak in numbers, and suffered from a lack
of cohesion in its different groups, it was strong in the quality of its
individual members. Pulteney headed the opposition to Walpole in the
House of Commons, more especially that part of it which included the
malcontent Whigs and the more moderate Tories who supported the
Hanoverian succession. It was Bolingbroke who built up this party, and he
invented for it the name of “Patriots”. Carteret, and later Chesterfield, were

among its leading lights, but Pulteney was the chief. This remarkable man
was in the prime of life, and endowed with natural and acquired advantages.
He was of good birth, and the owner of great wealth; he had a handsome
person, a dignified manner and a cultured mind. His wit and scholarship
almost rivalled Bolingbroke’s, and as an orator he had few equals, and no
superior, in his generation. Pulteney’s abilities as a statesman were of the
highest order; he had been a colleague of Walpole in earlier days, and stood
by him in many a hard fought fight. He had therefore the strongest claims
for place. But Walpole, jealous of Pulteney’s powers, passed him over for
Cabinet office and offered him a minor post in the Government, and a
peerage. The latter was refused, the former accepted for a time, but
Pulteney soon resigned and went into active opposition. He joined forces
with Bolingbroke, and the first fruit of their union was the Craftsman, a
journal which fiercely attacked Walpole and his policy, the second was the
formation of the Patriots’ party. Bolingbroke, though still excluded from the
House of Lords, was able through the medium of the Craftsman to address
himself to the wider constituency of the nation. His articles against his
lifelong enemy were masterpieces of damaging criticism and polished
invective. Besides Bolingbroke, the ablest political writers of the day
contributed to the Craftsman.
The most remarkable feature of the Opposition was the fact that it
included men who, though differing widely among themselves, were united
in common hatred of Walpole. There became practically only two parties in
the State, those who were for Walpole and those who were against him; and
the differences between malcontent Whig and Tory, Jacobite and
Hanoverian, sank into comparative insignificance. Thus Pulteney and
Carteret were staunch Hanoverians and Whigs, Barnard was a Hanoverian
Tory, Wyndham a Tory with Jacobite leanings, and Shippen a Jacobite out
and out; Bolingbroke stood among these parties, partaking a little of them
all, and concentrating into himself the essence of their hatred of Walpole.
No English Minister has ever been hated more than Walpole and none
has had abler foes. The combination of two such master-minds as
Bolingbroke and Pulteney would, under ordinary circumstances, have
broken down any Minister. But the circumstances were not ordinary, and no
statesman was more successful than Walpole in overcoming his enemies.
His success was largely due to the steady support he received from the

Queen. To her wise counsels was also something due. Walpole now
refrained from violent measures against his political opponents, even under
intense provocation. Hitherto in English politics the party in power had
consistently persecuted the party in the minority. But now a new era set in;
it was possible to oppose a powerful Minister and yet not be sent to the
Tower or impeached as a traitor. This more generous policy may be directly
traced to Queen Caroline, for Walpole in George the First’s reign had been
anything but conciliatory, and no Minister had urged more fiercely than he
the impeachment, the exile, and even the death of his political opponents. It
was he who had clamoured for the execution of the Jacobite peers. But
Caroline now exercised a restraining hand. During her ten years of
queenship great freedom of speech was allowed in Parliament and outside
it, and the widest liberty was given to the press. Impeachment, fining and
imprisonment of politicians in opposition to the Government were things
unheard of, and Caroline was careful to conciliate, or to endeavour to
conciliate, such members of the Opposition as were loyal, or professed
themselves to be loyal, to the Hanoverian dynasty. She remained on good
terms with John, Duke of Argyll, who had been the King’s favourite when
he was Prince of Wales, but who had now gone into the cold shade of
Opposition, and resigned all his offices about the court. She even received
Pulteney much against Walpole’s wish, and she had a smile and a gracious
word for many of the Patriots when they came her way, always excepting
Bolingbroke, whom she never would admit to the least atom of her favour.
In Caroline’s wise policy may be seen the germs of that strict impartiality
which the Sovereign ought to show towards prominent statesmen, whether
they are in office or in opposition. This has now become almost an
unwritten law of the English Constitution.
In a far lesser degree Caroline’s influence may also be traced in the
way in which Walpole, though possessing the power to force through
Parliament any measure he would, refrained from running counter to the
popular will, when that will was unmistakably declared. True, here his own
inherent statesmanship came in, and counselled moderation. But Caroline
also had theories about the popular will and civil liberty which she had
acquired in her youth from Sophie Charlotte of Prussia, the “Republican
Queen,” and this at least may be claimed for her, that she taught Walpole
the art of making his concessions gracefully. Her love of liberty in matters
of religion showed itself in the zeal with which she urged indulgence to

Protestant dissenters; the time was not supposed to be ripe for the repeal of
the penal laws against them, but annual Acts of Indemnity were passed
which practically gave them the relief they desired, and drew the fangs of
the Test and Corporation Acts. Caroline’s power was most noticeable in the
dispensing of patronage; it is not too much to say that in all the ten years
she was Queen no important appointment, either in Church or State, was
made without her having some voice in it. In this transition period the
judicious distribution of patronage influenced largely the future of the
nation, and the Queen, who saw further ahead than most of her
contemporaries, was fully conscious of its importance. Thus this princess,
who little more than a decade before was a stranger to the English laws and
constitution, was able to shape and guide the destinies of England.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER II:
7
“A particular account of the solemnities used at the Coronation of His
Sacred Majesty King George II. and of his Royal Consort Queen
Caroline on Wednesday the 11th October, 1727,” London, 1760.
From the pamphlet the other particulars of the coronation are taken.
8
She had been appointed governess to the three eldest princesses by
George I., but was dismissed by Queen Caroline.
9
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters and Works. Edited by Lord
Wharncliffe.

CHAPTER III.

THE COURT OF QUEEN CAROLINE.

The court of King George the Second and Queen Caroline was conducted
on a larger scale than any court England had known since the days of
Charles the Second, though it lacked much of the gaiety and more of the
grace that enlivened and adorned the court of the Merry Monarch. George
the Second was a great lover of show, but he had neither wit nor good taste,
and when he assumed the crown he seemed to think that he ought also to
assume a stiffness and pomposity of manner to maintain his regal dignity.
Like all German princes he was a great stickler for etiquette, and he
modelled his court not only on Versailles, which then served as a pattern for
all the courts of Europe, but imported to it some of the dulness of
Herrenhausen, and further regulated it with strict regard to English
precedents in previous reigns. The court officials were often very hard put
to it to unearth them. But the King was exceedingly precise and resented the
most trifling breach of etiquette as a reflection on his royal dignity. He was
a great authority on dress and ceremonial; he could tell to a hair’s-breadth
the precise width of the gold braid which should adorn the coat of a
gentleman of the bedchamber, and recall with accuracy the number of
buttons required for the vest of a page of the backstairs. The Queen
encouraged and applauded his bent in this direction; it occupied his mind
and left her free to arrange with Walpole the weightier affairs of the nation.
Leicester House was given up and the court made St. James’s Palace its
headquarters in London. All the Hanoverian mistresses and favourites who
had occupied apartments there during the last reign were turned out without
ceremony. The court of Queen Caroline was more select than that of George
the First. Drunkenness was still a venial offence, but it was not approved of
in the royal presence, and women of notoriously ill repute were no longer
received at St. James’s. When the court was at St. James’s, drawing-rooms
were held several times a week, public days as they were called, and the

King and Queen gave frequent audiences besides. Court balls often took
place, and at the evening drawing-rooms cards and high play were still in
vogue. Every movement of the King and Queen in public was made the
occasion of ceremonial; they attended divine service at the Chapel Royal in
state; they walked in St. James’s Park followed by a numerous suite, the
way kept clear by guards; they seldom drove out unless preceded by an
escort; their visits to the theatre or opera were always announced
beforehand, and their coming and going made the occasion of a spectacle.
The people, with whom the pomp and circumstance of Royalty is always
popular, loved these sights mightily, and all classes were pleased that there
was once more a court in London. The King and Queen also revived the
custom of dining in public on Sundays. One of the large state rooms of St.
James’s Palace was set apart for the occasion, and at a flourish of trumpets
the King and Queen and the Royal Family entered and sat down to table in
the centre of the room surrounded by the officers of the household. The
courses were served with much ceremony on bended knee. The table was
decked with magnificent plate and a band played during dinner. The
enclosure was railed around, and the public were admitted by ticket, and
allowed to stand behind the barriers and watch the royal personages eat, a
privilege of which they freely availed themselves. After dinner the King and
Queen withdrew to their apartments, their going, as their coming, being
made the occasion of a procession.
One of the first acts of the new King and Queen was to make a tour of
the royal palaces, which had been practically closed to them since their
rupture with George the First. The old King had disliked Windsor and rarely
went there, its grandeur oppressed him, and he and his German mistresses
felt out of their element in a place steeped in traditions essentially English.
George the Second did not care for Windsor any more than his sire, and
excused himself from going there often on the ground that it was too far
from London. He visited the castle chiefly for the purpose of hunting in the
forest. But Caroline loved royal Windsor greatly, and used to go there
during the King’s absences at Hanover. In one of the recesses of the picture
gallery, now the library, she arranged an extensive and valuable collection
of china; the collection was afterwards dispersed, but some of the china
remains at Windsor Castle until this day, and is the only relic of Queen
10
Caroline’s occupation.

The King and Queen paid their first visit to Windsor in the autumn of
1728, and great preparations were made to welcome them to the royal
borough. “Last Saturday,” we read, “when their Majesties arrived at
Windsor, the Mayor, aldermen, and capital burgesses were ready in their
formalities to receive them, and the balconies were hung with tapestry and
vast crowds of spectators, but their Majesties came the Park way. The King
and Queen walked in the Park till dinner time. The next day their Majesties
dined in public, when all the country people, whether in, or out of,
11
mourning, were permitted to see them.” On this occasion George the
Second assumed his stall in St. George’s Chapel as Sovereign of the Order
of the Garter, and made his offering at the altar. The Queen, with the Duke
of Cumberland, the Princess Royal, and the Princesses Caroline, Mary and
Louisa, were present, and the Queen was seated under a canopy erected on
the south side of the choir. A ball was given in the evening. The royal pair
hunted the stag in Windsor Forest frequently during the visit, and on one
occasion remained out until nine o’clock at night, and on another hunted all
day through the rain, chasing the stag as far as Weybridge. The Queen
followed the hounds in a chaise with one horse, in the same way that Queen
Anne used to hunt in Windsor Forest. During their sojourn at Windsor the
King and Queen received one Mrs. Joy, “a widow lady in the ninety-fourth
year of her age, who had kissed Charles the First’s hand; she was very
12
graciously received”. The Queen celebrated her first visit to Windsor by
giving £350 at Christmas for releasing insolvent debtors confined in the
town and castle gaol—her favourite form of charity. The prisoners, to the
number of sixteen, were set free.
Kensington was George the Second’s favourite palace, as it had been
his father’s. King George the First rebuilt the eastern front and added the
cupola. He also improved the interior, notably by making the grand
staircase. Then, as now, Kensington Palace was an irregular building with
little pretence to beauty and none to grandeur. But our first Hanoverian
kings loved it; its homeliness reminded them of Herrenhausen. The
Kensington promenades were now revived, and the King and Queen
accompanied by the Royal Family would pace down the walks between an
avenue of bowing and smiling courtiers. Throughout this reign, and far into
the next, Kensington Gardens formed a fashionable resort, and with the
promenades are associated many of the great names of the eighteenth

century. People were admitted to the gardens by ticket obtainable through
the Lord Chamberlain. Thus the promenades developed into a sort of
informal court and were much resorted to by persons who did not attend
drawing-rooms and levées in the ordinary way, as well as by those who did.
The King and the Queen on these morning walks would make many a
person happy by singling him out from the crowd with a bow, a smile, or
the honour of a few words; or, on the other hand, they would plunge many
an aspirant to Court favour into gloom by ignoring him. The origin of these
promenades may be traced to the daily walks of the Electress Sophia in the
gardens of Herrenhausen, when she used to give audience to her supporters.
Like the old Electress, her grandson and his Queen were great walkers. The
little King used to walk very fast, with a curious strutting step, and
generally forged ahead, leaving his taller and stouter consort to pant along
behind him. In a political skit of the day there is an amusing reference to
Caroline’s custom of dropping behind her husband. It is headed: “Supposed
to be written on account of three gentlemen being seen in Kensington
Gardens by the King and Queen while they were walking”. It was written
either by Pulteney or Chesterfield, and these two were doubtless
represented in it, the third being Wyndham or Bolingbroke. “The great river
Euphrates” is the Serpentine, which Caroline created out of a string of
ponds. It runs:—
“Now it came to pass in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of
Babylon, in the eighth month, of the sixth year, the beginning of hay
harvest, that the King and Queen walked arm in arm in the gardens which
they had planted on the banks of the river, the great river Euphrates, and
behold there appeared on the sudden three men, sons of the giants. Then
Nebuchadnezzar the King lifted up his voice and cried: ‘Oh men of war,
who be ye, who be ye, and is it peace?’ They answered him not. Then spake
he and said: ‘There is treachery, oh my Queen, there is treachery,’ and he
turned his face and fled. Now when the Queen had seen what had befallen
the King she girt up her loins and fled also, crying: ‘Oh my God!’ So the
King and Queen ran together, but the King outran her mightily, for he ran
very swiftly; neither turned he to the right hand nor the left, for he was sore
afraid where no fear was, and fled when no man pursued.”
The King and Queen probably saw Pulteney, Chesterfield and
Bolingbroke coming towards them, and as they were no doubt just then

opposing some pet measure of Walpole and of the court, the King not
wishing to receive their salutations, and not caring to ignore them, turned
on his heel, and, followed by the Queen, hurried off as fast as he could.
Richmond Lodge had now become Caroline’s personal property, and
the Queen continued to be very fond of it, and spent large sums of money in
enlarging the gardens. Soon after Caroline became Queen she gave £500 for
railing and improving Richmond Green, and we read: “A subscription is set
on foot among the inhabitants of the town of Richmond for erecting the
13
effigy of her Majesty in the middle of the green”. But this intention was
apparently never carried out. The Queen also had a cottage at Kew where
she often drove to breakfast from Richmond. She gave the use of it to her
favourite, Mrs. Clayton, afterwards Lady Sundon.

HAMPTON COURT, TEMP. GEORGE II.
Hampton Court, more than any other royal palace, has memories of
Queen Caroline, and many of its rooms remain to this day much as she left
them. The Queen’s dressing-room is almost the same as it was one hundred

and seventy years ago; her high marble bath on one side of the room may
still be seen, and on the other side is the door that led to her private chapel.
Under Caroline’s supervision Hampton Court was altered in many ways,
and in some improved. The great staircase was completed and decorated;
the Queen’s presence chamber and the guard chamber were altered in a way
characteristic of the early Georgian period. The public dining room, which
is one of the finest rooms in the palace, was also redecorated, and the
massive chimney-piece of white marble which bears the arms of George the
Second was placed in it. Nor did the Queen confine her alterations only to
the palace. She had a passion for gardening, especially landscape gardening,
and the grounds of Hampton Court were considerably changed under her
supervision. It was she who substituted wide sweeping lawns for the
numerous fountains and elaborate flower beds which until then had
ornamented the great fountain garden. Her alterations in many respects
14
were severely criticised.
Both the King and the Queen had pleasant memories of the place where
they had celebrated their only regency when Prince and Princess of Wales.
The summer after the coronation they came to Hampton Court for some
time, and, as long as the Queen lived, a regular practice was made of
spending at least two months there every summer. From Hampton Court the
King did a great deal of stag hunting; he was especially fond of the
pleasures of the chase and would not forego them on any account. His
enthusiasm was not shared by the lady members of the royal household.
“We hunt,” writes Mrs. Howard from Hampton Court to Lady Hervey,
“with great noise and violence, and have every day a very tolerable chance
15
to have a neck broke;” and her correspondent, writing of the same subject,
declares her belief that much of Mrs. Howard’s illness was due to this
violent riding. The following is a description of one of these expeditions:—
“On Saturday their Majesties, together with their Royal Highnesses the
Duke (of Cumberland) and the Princesses, came to the new park by
Richmond from Hampton Court and diverted themselves with hunting a
stag, which ran from eleven to one, when he took to the great pond, where
he defended himself for half an hour, when he was killed. His Majesty, the
Duke, and the Princess Royal hunted on horseback, her Majesty and the
Princess Amelia in a four-wheeled chaise, Princess Caroline in a two-
wheeled chaise, and the Princesses Mary and Louisa in a coach. Her

Majesty was pleased to show great condescension and complaisance to the
country people by conversing with them, and ordering them money. Several
of the nobility attended, amongst them Sir Robert Walpole, clothed in green
as Ranger. When the diversion was over their Majesties, the Duke, and the
Princesses refreshed themselves on the spot with a cold collation, as did the
nobility at some distance of time after, and soon after two in the afternoon
16
returned to Hampton Court.”
The Queen always accompanied the King in her chaise, but she cared
nothing for the sport. She took with her her vice-chamberlain, Lord Hervey,
“who loved hunting as little as she did, so that he might ride constantly by
the side of her chaise, and entertain her whilst other people were
17
entertaining themselves by hearing dogs bark, and seeing crowds gallop”.
The King cared only for stag-hunting and coursing; he affected to despise
fox-hunting, though the sport was very popular among his subjects. Once,
when the Duke of Grafton said he was going down to the country to hunt
the fox, the King told him that: “It was a pretty occupation for a man of
quality, and at his age to be spending all his time in tormenting a poor fox,
that was generally a much better beast than any of those that pursued him;
for the fox hurts no other animal but for his subsistence, while those brutes
who hurt him did it only for the pleasure they took in hurting.” The Duke of
Grafton said he did it for his health. The King asked him why he could not
as well walk or ride post for his health; and added, if there was any pleasure
in the chase, he was sure the Duke of Grafton can know nothing of it; “for,”
added his Majesty, “with your great corps of twenty stone weight, no horse,
I am sure, can carry you within hearing, much less within sight, of the
18
hounds.”
At Hampton Court, as at St. James’s, the King and Queen dined in
public on Sundays, and the people came in crowds to see the sight. On one
of these occasions an absurd incident took place. “There was such a resort
to Hampton Court last Sunday to see their Majesties dine,” writes a news-
sheet, “that the rail surrounding the table broke, and causing some to fall,
made a diverting scramble for hats and wigs, at which their Majesties
19
laughed heartily.” On private evenings at Hampton Court the only
amusement was cards, but now and then the King and Queen held drawing-
20
rooms, in the audience chamber. Often in summer, when the nights were

fine, the Queen and her ladies would go out and walk in the gardens. We
may picture her pacing up and down the avenues of chestnut and lime in the
warm dusk, or viewing from the gardens the beautiful palace bathed in the
moonbeams. So little is changed to-day that it requires no great effort of the
imagination to re-people Hampton Court with the figures of the early
Georgian era.
One of the most prominent personages at the Court of Queen Caroline
was her favourite, Lord Hervey, whom she had now appointed her vice-
chamberlain, and who enjoyed her fullest confidence. The Queen delighted
to have him about her at all times, and would converse with him for hours
together, asking him questions about a hundred and one things, and
laughing at his clever talk. Lord Hervey was a man of considerable wit and
ability, and undoubtedly an amusing companion. But he was a contemptible
personality, diseased in body and warped in mind, incapable of taking a
broad and generous view of any one or anything; ignorant of lofty ideals
and noble motives himself, he was quite unable to understand them in
others, and always sought some sordid or selfish reason for every action.
The Queen, however, overlooking his faults, with which she must have
been familiar, and his effeminacies and immoralities, of which she could
not have been ignorant, believed that he was a faithful servant to her, and
trusted him in no ordinary degree. As a sign of her favour she increased his
salary as vice-chamberlain by £1,000 a year, allowed him considerable
patronage, which was worth a good deal more, and made him many
valuable presents. She treated him rather as a son than as a subject. “It is
well I am so old,” she used to say (she was fourteen years Hervey’s senior),
“or I should be talked of over this creature.” No one, however, ever talked
scandal of her Majesty, though some doubted her judgment in choosing her
friends, and it must be confessed that she was unwise in admitting Hervey
to so many of her secrets. Notwithstanding that she heaped favours upon
him, he repaid her with ingratitude, and when she was dead endeavoured to
befoul her memory. But to the Queen’s face he was a fawning and
accomplished courtier, and expressed the greatest zeal in her service.
Hervey had a nimble and superficial pen, and sometimes employed
himself in writing anonymous pamphlets in defence of the Government and
Court against members of the Opposition. A great many of these
anonymous pamphlets were showered upon the town at this time, and

Pulteney chancing to come across one of them, entitled Sedition and
Defamation Displayed, which attacked him and Bolingbroke in no
measured terms, thought it was from Lord Hervey’s pen (it afterwards
turned out to be not so), and wrote a violent answer, also anonymous, called
A Proper Reply to a Late Scurrilous Libel. This pamphlet abused Walpole,
and by implication the Court, and applied several opprobrious epithets to
Hervey, speaking of him by his nickname “Lord Fanny,” describing him as
“half-man and half-woman,” and dwelling malignantly on his peculiar
infirmities. The pamphlet was warmly resented at court. Like many who set
no bounds to their own malice, Hervey was extremely sensitive to attack,
and wishing to curry favour with the King and Queen he wrote to Pulteney
to know if he were the author of the pamphlet. Pulteney answered that he
would inform him on that point if Hervey would tell him first whether he
was the writer of Sedition and Defamation Displayed. Hervey sent back
word to say that he had not written the pamphlet, and again demanded an
answer to his question. Pulteney returned a defiant message saying that
“whether or no he was the author of the Reply he was ready to justify and
stand by the truth of every word of it, at what time and wherever Lord
Hervey pleased”. This was tantamount to a challenge, and Hervey, though
not given to duelling, could not in honour ignore it. A duel was arranged.
21
“Accordingly,” writes an eye-witness, “on Monday last, between three
and four in the afternoon, they met in Upper St. James’s Park, behind
Arlington Street, with their two seconds, who were Mr. Fox and Sir J.
Rushout. The two combatants were each of them slightly wounded, but Mr.
Pulteney had once so much the advantage of Lord Hervey that he would
have infallibly run my lord through the body if his foot had not slipped, and
then the seconds took the occasion to part them. Upon which Mr. Pulteney
embraced Lord Hervey, and expressed a great deal of concern at the
accident of their quarrel, promising at the same time that he would never
personally attack him again, either with his mouth or his pen. Lord Hervey
made him a bow without giving him any sort of answer, and, to use a
common expression, thus they parted.” Sir Charles Hanbury Williams wrote
some lines on this duel, in which, addressing Pulteney, he says:—

Lord Fanny once did play the dunce,
And challenged you to fight;
And he so stood to lose his blood,
But had a dreadful fright.

Among minor figures about the court two of the most familiar were
Lord Lifford and his sister, Lady Charlotte de Roussie. They were the
children of a Count de Roussie, a French Protestant who came over to
England with William of Orange in 1688, and was created by him Earl of
Lifford in the peerage of Ireland. They were typical courtiers of the baser
sort, and would perform the meanest offices and indulge in the grossest
flattery in order to win some rays of the royal favour. They were not
popular with any of the English people about the court. Hervey tells us:
“They had during four reigns subsisted upon the scanty charity of the
English Court. They were constantly, every night in the country and three
nights in the town, alone with the King or Queen for an hour or two before
they went to bed, during which time the King walked about and talked to
the brother of arms, or to the sister of genealogies, whilst the Queen nodded
and yawned, till from yawning she came to nodding, and nodding to
snoring. These two miserable Court drudges, who were in a more constant
waiting than any of the pages of the backstairs, were very simple and very
quiet, did nobody any hurt, nor anybody but His Majesty any pleasure, who
paid them so ill for all their assiduity and slavery that they were not only
not in affluence, but laboured under the disagreeable burdens of small
debts, which £1,000 would have paid, and had not an allowance from the
Court, that enabled them to appear there even in the common decency of
clean clothes. The King nevertheless was always saying how well he loved
them, and calling them the best people in the world, but though he never
forgot their goodness he never remembered their poverty.”
Another foreign dependent was Schütz, a Hanoverian. Pope, who had
lost the favour of the Court, was very bitter upon those who retained it; in
one of his ballads he sings:—

Alas! like Schütz I cannot pun,
Like Grafton court the Germans,
Tell Pickenbourg how slim she’s grown,
Like Meadows run to sermons.

Hervey satirises Schütz’s dulness as follows:—

And sure in sleep no dulness you need fear
Who, ev’n awake, can Schütz and Lifford bear.

And again—

Charlotte and Schütz like angry monkeys chatter,
None guessing what’s the language or the matter.

While in another of his satires occur these lines:—

There is another Court booby, at once hot and dull,
Your pious pimp Schütz, a mean Hanover tool.

A personage of quite a different order to the foregoing was Henrietta
Louisa, Countess of Pomfret, the authoress of the correspondence with
Lady Hertford. Lady Pomfret was the granddaughter on the paternal side of
Judge Jefferies, on the maternal of the Earl of Pembroke, and on the
strength of the latter claimed descent from Edward the First. Lady Pomfret
accepted the post of lady of the bedchamber, but she was of a different type
to many of the Queen’s ladies. She was a matron of unimpeachable virtue,
the mother of six lovely daughters—all beauties—of whom, perhaps, the
best known was Lady Sophia Fermor, afterwards Lady Carteret. Lady
Pomfret had a keen sense of her dignity, and she affected a knowledge of
literature and the fine arts. The celebrated “Pomfret Letters,” much admired

in their day, are packed with platitudes, and so dull that they leave no doubt
as to the correctness of her principles. Lady Pomfret was considered by
many of her contemporaries to be a prodigy of learning; she seems rather to
have been a courtly Mrs. Malaprop. She once declared that “It was as
difficult to get into an Italian coach as for Cæsar to take Attica”—by which
she meant Utica. On another occasion some one telling her of a man “who
talked of nothing but Madeira, she asked gravely what language that was”.
But despite her eccentricities she had sterling qualities, and was as much a
credit to the court as her daughters were its ornaments.
The Queen’s household was numerous, and included the Mistress of the
Robes, the Duchess of Dorset, six ladies of the bedchamber, all countesses;
six bedchamber women and six maids of honour. The two most prominent
members of it were two bedchamber women, Mrs. Clayton, the Queen’s
favourite, and Mrs. Howard, the King’s favourite, who hated one another
thoroughly.
Mrs. Clayton had now great influence with the Queen, more indeed
than any one except Walpole, with whom she came frequently into
collision. She was an irritating woman with an overwhelming sense of self-
esteem. Horace Walpole calls her “an absurd pompous simpleton”. Lord
Hervey credits her with all the virtues, and declares that she possessed an
excellent understanding and a good heart. She undoubtedly possessed
cunning and ability, which she used to such advantage that she ultimately
procured for her stupid husband a peerage, as Viscount Sundon, and she
foisted a large family of needy relatives on to the public service. She acted
as a sort of unofficial private secretary to the Queen and became the
medium of all manner of communications to her mistress. Many of the
letters written to her were really addressed to Caroline. Walpole heartily
disliked Mrs. Clayton and tried in vain to shake her influence with the
Queen. Her ascendency was inexplicable to him for years, but at last he
thought that he had discovered the reason. When Lady Walpole died, the
Queen asked him many questions about his wife’s last illness and
persistently referred to one particular malady from which, in point of fact,
Lady Walpole had not suffered. The Prime Minister noticed it, and when he
came home he said to his son: “Now, Horace, I know by the possession of
what secret Lady Sundon has preserved such an ascendant over the Queen”.
Whether her influence was wholly due to this cause is open to question, for

she stood in high favour before her mistress’s malady began. But for long
years Caroline suffered from a distressing illness of which she would rather
have died than have made it known, and Mrs. Clayton was one of the few
who knew her secret.
All the maids of honour except Miss Meadows had changed since the
King and Queen were last at Hampton Court, but these young ladies were
still of a lively temperament. One evening in the darkness several of them
played at ghost, and stole out into the gardens and went round the palace
rattling and knocking at the windows. Lady Hervey, who had heard of these
frolics, writes to Mrs. Howard: “I think people who are of such very hot
constitutions as to want to be refreshed by night walking, need not disturb
others who are not altogether so warm as they are; and it was very lucky
that looking over letters till it was late, prevented some people being in bed,
and in their first sleep, otherwise the infinite wit and merry pranks of the
22
youthful maids might have been lost to the world.”
But, however lively may have been the young maids of honour, one
member of the Queen’s household found Hampton Court dull under the new
reign and its glory departed. Writing to Lady Hervey Mrs. Howard says:—
“Hampton is very different from the place you knew; and to say we
wished Tom Lepell, Schatz and Bella-dine at the tea-table, is too interested
to be doubted. Frizelation, flirtation and dangleation are now no more, and
nothing less than a Lepell can restore them to life; but to tell you my
opinion freely, the people you now converse with” (books) “are much more
23
alive than any of your old acquaintances.”
Mrs. Howard had a good reason to be dispirited, for the new reign had
proved a sad disappointment to her. She had expected, and so had her
friends, that the King’s accession to the throne would bring her an increase
of power, wealth and influence, which would have helped to compensate
her for the equivocal position she occupied, a position which, as she was a
modest woman, could not have been altogether congenial to her. “No
established mistress of a sovereign,” says Horace Walpole, “ever enjoyed
less brilliancy of the situation than Lady Suffolk.” The only benefit she
received was a peerage for her brother, Sir Henry Hobart, and at the end of
a long and trying career at court she managed to amass a sum, not indeed
sufficient to give her wealth, but to save her from indigence. The Queen

once said that Mrs. Howard received £1,200 a year from the King all the
time he was Prince of Wales, and it was increased to £3,200 a year when he
became King. He also gave her £12,000 towards building her villa at
Marble Hill, near Twickenham, besides several “little dabs” both before and
after he came to the throne. But this represented all that Mrs. Howard
gained, if indeed she gained so much; patronage or influence she had none,
and those who placed their trust in her found themselves out of favour.
After a while the courtiers began to find out that it was more profitable to
pay their suit to Mrs. Clayton, who had the ear of the Queen, than to Mrs.
Howard, who had not the ear of the King. Yet the King still continued to
visit Mrs. Howard for some three or four hours every evening, at nine
o’clock, “but with such dull punctuality that he frequently walked up and
down the gallery for ten minutes with his watch in his hand if the stated
24
minute was not arrived”. The Queen was doubtless glad to get rid of him
for a time, but Mrs. Howard must have suffered sadly from the tedium of
entertaining her royal master on these daily visits, and certainly deserved
more than she got in the way of recompense. She had, as one puts it, “the
scandal of being the King’s mistress without the pleasure, the confinement
without the profit”. The Queen took care that the profit was strictly limited.
The King was so mean that at one time he even suggested, indirectly,
that the Queen should pay Mrs. Howard’s husband out of her privy purse
for keeping himself quiet. This was too great a tax even on Caroline’s
complaisance and in one of her bursts of confidence she told Lord Hervey
that when Howard insisted on his wife returning to him, “That old fool, my
Lord Trevor, came to me from Mrs. Howard, and after thanking me in her
name for what I had done, proposed to me to give £1,200 a year to Mr.
Howard to let his wife stay with me; but as I thought I had done full
enough, and that it was a little too much not only to keep the King’s
guenipes” (in English trulls) “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 £1,200 a-year I
really could not afford it”. So Howard’s silence was bought out of the
King’s pocket, and Mrs. Howard’s maintenance was partly provided by
him, and partly by the Queen, who gave her a place in her household and so
threw a veil of respectability over the affair.

Mrs. Howard found that she gained so little by the King’s accession,
that she wished to retire from court, but was not allowed to do so.
Meanwhile all her nominations were refused. She seems to have shown her
resentment in divers ways. Her refusal to kneel during the ceremony of the
Queen’s dressing was perhaps one manifestation of it. With regard to her
uprising and retiring, her dressing and undressing, Queen Caroline followed
the custom which had been observed by all kings and queens of England
until George the First, who refused to be bound by precedent in this matter.
Caroline performed the greater part of her dressing surrounded by many
persons. The Queen, who had a great idea of what was due to her dignity,
desired that the bedchamber-woman in waiting should bring the basin and
ewer and present them to her kneeling. Mrs. Howard objected to this, and,
considering the peculiar relations which existed between her and the King,
her objection was natural enough. But the Queen insisted. “The first thing,”
said Caroline to Lord Hervey later, “this wise, prudent Lady Suffolk” [Mrs.
Howard] “did was to pick a quarrel with me about holding a basin in the
ceremony of my dressing, and 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; indeed you will.
Go, go! fie for shame! Go, my good Howard; we will talk of this another
time.’”
Mrs. Howard went, and in her dilemma wrote to Dr. Arbuthnot to
inquire of Lady Masham, who had been at one time bedchamber-woman to
Queen Anne, whether this disputed point was really according to precedent.
She got little comfort from Lady Masham, who through Arbuthnot
replied:—
“The bedchamber-woman came into waiting before the Queen’s
prayers, which was before her Majesty was dressed. The Queen often
shifted in a morning; if her Majesty shifted at noon, the bedchamber-lady
being by, the bedchamber-woman gave the shift to the lady without any
ceremony, and the lady put it on. Sometimes, likewise, the bedchamber-
woman gave the fan to the lady in the same manner; and this was all that the
bedchamber-lady did about the Queen at her dressing.
“When the Queen washed her hands the page of the backstairs brought
and set down upon a side-table the basin and ewer, then the bedchamber-

woman set it before the Queen, and knelt on the other side of the table over
against the Queen, the bedchamber-lady only looking on. The bedchamber-
woman poured the water out of the ewer upon the Queen’s hands.
“The bedchamber-woman pulled on the Queen’s gloves when she could
25
not do it herself.
“The page of the backstairs was called in to put on the Queen’s shoes.
“When the Queen dined in public the page reached the glass to the
bedchamber-woman, and she to the lady in waiting.
“The bedchamber-woman brought the chocolate, and gave it without
kneeling.
“In general, the bedchamber-woman had no dependence on the lady of
26
the bedchamber.”
As Mrs. Howard was not a lady of the bedchamber but bedchamber-
woman only, she found that the Queen had asked of her nothing more than
etiquette required, and after a week of indecision she yielded the point, and
knelt with the basin as commanded. Horace Walpole, who was fond of
imputing base motives to others, says that the Queen delighted in subjecting
her to such servile offices, though always apologising to her “good
Howard”. But there is no evidence to show that the Queen was capable of
such petty spite; she required nothing more than the duties the office
involved, however menial they may seem now. The Queen, who bore no
malice, soon forgave Mrs. Howard this little display of temper, for she told
Lord Hervey: “About a week after, when upon maturer deliberation, she had
done everything about the basin that I would have her, I told her 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——.”

HENRIETTA HOWARD (COUNTESS OF SUFFOLK).
The Queen’s morning toilet was generally made by her the occasion of
an informal levée, and to it she would command all those whom she wished

to see on any subject. While her head was being tired a group would be
standing around her, and in the ante-chamber divines rubbed shoulders with
poets, and learned men with politicians and court ladies. On the Queen’s
toilet table would be found not only the requisites for dressing but a heap of
other things—a sermon, a new book, a poem in her praise, a report as to her
gardens and building plans, a pile of letters on every conceivable subject,
and the memorandum of a minister. All these she would deal with quickly
and characteristically. She would also on these occasions have retailed to
her the latest news, or engage a philosopher and a divine in a dispute upon
some abstract question, and would put in a word in the interval of having
her head tired and washing her hands. Prayers would be read to her in an
adjoining room while she was dressing, in order to save time. The door was
left a little ajar so that the chaplain’s voice might be heard. The
bedchamber-woman was one day commanded to bid the chaplain, Dr.
Maddox, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, to begin his prayers, but seeing a
picture of a naked Venus over the fald-stool, the divine made bold to
remark: “And a very proper altar piece is here, madam!” On another
occasion the Queen ordered the door to be closed for a minute, and then,
not hearing the chaplain’s voice, she sent to know why he was not going on
with his prayers. The indignant clergyman replied that he refused to whistle
the word of God through the keyhole. This latter anecdote is sometimes told
of Queen Anne, though, as she was always very devout in her religious
observances, it is far more likely to be true of Queen Caroline. It is borne
out by the following passage, which occurs in “a dramatic trifle” which
Lord Hervey wrote to amuse the Queen, entitled The Death of Lord Hervey
or a Morning at Court. The scene is laid in the Queen’s dressing-room.
“The Queen is discovered at her toilet cleaning her teeth, with Mrs. Purcell
dressing her Majesty’s head, and the princesses, and ladies and women of
the bedchamber standing around her. The Litany is being said in the next
room”:—
First Parson (behind the scenes): “From pride, vain glory and
hypocrisy, from envy, hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness”.
Second Parson: “Good Lord deliver us!”
Queen: “I pray, my good Lady Sundon, shut a little that door; those
creatures pray so loud, one cannot hear oneself speak.” [Lady Sundon goes
to shut the door.] “So, so, not quite so much; leave it enough open for those

parsons to think we may hear, and enough shut that we may not hear quite
so much.”
The King seldom honoured these morning levées of his Queen with his
presence, for he disliked cosmopolitan gatherings, but sometimes he would
strut in and clear out the crowd with scant ceremony. On one occasion he
came into the room while the Queen was dressing, and seeing that his
consort’s bosom was covered with a kerchief, he snatched it away,
exclaiming angrily to Mrs. Howard who was in waiting: “Is it because you
have an ugly neck yourself that you love to hide the Queen’s”? The Queen’s
bust was said by sculptors to have been the finest in Europe.
The Queen was pleased with Mrs. Howard’s submission in the matter
of the basin, and by way of marking her appreciation, she did her the
honour of dining with her at her new villa at Marble Hill—that famous villa
of which Lords Burlington and Pembroke designed the front, Bathurst and
Pope planned the gardens, and Swift, Gay and Arbuthnot arranged the
household. But the Queen would allow Mrs. Howard no political influence.
Compton and Pulteney, Bolingbroke and other Opposition leaders who had
trusted to her found that they had leant on a broken reed. Indeed Mrs.
Howard’s goodwill seemed fatal to all her friends. It was through her,
unwittingly, that Lord Chesterfield lost the favour of the Queen, though
Walpole’s jealousy, and the remembrance the Queen had of his mocking her
in the old days at Leicester House, had something to do with it.
Chesterfield, who had been appointed in the last reign Ambassador at
the Hague, came over to England some little time after King George the
Second ascended the throne to see his friends and pay his respects to their
Majesties. He at once repaired to Walpole, who said to him jealously:
“Well, my Lord, I find you have come to be Secretary of State”. Lord
Chesterfield declared that he had no such ambition, but he said: “I claim the
Garter, not on account of my late services, but agreeably with the King’s
promise to me when he was Prince of Wales; besides, I am a man of
pleasure, and the blue riband would add two inches to my size”. The King
kept his word, and Chesterfield was given the Garter, and also the sinecure
of High Steward of the Household. All would have gone well with him if he
had not been so unfortunate as to get again into the Queen’s bad books.
“The Queen,” says Horace Walpole, “had an obscure window at St. James’s
that looked into a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at night,

which looked upon Mrs. Howard’s apartment. Lord Chesterfield, one
Twelfth-night at Court, had won so large a sum of money that he thought it
imprudent to carry it home in the dark, and deposited it with the mistress.
Thus the Queen inferred great intimacy; thenceforward Lord Chesterfield
could obtain no favour from Court.” The sum which Lord Chesterfield was
said to have won on this occasion was £15,000, which gives some idea of
the high play then in vogue. But he lost far more than he gained—the
Queen’s goodwill, without which no statesman could hold place in the
councils of the King.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER III:
10
After Queen Caroline’s death George II. rarely went to Windsor, and
so neglected the Castle that when George III. ascended the throne it
was found to be in a ruinous condition.
11
Stamford Mercury, 19th September, 1728.
12
Daily Post, 27th December, 1728.
13
Country Journal, 22nd June, 1728.
14
Most of them, both in the palace and the gardens, were carried out by
Kent, an unworthy successor to Sir Christopher Wren. Some of
Kent’s work at Hampton Court is very incongruous and inferior.
15
Accidents were not infrequent at these hunting parties. For instance,
we read in the newspapers of the day:—
“25th August, 1731.—The Royal Family were hunting, and in the
chase a stag started upon the Princess Amelia’s horse, which, being
frightened, threw her.
“28th August, 1731.—The Royal Family hunted in Richmond
Park, when the Lord Delaware’s lady was overturned in a chaise,

which went over but did no visible hurt.”
16
Stamford Mercury, 22nd August, 1728.
17
Hervey’s Memoirs.
18
Ibid.
19
Stamford Mercury, 25th July, 1728.
20
The canopy of crimson silk under which Caroline stood is still affixed
to the wall of the Queen’s audience chamber at Hampton Court—or
was there until lately.
21
Thomas Pelham to Lord Waldegrave, 30th June, 1730.
22
Lady Hervey to Mrs. Howard, 7th July, 1729. Suffolk
Correspondence.
23
Mrs. Howard to Lady Hervey, September, 1728.
24
Walpole’s Reminiscences. Mrs. Howard was lodged at Hampton
Court in the fine suite of rooms until recently occupied by the late
Lady Georgiana Grey.
25
Queen Anne’s hands were swollen with gout.
26
Dr. Arbuthnot to Mrs. Howard, 29th May, 1728. Suffolk
Correspondence.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ROYAL FAMILY.

1728.

Frederick Louis, the eldest son of George the Second, still remained at
Hanover, though now direct heir to the throne of England, and his father
made no sign. Remembering perchance what a thorn he, when Prince of
Wales, had been in his father’s side, the King was afraid lest his heir should
treat him likewise, and the Queen, whose affection had gone to her younger
son, William, Duke of Cumberland, agreed with her husband as to the
advisability of keeping their first-born away from England as long as
possible. This is more extraordinary when it is remembered that the policy
of George the First in keeping Frederick at Hanover was, in the early part of
his reign, one of his son’s grievances against him, and he and the Princess
frequently urged, both in private and public, that their son should be
brought to England. But after the birth of William, Duke of Cumberland,
they completely changed their minds, and were as anxious to keep
Frederick at Hanover as they had formerly been to have him in England.
They would have liked to supplant the elder brother by the younger, who
was born on British soil—to give Prince Frederick Hanover only, and
reserve the throne of England for Prince William. They forgot that the
English crown was not theirs to give. In the latter days of George the First’s
reign Walpole urged upon the old King the advisability of bringing his
grandson to England, and George would, it was said, have brought him
back with him after his last visit to Hanover. But his death on the road
thither changed all this.
Neither the King nor the Queen had any affection for their eldest son,
who had grown up a stranger to them, and of whom they received
unfavourable accounts. On the other hand, it is only fair to say that Lady

Mary Wortley Montagu, who was by no means given to flattering any one,
were he prince or peasant, on her visit to Hanover in 1716 spoke strongly in
Frederick’s favour. She writes: “Our young Prince, the Duke of Gloucester,
has all the accomplishments that it is possible to have at his age, with an air
of sprightliness and understanding, and something so very engaging and
easy in his behaviour that he needs not the advantage of his rank to appear
charming. I had the honour of a long conversation with him last night
before the King came in. His governor retired on purpose, as he told me
afterwards, that I might make some judgment of his genius by hearing him
speak without constraint, and I was surprised by the quickness and
politeness that appeared in everything that he said, joined to a person
perfectly agreeable, and the fine fair hair of the Princess.”
The fact that Frederick had grown up under his grandfather’s influence
prejudiced his parents against him, more especially when they heard that he
espoused the old King’s side in the family quarrel. On the other hand, his
father’s tardiness in summoning him to England after his accession and his
refusal to pay the debts he had made at Hanover created a bad feeling on
Frederick’s part towards his parents. Thus matters stood for more than a
year after the coronation, despite the representations of Walpole and the
clamours of the Opposition, who attacked the Government for not forcing
the King’s hand in this matter. The Privy Council represented the dangers
that would ensue from suffering the heir to the throne to remain so long
away from the country over which he would one day, under Providence,
reign. The King listened very unwillingly, but while he was hesitating an
incident occurred which hastened his decision.
Prince Frederick, it will be remembered, was betrothed, more or less
formally, to Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia, and his grandfather had
promised that the nuptials should be solemnised when he next came to
Hanover, but his death postponed the marriage. George the Second and
Caroline, though they did not absolutely refuse the alliance, declined to be
bound by the late King’s word, and stipulated that their daughter Amelia
should marry the Crown Prince of Prussia as a compensation. The Queen of
Prussia was more than willing, but the King of Prussia did not want Amelia
for a daughter-in-law any more than the King and Queen of England wanted
Wilhelmina, and so matters came to a standstill, to the despair of Queen
Sophie Dorothea. “I will not have a daughter-in-law,” said the King of

Prussia to his Queen, “who carries her nose in the air and fills my Court
with intrigues as others are already doing. Your Master Fritz [the Crown
Prince] shall soon get a flogging at my hands; and then I will look out for a
27
marriage for him.” The Crown Prince was quite ready to marry Amelia or
any one else, if it would give him some independence and protection from
his father’s ill-usage. Prince Frederick at Hanover declared himself in love
with Wilhelmina, whom he had never seen, but Wilhelmina was anything
but in love with Frederick. Her mother had so dinned him into her ears, and
had given her such accounts of him, that she had grown to dislike him. “He
is a good-natured prince,” the Queen said to her daughter; “kind-hearted,
but very foolish; if you have sense enough to tolerate his mistresses, you
will be able to do what you like with him.” Wilhelmina declared that this
was not the ideal husband of her young dreams; she wanted some one
whom she could look up to and respect, and she certainly could not respect
Frederick.
Prince Frederick’s vanity was piqued at the delay and he was indignant
at his father’s neglect, so, early in the year 1728, he determined to take
matters into his own hands. He sent Lamotte, a Hanoverian officer, on a
secret mission to Berlin to Sastot, one of the Queen’s chamberlains. When
Lamotte reached Berlin he went to Sastot and said: “I am the bearer of a
most important confidential message. You must hide me somewhere in your
house, that my arrival may remain unknown, and you must manage that one
of my letters reaches the King.” Sastot promised, but asked if his business
were good or evil. “It will be good if people can hold their tongues,” replied
the Hanoverian, “but if they gossip it will be evil. However, as I know you
are discreet, and as I require your help in obtaining an interview with the
Queen, I must confide all to you. The Prince Frederick Louis intends being
here in three weeks at the latest. He means to escape secretly from Hanover,
brave his father’s anger, and marry the Princess. He has entrusted me with
the whole affair, and has sent me here to find out if his arrival would be
agreeable to the King and Queen, and if they are still anxious for this
marriage. If she is capable of keeping a secret and has no suspicious people
28
about her, will you undertake to speak to the Queen on the subject?”
The same evening the chamberlain went to Court and confided to the
Queen the weighty communication with which he was entrusted. The
Queen was overjoyed, and the next day communicated the glad news to her

daughter. “‘I shall at length see you happy, and my wishes realised at the
same time; how much joy at once,’ cried the Queen. ‘I kissed her hands,’
said Wilhelmina, ‘which I covered with tears.’ ‘You are crying,’ my mother
exclaimed. ‘What is the matter?’ I would not disturb her happiness, so I
answered: ‘The thought of leaving you distresses me more than all the
crowns of the world could delight me.’ The Queen was only the more tender
towards me in consequence, and then left me. I loved this dear mother truly,
and had only spoken the truth to her. She left me in a terrible state of mind.
I was cruelly torn between my affection for her, and my repugnance for the
Prince, but I determined to leave all to Providence, which should direct my
29
ways.”
The Queen held a reception the same evening, and, as ill-luck would
have it, the English envoy Bourguait came. The Queen, forgetting her
prudence, and thinking the plan was well matured, actually confided to him
the Prince’s project. Bourguait, overwhelmed with astonishment, asked the
Queen if it were really true. “Certainly,” she replied, “and to show you how
true it is, he has sent Lamotte here, who has already informed the King of
everything.” “Oh! why does your Majesty tell me this? I am wretched, for I
must prevent it!” exclaimed the envoy. Greatly dismayed, the Queen asked
him why. “Because I am my Sovereign’s envoy; because my office requires
of me that I should inform him of so important a matter. I shall send off a
messenger to England this very evening. Would to God I had known
nothing of all this!” The Queen entreated him not to do so, but he was firm,
and despatched the messenger to England. Thus did Queen Sophie
Dorothea defeat the scheme for which she had toiled many years at the very
moment of its fruition.
On receipt of the news George the Second sent Colonel Lorne to
Hanover, with commands to bring the Prince over to England without an
instant’s delay. When Lorne arrived at Hanover a few days later he found
Prince Frederick giving a ball at Herrenhausen. He gave the King’s
message, and acted with so much despatch that at the end of the ball the
Prince, escorted by Lorne, and attended by only one servant, quitted
Hanover for ever. His plot had failed; there was nothing else to be done.
The rage and disappointment when the news of the Prince’s departure
reached the Court of Berlin was very great. The King blustered and swore,
called Wilhelmina “English canaille,” and beat her and her brother in a

shocking manner; the Queen broke down and took to her bed; Wilhelmina
fainted away. But it was all to no purpose; not only her marriage, but the
30
double marriage scheme, vanished into thin air.
Frederick did not find a warm welcome awaiting him from his parents.
The Prince landed in England the first week in December (1728), and made
his way to London; he arrived at St. James’s without any ceremony, and
was smuggled up the backstairs as though he had been a pretender rather
than the heir-apparent to the crown. “Yesterday,” we read, “His Royal
Highness Prince Frederick came to Whitechapel about seven in the evening,
and proceeded thence privately in a hackney coach to St. James’s. His
Royal Highness alighted at the Friary, and walked down to the Queen’s
31
backstairs, and was there conducted to her Majesty’s apartment.”
It must have been a strange meeting between mother and son. The
Queen received him amiably; the succession could not be altered, so she
determined to make the best of him, but the King was very harsh. George
had an unnatural and deep-rooted aversion to his eldest son, whom he
regarded as necessarily his enemy. This peculiarity was hereditary in the
House of Hanover for some generations, for the Sovereign and his first-
born were always at war with one another. Some pity must be extended to
the young Prince, who never had a fair chance. He was only twenty-two
years of age when he came to England, and he found himself among
strangers and enemies in a country of which he knew nothing. He was very
shy and frightened at first, and his father’s manner did not tend to reassure
him. Lord Hervey says that, “Whenever the Prince was in the room with
him (the King) it put one in mind of stories that one has heard of ghosts that
appear to part of the company but are invisible to the rest; and in this
manner, wherever the Prince stood, though the King passed him ever so
often, or ever so near, it always seemed as if the King thought the Prince
filled a void of space”. The Prince did not dine in public at St. James’s the
Sunday after his arrival, but the Queen suffered him to hand her into her
pew at the Chapel Royal, and this was his first appearance before the
English Court. But, however much his parents might slight him, the fact
remained that he was, by Act of Parliament, heir to the throne, and, through
the insistence of the Privy Council, the King soon after his arrival created
him Prince of Wales. But he was careful not to give him the allowance of
£100,000 a year which had been voted by Parliament for the Prince of

Wales in the Civil List. True, Parliament had given the King control over
the Prince’s income, and he exercised it by giving him only a small
allowance. The young Prince quickly made friends, some of them not of a
very desirable character. He had been taught to speak English fairly well,
and he had pleasant manners. He had inherited from his mother a taste for
letters, and he also possessed the art of dissimulation and a love of intrigue.
He had not the slightest affection for either of his parents—how could he
have?—and he soon began to deceive them, a task in which he found plenty
to help him. Lady Bristol in one of her letters gave a very flattering account
of him as being “the most agreeable young man it is possible to imagine,
without being the least handsome, his person little, but very well made and
genteel, a loveliness in his eyes that is indescribable, and the most obliging
address that can be conceived.” The poets praised him; and one sycophant
rhapsodised over him as follows:—

Fresh as a rose-bud newly blown and fair
As op’ning lilies: on whom every eye
With joy and admiration dwells. See, see
He rides his docile barb with manly grace.
Is it Adonis for the chase arrayed
Or Britain’s second hope?

The first hope presumably was the King, the other hopes were the rest of
the royal children. They were not a lovable family, nor was there any love
lost among them. They disliked one another thoroughly, but, with the
exception of Frederick, they were all devoted to their mother, and they all
united, Frederick included, in disliking their father, who on his part disliked
them. The King had rarely a kind word for any of his children, and in his
old age he admitted it. “I know I did not love my children,” he said. “When
they were young I hated to have them running about the room.” Caroline,
on the other hand, was devoted to all her children, except the Prince of
Wales, whom long absence had estranged from her. One of her first acts
after becoming Queen was to dismiss the state governess, and have her
daughters educated under her immediate supervision. She was a Spartan
mother, and a firm believer in the proverb: “Spare the rod, spoil the child”.
The Duchess of Marlborough relates how on one occasion when she went

to see the Queen, then Princess of Wales, she found her chastising little
Prince William, who was roaring and kicking lustily. The Prince was
looking on complaisantly. The duchess tried to soothe the youthful
delinquent. “Ah, see,” cried George Augustus, “you English are none of you
well-bred, because you were not whipped when you were young.” “Umph!”
quoth her Grace. She afterwards said, “I thought to myself, I am sure you
could not have been whipped when you were young, but I choked it in”.
Anne, Princess Royal, was now in her twentieth year. She had little
beauty, and her figure was short and squat, but she had fair abilities and
several accomplishments; she could paint well, speak three languages, and
was an excellent musician. Her favourite recreation was the opera, and she
loved to get professional singers and players around her, and practise with
them. She was vain and ambitious, and once told her mother that she
wished she had no brothers, so that she might succeed to the throne. On the
Queen’s reproving her, she said: “I would die to-morrow to be Queen to-
day”. Unfortunately for her ambition, heirs to thrones or reigning monarchs
were in no wise attracted to her, and so far no eligible candidate for her
hand had come forward. The Queen also once rebuked her for her lack of
consideration to her ladies. She noticed one morning that she kept her lady
standing for a long time, conversing with her on some trifling matter, while
she herself remained seated. In the evening Anne came to her mother to
read to her and was about to sit down. “No, my dear,” said the Queen, “you
must not sit down at present, I intend to keep you standing for as long a
time as you kept Lady —— in the same position this morning.”
The second daughter, Princess Amelia, or Emily, as she was more
generally called, was better looking than her sister and far cleverer. In her
youth she had considerable pretensions to beauty, and her ready wit made
her the most popular of the princesses. “The Princess Amelia,” writes Lady
Pomfret enthusiastically to Mrs. Clayton, “is the oddest, or at least one of
the oddest princesses that ever was known; she has her ears shut to flattery
and her heart open to honesty. She has honour, justice, good-nature, sense,
wit, resolution, and more good qualities than I have time to tell you, so
mixed that (if one is not a devil) it is impossible to say she has too much or
too little of any; yet all these do not in anything (without exception) make
her forget the King of England’s daughter, which dignity she keeps up with
such an obliging behaviour that she charms everybody. Do not believe her

complaisance to me makes me say one silible more than the rigid truth;
though I confess she has gained my heart and has added one more to the
32
number of those few whose desert forces one’s affection.”
This paragon of a princess had been the destined bride of the Crown
Prince of Prussia afterwards Frederick the Great, but as the double marriage
scheme fell through she continued single. Several minor German princes
offered themselves, but she did not think them worthy of her acceptance.
Yet she was far from indifferent to admiration, and had a liking for men’s
society. She was of a masculine turn of mind, and her happiest hours were
passed in the hunting field, and the stables and kennels. She liked to spend
much time with her horses and discuss their points minutely with the
grooms, and one Sunday she shocked the good people of Hampton Court by
going to church in a riding costume with a dog under each arm. She shared
her father’s passion for hunting, and was a far better rider than he. She used
to hunt in a costume which was masculine rather than feminine, and rode
hard and fearlessly, followed by her favourite groom, Spurrier. There is a
curious portrait of her in a round hunting cap and laced scarlet coat, which
makes her look like a man. She had flirtations with the Duke of Newcastle
and the Duke of Grafton; that with the latter was serious. It went on for a
long time, and the Princess seems really to have been attached to him,
though he was much older than she.

THE PRINCESS AMELIA.
(SECOND DAUGHTER OF GEORGE II.)

The Duke of Grafton, the Lord Chamberlain, was a grandson of
Charles the Second, and had the personal beauty and charm of manner
characteristic of the Fitzroys. He made no secret of his attentions to the
Princess, and she received them with a great deal of favour. Queen Caroline
was annoyed at what she considered was the duke’s presumption in aspiring
to be her daughter’s lover. She also resented his familiar manner towards
herself; he frequently addressed her as though he were her equal, and

indeed he considered himself to be a scion of royalty. He once told her that
he believed it was not in her nature to love any one, to which she replied:
“But I love the King”. He answered: “By God, ma’am, I do not know, but if
I were King of France I would soon find out whether you did or not”. He
used to tease her also with the tale that she was in love with some German
prince before her marriage to the Electoral Prince of Hanover, and ended by
saying: “God, ma’am, I wish I could see the man you could love”. As she
could not repress him, Caroline affected to treat these familiarities as a joke,
but she secretly resented them. She did her best to put an end to the
intimacy between her daughter and the duke, but without much effect. The
Princess Amelia and the duke would go a-hunting together two or three
times a week, and frequently rode away from the rest of the party. On one
occasion at Windsor their attendants lost them altogether, and they did not
return to the castle until long after it was dark. It was said that they had
gone together to a private house in Windsor forest and there remained. The
King was absent from England at the time this happened, but the Queen
was highly incensed, and soundly rated Amelia on her imprudence. She
would have complained to the King about the Duke of Grafton, but Walpole
dissuaded her from doing so. The duke would not have cared, and it would
have done the princess harm.
The year after the King’s accession to the throne Princess Amelia went
to Bath to drink the waters, attended by Lady Pomfret. Royal visits to Bath
were as yet few and far between, indeed the only royal personages who had
visited Bath before the Princess were Queen Anne (before she came to the
33
throne) with her husband Prince George of Denmark. Princess Amelia
was received by the Mayor and Corporation in full state, and a hundred
young men on horseback met her coach at the North Gate and formed an
escort to her lodgings. Bath had already become a gay and fashionable
place, and many persons of quality and of no quality at all, who suffered
from gout, rheumatism, the results of dissipation, or that mysterious ailment
which the ladies of the eighteenth century called “vapours,” flocked thither
to drink the waters and kill the time. The pump room and assembly-rooms
were “elegantly fitted” and a band played daily. Breakfast parties were
much the vogue at “one and twenty pence a piece,” and the forenoon was
passed in drinking the waters and listening to the concert. In the afternoon
there were the bowling greens and the promenade in the gardens skirting

the river, the toy shops and the coffee-houses where the beau monde
loitered, drinking “dishes of tea” and eating Bath buns. In the evening there
were cards and dancing—and there was scandal all day long. Bath was then
under the reign of “King” Nash, who had become its arbiter elegantiarum.
Opinions differ as to the services Nash rendered to Bath. Some say he made
the place; others that he merely cloaked the grossness and licentiousness of
the fashionable world there by throwing over it a garb of mock ceremony.
Certainly Bath was a hotbed of gambling, and many undesirable characters
were attracted thither simply by the high play.
Princess Amelia’s arrival caused quite a flutter in the gay world of
Bath. She took the waters in the morning, and after drinking them strolled
in Harrison’s walks, all the men and women of fashion following after her
or keeping within a respectful distance. But there was one who would not
pay her homage, and she was Lady Wigtown, a Jacobite peeress. One day in
the public garden Lady Wigtown met the Princess face to face, and without
taking the slightest notice of her, she pushed aside the ladies-in-waiting and
walked past. Of this incident Lady Pomfret writes to Mrs. Clayton: “Lady
Frances Manners asked me if I knew my Lady Wigtown (a Scottish
countess). I said I had never heard of her in my life, and believed she had
not yet sent to the Princess; upon which both she and the Duchess of
Rutland smiled, and said: ‘No, nor will, I can tell you; for seeing the
Princess coming to the pump the morning before, she had run away like a
Fury for fear of seeing her; and declares so public an aversion for the King,
etc., that she would not go to the ball made on the Queen’s birthday; and
some of that subscription money remaining, the company had another ball,
which she denied going to, and told all the people it was because the
34
Queen’s money made it’.”
These balls began at six o’clock in the evening, and were under the
direction of Beau Nash, who commanded that they should be over by
eleven at the latest. When the first stroke of the hour sounded the Beau
waved his wand, and the music ceased, though it were in the middle of a
dance. Once the Princess Amelia objected to this summary ending. “One
more dance, Mr. Nash; remember I am Princess.” “Yes, madam, but I reign
here and my law must be kept.”

It was creditable to the Princess Amelia that Lady Wigtown’s rudeness
made no difference to her courtesy to the other Jacobites and Roman
Catholics, of whom just then Bath was full. Acting under instruction from
her mother, she had a gracious word and a smile for all of them who came
her way. Among others were the unfortunate Lord Widdrington and his
lady. Lord Widdrington was one of the Jacobite peers condemned to death
for the part they had taken in the rising of ’15, but he was ultimately
pardoned, though his estates were forfeited. He brought his broken health
and ruined fortunes to Bath, where he was living in comparative poverty
when the Princess Amelia came there. The Princess noticed Lady
Widdrington in the Pump Room, and asked who she was. When she was
told she talked to her, walked with her, and generally took much notice of
her. “Her kindness,” writes Lady Pomfret, “had such an effect upon all that
sort [Jacobites] in this city that is hardly to be imagined, and they all speak
of the Princess Amelia as of something that has charmed them ever since.”
But another lady in waiting, Mrs. Tichburne, was perturbed lest the
Princess’s graciousness to a “rebel’s wife” should be misunderstood, and
Lady Pomfret thought well to ask Mrs. Clayton to explain matters to the
Queen. She need not have troubled, for the Princess had only done as the
Queen wished.
It is a pity that we cannot take leave of the Princess Amelia with this
pleasing illustration of her amiability. But truth compels us to add that as
she grew older her character sadly deteriorated. She developed into a hard,
mean, inquisitive woman, and was often insolent without provocation.
Perhaps this was due to the crossing of her young affections, and her nature,
driven back upon itself, grew warped in the cramped atmosphere of the
court. In later life Bath continued to be a favourite resort of the Princess
Amelia, for here she could indulge in her love of cards and scandal without
let or hindrance; she used to play night after night for very high stakes,
refreshing herself with pinches of snuff during the game. One night when
she was playing in the public card room at Bath an old general, who was
seated next her, ventured to take a pinch of snuff out of her box, which
stood by him on the table. She haughtily stared at him without making any
remark, and then beckoning to her footman, ordered him to throw the snuff
in the fire and bring her a fresh box. Little peculiarities like this did not tend
to make her popular, and she grew to be generally disliked. She lived far
into the reign of her nephew George the Third, and died unmarried.

The third daughter, Princess Caroline, was of a very different
disposition to her elder sisters; she had no beauty, and suffered from
delicate health, but she had much quiet goodness and unobtrusive piety.
When she was a child her parents used to say of her: “Send for Caroline,
and then we shall know the truth”. She was the Queen’s favourite daughter,
and was greatly attached to her. Constantly with her mother, she was thrown
a good deal into the companionship of Lord Hervey, and conceived for him
a deep and lasting love, a most unfortunate attachment, as Lord Hervey was
by no means a worthy object for her devotion, even if he had been able to
requite it properly, which he could not, as he was married to the beautiful
Lepel. Her attachment flattered his vanity, and he must have secretly
encouraged it. The hopelessness of her passion made no difference to the
gentle Princess; she continued to cherish it until Lord Hervey’s death, and
even after his death she testified her devotion to his memory by showing
great kindness to his children. After she lost her mother she became a
confirmed invalid, and spent her life in retirement and works of
benevolence. She died unmarried.
William, Duke of Cumberland, the second surviving son of George the
Second and Caroline, was at the time they came to the throne a boy, and had
not yet developed those unamiable qualities he displayed in later life, which
earned for him undying infamy as “the butcher of Culloden”. He was a
precocious youth, very grave and solemn in his demeanour, not caring to
play like other boys, but preferring to mope in a corner over a book, or to
gaze at uniforms and military evolutions—for quite early in life he showed
a strong predilection for the army. Some characteristic anecdotes are related
of his early years. When a child he was taken on one of his birthdays to see
his grandfather, George the First. The King asked him at what time he got
up in the morning; the young duke replied: “When the chimney-sweepers
are about”. The King asked: “Vat are de chimney-sweepers”? “Have you
been so long in England,” said his grandson, “and do not know what a
chimney-sweep is? Why, he is like that man there;” and he pointed to Lord
Finch, afterwards Earl of Winchelsea and Nottingham, who was in
attendance. Lord Finch, like the rest of his family, “the black funereal
Finches,” had a very swarthy complexion, and after this he was generally
known by the nickname of “The Chimney Sweep”. On another occasion,
after a display of temper, his mother ordered the duke to be locked up in his
room. When he came out he was downcast and sullen. “William,” inquired

the Queen, “what have you been doing?” “Reading,” he said shortly.
“Reading what?” “The Bible.” “And what did you read there?” “About
Jesus and Mary.” “And what about them?” asked the Queen. “Why,” replied
William, “that Jesus said to Mary: ‘Woman, what hast thou to do with me?’”
Lady Strafford has left an account of the Duke of Cumberland’s
birthday reception, a sort of children’s party which represents the young
prince in a more amiable light:—
“My love” (her son, Lord Wentworth), she writes, “is perfectly well and
vastly delighted with his Court ball. I took him to Court in the morning, and
the Queen cried out: ‘Oh! Lord Wentworth! how do you do? you have
mightily grown! My lady, he is prodigiously well dressed. I hope you will
let him come to our ball to night.’ After the drawing-room was over the
duke had a levée in his own room, so I desired my brother to take him there,
and the duke told him he hoped he would do him the favour to come at
night. But as a great misfortune Lady Deloraine fell in labour, and was just
brought to bed of a dead son; so they could not have the room they used to
dance in (it being next to hers), so they had a bad little room and they did
not dance French dances. Princess Amelia asked Lord Wentworth to dance
one with her, and afterwards the duke gave him Lady Caroline Fitzroy for
his partner. They had a supper of cold chicken, tongue, jelly and
sweetmeats, but they were (served) in an odd manner, for they had neither
knives nor plates, so that well as my love loves eating, he says he ate but a
leg of a chicken, for he says he did not (think) it looked well to be pulling
greasy bones about in a room full of princesses; the way of getting rid of the
bones was the children threw them out of the window. The King was
present to see them dance, but not the Queen. The ball ended about half an
hour after ten. The duke was quite free and easy, and extremely civil.”
Of the two younger princesses, Mary and Louisa, there is little to be
said, as they were children during their mother’s lifetime. Mary, like her
sister Caroline, was of a soft and gentle disposition. Some years after her
mother’s death she was married to Frederick, Hereditary Prince of Hesse-
Cassel, an obstinate, ill-tempered prince, who treated his wife with cruelty
and infidelity, and her life was a very unhappy one. She survived her
husband a few years.

Princess Louisa, the youngest of them all, was by far the most beautiful
of Queen Caroline’s daughters, and inherited her mother’s abilities and
accomplishments. She married Frederick, Crown Prince of Denmark, and in
due time became Queen of Denmark. Her married life was not altogether
happy, but she had her mother’s philosophy and made the best of it. She
died of the same illness as Queen Caroline, and curiously enough from the
same cause—concealing the nature of her malady until it was too late.
Though the King enjoyed an enormous Civil List he was exceedingly
mean to his children. To his daughters, though three of them had now
grown up, he gave little or nothing. Anne and Amelia were often in need of
pocket-money, and not above borrowing of the people about the court.
Their dress allowance was exceedingly small, and if their mother had not
helped them, they would scarcely have been able to make a presentable
appearance at their father’s drawing-rooms. There is a curious old paper
35
extant, endorsed “Mrs. Powis,” who was probably dresser to the
Princesses, which gives some idea of their wardrobe. The following extracts
may be quoted:—
“What was delivered yearly for each Princess (Anne, Amelia and
Caroline):
“Winter Clothes:—

Two coats embroider’d, one trim’d or rich stuff, and one velvet or
rich silk without.
Three coats brocaded or damask.
A damask night-gown.
Two silk under petecoats, trim’d with gold or silver.

“Summer Clothes:—

Three flower’d coats, one of them with silver.
Three plain or stripped lastrings.
One night-gown and four silk hoops.

Shoes: a pair every week.
Gloves: sixteen dozen in the year; 18s. per dozen.
Tans: no allowance, but they did not exceed eight guineas per
annum.
Mouslines and lawns were bought as wanted, no settled price.

“Sundries:—

No certain allowance for ribbons or artificial flowers.
Powder, patches, combs, pins, quilted caps, band boxes, wax, pens
and paper, came to about £40 per annum for the three princesses, paste
for hands and pomatum came from the apothecary, Mr. Tagar, and did
not come into my bill.
I paid the tire woman 129 guineas a year.
I paid for tuning the harpsichord, food for their birds, and many
other little things belonging to their Royal Highnesses, which were too
trifling to mention, which whilst the Duke was with them came to £50
per annum.
Their Royal Highnesses had each a page of honour and gentleman
usher at £100 sallary.
Each one had a dresser at £50, and one chambermaid, I do not
know at what sallary.
Also one page of the backstairs.
The Princesses used the Queen’s coaches, footmen and grooms.”

The Princesses led singularly idle, purposeless lives; Anne and Amelia
chiefly occupied themselves with card-playing and the petty intrigues of the
court, and the way their father treated them led them early to lie and
practise the arts of dissimulation. Even Princess Caroline, when we have
credited her with all the virtues, remains a colourless nonentity. The
Princesses always appeared at court festivities and took part in whatever
was going on, and the Queen would often relax some of the stiffness of

etiquette for the benefit of the young people. For instance, sometimes after
the evening drawing-rooms she would turn the function into a ball. We
read:—
“On Monday night His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and the
Princess Royal opened a ball at Court with a minuet, and afterwards they
danced several set dances with several of the quality till between four and
five o’clock next morning. Her Majesty was richly dressed, and wore a
flowered muslin hood with an edging. The Princess Royal had the like,
which makes it believed that muslins will come into fashion. There never
was seen so great an appearance, either for number or magnificence as on
36
the like occasion.”
Nor was the King to be outdone in the splendour of his attire; indeed he
outshone the Queen, for he loved dress and display far more. We read: “His
Majesty appeared in a suit of crimson velvet with gold buttons and button
holes, sleeves faced with rich tissue, and a waistcoat of the same.”
The great days at court were the royal birthdays. The birthdays of the
Prince of Wales and all the royal children were duly celebrated. The
Queen’s birthdays were always largely attended, and so were the King’s at
the beginning of the reign. But after his visits to Hanover he became very
unpopular, and he noted with ire that not only was the attendance meagre at
his drawing-rooms, but there were no new clothes for the occasion. If any
of the great nobility absented themselves from the drawing-rooms for any
time, as some occasionally thought fit to do, they were generally conciliated
by the Queen and persuaded to put in an appearance again. The birthday
drawing-rooms were chiefly remarkable for the splendour of the clothes,
every one appearing in his best, and even the royal footmen being arrayed
in new liveries. “There was his Majesty in scarlet and gold,” writes a
correspondent; “the Duke of Cumberland in blue trimmed with silver; the
Princess Anne in silver and colours of yellow; the Princess Louisa in a dark
green velvet, embroidered in gold; my Lady Browne in scarlet, with great
roses not unlike large silver soup plates, made in an old silver lace, and
spotted all over her gown.”
But these were great occasions; in the ordinary way the private life of
the court was dull, even in these early days of the reign, and there was little
doing except ombre or quadrille. Peter Wentworth, who was now one of the

Queen’s equerries and was sometimes in attendance on the Prince of Wales
and sometimes on the Princess Royal, gives a fair description of how the
Royal Family spent their evenings. Writing to his brother Lord Strafford, he
says:—
“The quadrille table is well known, and there is a large table
surrounded by my master (the Prince of Wales), the Princesses, the Duke of
Cumberland, the bedchamber ladies, Lord Lumley, and all the belle-
assemblée, at a most stupid game, to my mind, lottery ticket. £100 is
sometimes lost at this pastime. The maids play below with the King in Mrs.
Howard’s apartment, and the moment they come up, the Queen starts up
and goes into her apartment.... T’other night Lord Grantham and the Queen
had a dispute about going to a room without passing by the backstairs; she
bade him go and see; he did, and came back as positive as before. ‘Well,’
says she, ‘will you go along with me if I show you the way?’ ‘Yes, madam,’
says he. Up she starts, and trots away with one candle, and came back
triumphant over my Lord Grantham. The belle-assemblée was in an uproar,
thinking the King was ill, when I told them ’twas a wager between the
37
Queen and my Lord Grantham.”
The Queen was fond of these little jokes, for on another occasion we
find Peter Wentworth writing: “Sunday, in the evening the Queen
commanded me to order her a chaise and one horse, and a coach and six to
follow, for Monday, at six o’clock in the morn, and six Life Guards and two
Grenadiers, and your humble servant a-horseback, which was to be kept a
great secret. When I had put her Majesty into her chaise with Princess
Mary, she bid me ride and tell the Colonel of the Guard not to beat the drum
as she passed out [of St. James’s]. We drove to the foot ferry at Kew, where
there was a barge of four oars which carried her Majesty, Princess Mary,
Mrs. Purcell and I to the Queen’s house at Kew. The whole joke of keeping
this a secret was upon Lord Lifford, who had said ’twas impossible for her
Majesty to go out at any time but he should know it. When we came there,
therefore, the Queen sent for the other Princesses, Lord Hervey and Lord
Lifford to breakfast with her. Lord Hervey, Princess Caroline and Princess
Louisa came before ten; the Queen, Mrs. Purcell and I walked twice round
the garden before they came. We had a fine breakfast, with the addition of
cherries and strawberries we plucked from the garden, some of which the
Queen gave me with her own hand; and said to Lord Hervey C’est un très

bon enfant, and repeated it several times, Lord Hervey assenting. I never
suspected she spoke of me, which she, perceiving, said in English: ‘We are
speaking of you; you know I love you, and you shall know I love, I do
really love you’. I made low bows, but had not the impromptu wit nor
38
assurance to make any other answer.”
And again:—
“On Saturday when the Queen was at Kew, the Blue Horse Guards in
stocks stood sentry there. As she goes up the court she says to Lord Lifford
and me: ‘I’ll lay you what you will he of the right is a Scotsman, and he of
the left an Englishman and a Yorkshireman’. When she came up to them,
she asked him of the right, who was a handsome young fellow and a
gentleman volunteer: ‘What countryman are you?’ ‘A Scotsman, your
Majesty.’ ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Hamilton.’ ‘Of what family?’ ‘The dukes of
that name.’ ‘How long have you been in the regiment?’ ‘Ever since it has
been the Duke of Argyll’s.’ Then she turns to t’other man, and asks what
countryman he was? ‘An Englishman, your Majesty.’ ‘Your name?’ ‘Hill.’
‘What county?’ ‘Yorkshire.’ The Queen was pleased and so was I, for I
would always have her pleased, and turned about to my lord and me, and
said: ‘N’est-ce pas que j’ay dit vray? Je connais bien la physiognomie.’”

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER IV:
27
Memoirs of Wilhelmina, Margravine of Baireuth.
28
Memoirs of Wilhelmina, Margravine of Baireuth.
29
Memoirs of Wilhelmina, Margravine of Baireuth.
30
Wilhelmina states in her Memoirs that the whole thing was a plot of
George II., who wished to find an excuse for keeping his son away
from England altogether, but the candour of the Queen of Prussia
spoilt it all. But there is nothing to support this statement.

31
Daily Post, 5th December, 1728.
32
The Countess of Pomfret to Mrs. Clayton, 22nd April, 1728. Sundon
Correspondence.
33
Thackeray says in his Four Georges: “As for Bath, all history went
and bathed and drank there; George II. and his Queen,” etc. In point
of fact, neither George II. nor Queen Caroline went to Bath. Princess
Amelia went in 1728; the Prince of Orange in 1734, the Prince and
Princess of Wales in 1738, and Princesses Caroline and Mary in
1840.
34
The Countess of Pomfret to Mrs. Clayton, Bath, 6th May 1728.
35
In the Manuscript Department, British Museum.
36
Daily Advertiser, 3rd March, 1731.
37
The Hon. Peter Wentworth to the Earl of Strafford, 10th August,
1730.
38
The Hon. Peter Wentworth to the Earl of Strafford, London 3rd June,
1735.

CHAPTER V.

CAROLINE’S FIRST REGENCY.

1729.

In May, 1729, the King, who had been for some time anxious to visit his
Hanoverian dominions, which he had not seen since 1714, got a short Act
passed through Parliament appointing the Queen to act as Regent in his
absence. The King’s visit to Hanover was very unpopular with his English
subjects, who hoped that they had heard of the last of these journeys when
George the First died. As Prince of Wales, George the Second had always
declared that he loved England far better than Hanover, but this was only in
opposition to his father, and soon after he ascended the throne he avowed
himself strongly Hanoverian in his tastes and found fault with everything in
England. In this mood the best thing for him to do was to return to his own
country for a time, and Walpole no doubt was glad to get him out of the
way, while the Queen eagerly grasped at the authority which the deed of
regency granted her. But she showed none of this eagerness to the King, and
when he announced his intention of leaving England she deplored his
absence with tears, and received his commission on her knees with all due
humility. The King gave the royal assent to the Act of Regency on May
14th, and three days later he set out for Hanover, accompanied by a
numerous retinue, and Lord Townshend as Minister in attendance.
The Queen appointed the Speaker of the House of Commons, Onslow,
to be her Chancellor during her Regency, and Keeper of the Great Seal. She
held her first Council as Regent five days after the King left. It was reported
in the London Gazette as follows:—

“At the Court at Kensington the 22nd day of May, 1729.

“Present.
“The Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty,
“His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Archbishop of
Canterbury, Lord Chancellor, Lord Privy Seal, Lord Steward, Lord
Chamberlain, Duke of Somerset, Duke of Bolton, Duke of Rutland,
Duke of Argyll, Duke of Montrose, Duke of Kent, Duke of Ancaster,
Duke of Newcastle, Earl of Westmoreland, Earl of Burlington, Earl of
Scarborough, Earl of Coventry, Earl of Grantham, Earl of Godolphin,
Earl of Loudoun, Earl of Findlater, Earl of Marchmont, Earl of Ilay,
Earl of Uxbridge, Earl of Sussex, Viscount Lonsdale, Viscount
Cobham, Viscount Falmouth, Lord Wilmington, Mr. Speaker, Mr.
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Master of the Rolls, Sir Paul Methuen,
and Henry Pelham, Esq.
“The King’s Commission appointing Her Most Excellent Majesty
the Queen Regent over this Kingdom, by the Style and Title of
Guardian of the Kingdom of Great Britain, and His Majesty’s
Lieutenant within the same during His Majesty’s absence, was this day
by Her Majesty’s command, opened and read in His Majesty’s Most
Honourable Privy Council, after which His Royal Highness the Prince
of Wales, and all the Lords and others of the Council who were present,
had the honour to kiss Her Majesty’s hand.”

Caroline entered with manifest enjoyment upon the duties of her office,
and discharged them with great ability; she had so long known the essence
of power that it was easy for her to adapt herself to its outward
manifestation. Townshend, who was jealous of Walpole’s favour with the
Queen, endeavoured to induce the King to modify her powers as Regent,
and urged him to send a despatch to that effect from the Hague, but the
King, though he listened, declined to do so; in fact, he knew better than any
one else that his interests were safe in his consort’s hands.

LETTER OF QUEEN CAROLINE TO THE KING OF FRANCE.
The Queen-Regent had the power of opening and proroguing
Parliament, signifying the royal assent to acts and measures, appointing
bishops, and of making other important appointments; she also received the
foreign ambassadors and envoys as though she were the King, and
corresponded with foreign sovereigns. Queen Caroline was especially
careful to cultivate and strengthen the good understanding between England
and France, and she wrote several letters to the King of France, and sent
39
him a present of a dozen hogsheads of perry and cider.
The most important negotiation in foreign affairs was the Treaty of
Seville, which was practically concluded during Caroline’s regency, though
it was not signed until a little later (November 9th, 1729). This treaty
terminated the long dispute between England and Spain. By its provisions,
English trade to America, which had been interrupted, was restored.
England was given back all that Spain had captured during the war, and the

Asiento Treaty (or contract for supplying negroes, of establishing certain
factories, and of sending one ship to the South Sea) was confirmed to the
South Sea Company. But the most important feature of the treaty was that
Gibraltar was tacitly relinquished by Spain. It would be too much to claim
for Caroline the credit of the cession of Gibraltar to England, but there is no
doubt that her wise and temperate counsels, and her anxiety not to give
needless offence to Spanish susceptibilities by mentioning the fortress by
name, materially aided William Stanhope, the English plenipotentiary at
Madrid, in conducting the difficult and delicate negotiations which resulted
in the Treaty of Seville. Gibraltar was a question which touched Spanish
pride very nearly, and to see a fortress on its own shores held and
garrisoned by England was as great a humiliation to Spain as England’s
possession of Calais had once been to France.
Time had been, and not so long before, when English Ministers advised
the recession of Gibraltar to Spain, and George the First had written a letter
which contained a promise to restore the fortress at some future time. This
letter had been written upon the advice of Townshend and Carteret in 1721,
and so lately as 1728 we find that Townshend was still in favour of the
cession of Gibraltar. Writing to Poyntz he declared: “What you proposed in
relation to Gibraltar is certainly very reasonable, and is exactly conformable
to the opinion which you know I have always entertained concerning that
place; but you cannot but be sensible of the violent and almost superstitious
zeal which has of late prevailed among all parties of this kingdom against
any scheme for the restitution of Gibraltar upon any conditions
40
whatsoever.” If the matter had rested with Townshend, who had obtained
the ear of the King during his absence at Hanover, Gibraltar would probably
have been ceded to Spain.
To Caroline, therefore, acting in conjunction with Walpole, the credit is
due of having retained it for England. True, Gibraltar was not mentioned by
name in the Treaty of Seville, though the Opposition clamoured for its
explicit mention. But the Queen and the Prime Minister were firm; they
were content with the kernel and troubled not about the husk. The result
justified their wisdom. The treaty was ultimately ratified without
conditions, and Gibraltar henceforth became a recognised possession of
England.

In this, as in all other matters, the Queen worked in close accord with
Walpole, and by way of showing the Opposition how little she heeded their
attacks, she publicly marked her favour of the Prime Minister by going to
dine with him, accompanied by the Prince of Wales and all the Royal
Family, at his house at Chelsea, where a magnificent entertainment was
provided for her Majesty. The Queen and the Royal Family dined in one
room, and the rest of the party in another, Walpole himself waiting on his
illustrious guest. Nor did the Queen neglect the ceremonial side of her
office; she kept great state whilst she was at St. James’s, and on the
anniversary (June 11th) of the King’s Accession she held a court at St.
James’s which was one of the most largely attended of the reign. She also
frequently honoured the nobility with her presence at their entertainments.
At Windsor Caroline kept much company, availing herself of the
King’s absence to go there. At Windsor she felt Queen of England indeed;
she occupied the rooms which had been used by the late Queen Anne, and
her favourite sitting room was the closet wherein Anne first heard of the
great victory of Blenheim, in which hung the banner annually presented by
the Duke of Marlborough, and now by his daughter, who was duchess in
her own right. Caroline held drawing-rooms in the state apartments, of
which the finest were the magnificent St. George’s Hall and the ball room,
hung with tapestry representing the seasons of the year. The celebrated
collection of beauties by Sir Peter Lely, afterwards removed to Hampton
Court, adorned one of the state apartments, and the private chapel had some
exquisite carved work by Grinling Gibbons. Here Caroline attended divine
service, and, seated in the royal closet hung with crimson velvet, listened to
lengthy discourses from Dr. Samuel Clarke, or some other favourite divine.
It was from Windsor on a notable occasion that she drove to honour the
Earl and Countess of Orkney with a visit to their beautiful seat at
Clieveden. “Yesterday,” writes Peter Wentworth, “the Queen and all the
Royal Family went to dine and supper at Clieveden. How they were
diverted I know not, but I believe very well, for they did not come home
41
until almost four in the morning.” According to all accounts the
entertainment was very successful, but Lady Orkney’s anxieties as a hostess
seem to have weighed heavily upon her, for we find her writing a long letter
a few days later to Mrs. Howard, expressing her “anguish” because some
little things had gone wrong. Perhaps, Lady Orkney only wanted a more

particular expression of the Queen’s satisfaction. Her letter may be quoted
as an expression of the fulsome servility to royal personages then in vogue
even among the high nobility.

“Clieveden, August 5th, 1729.
“Madam,
“I give you this trouble out of the anguish of my mind, to have the
Queen doing us the honour to dine here, and nothing performed in the
order it ought to have been! The stools which were set for the Royal
Family, though distinguished from ours, which I thought right, because
42
the Princess Royal sits so at quadrille, put away by Lord Grantham,
who said there was to be no distinction from princes and princesses and
the ladies. He directed the table-cloths so that there must be two to
cover the table; for he used to have it so; in short, turned the servants’
heads. They kept back the dinner too long for her Majesty after it was
dished, and was set before the fire, and made it look not well dressed,
the Duke of Grafton saying they wanted a maître d’hôtel. All this
vexed my Lord Orkney so—he tells me he hopes I will never meddle
more, if he could ever hope for the same honour; which I own I did too
43
much, as I see by the success, but having done it for the late King,
and was told that things were in that order, that it was as if his Majesty
had lived here, I ventured it now, but I have promised not to aim at it
more.
“But what I have said shows the greater goodness in the Queen to
be so very easy. I have seen condescension in princesses, but none that
ever came up to her Majesty: nay, not all the good you have ever said
could make me imagine what I saw and heard. We all agreed her
Majesty must be admired; and, if I may use the term, it was impossible
to see her and not love her.
“If you hear of these mismanagements, pray be so good as to say
the house was too little for the reception of the Queen, and so many
great princes and princesses, who, without flattery, cannot be but
respectedly admired. I thought I had turned my mind in a philosophical
way of having done with the world, but I find I have deceived myself;

for I am vexed and pleased with the honours I have received. I know
from your discretion you will burn this, and I hope will always believe
me, etc.,
44
“E. Orkney.”

From Windsor the Queen returned to Kensington, which she made her
headquarters for the rest of the summer, paying visits occasionally to
Hampton Court, Richmond, and Windsor, for the purpose of hunting. The
best idea of the social side of her regency may be gathered from the letters
45
that Peter Wentworth wrote during this period to Lord Strafford. They
throw curious sidelights on the manners of the time. To quote seriatim:—

“Kensington, July 25th, 1729.
“I have been at Richmond again with the Queen and the Royal
Family, and I thank God they are all very well. We are to go there to-
day, and the Queen walks about there all day long. I shall be no more
her jest as a lover of drink at free cost, not only from her own
observation of one whom she sees every morning at eight o’clock, and
in the evening again at seven, walking in the gardens, and in the
drawing-room till after ten, but because she has my Lord Lifford to
play upon, who this day sen’night got drunk at Richmond. His manner
of getting so was pleasant enough; he dined with my good Lord
Grantham, who is well served at his table with meat, but very stingy
and sparing in his drink, for as soon as his dinner is done he and his
company rise, and no round of toasts. So my lord made good use of his
time whilst at dinner, and before they rose the Prince [of Wales] came
to them and drank a bonpêre to my Lord Lifford, which he pledged,
and began another to him, and so a third. The Duke of Grafton, to show
the Prince he had done his business, gave him (Lord Lifford) a little
shove, and threw him off his chair upon the ground, and then took him
up and carried him to the Queen. Sunday morning she railed at him
before all the Court upon getting drunk in her company, and upon his
gallantry and coquetry with Princess Amelia, running up and down the
steps with her. When somebody told him the Queen was there and saw
him, his answer was: ‘What do I care for the Queen?’ He stood all her

jokes not only with French impudence, but with Irish assurance. For all
you say I don’t wonder I blushed for him and wished for half his stock.
I wonder at her making it so public. Nobody has made a song; if Mr.
Hambleton will make one that shall praise the Queen and the Royal
Family’s good humour, and expose as much as he pleases the folly of
Lord Grantham and Lord Lifford, I will show it to the Prince, and I
know he won’t tell whom he had it from, for I have lately obliged him
with the sight of Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s litany, and he has promised he will
not say he had it from me. So I must beg you to say nothing of this to
Lady Strafford, for she will write it for news to Lady Charlotte
Roussie, and then I shall have Mrs. Fitz. angry with me, and the Prince
laughing at me for not being able to be my own councillor, as I fear
you laugh now. But if you betray me I make a solemn vow I never will
tell you anything again.
“The Queen continues very kind and obliging in her sayings to me,
and gave me t’other day an opportunity to tell her of my circumstances.
As we were driving by Chelsea she asked me what that walled place
was called. I told her Chelsea Park, and in the time of the Bubbles
46
’twas designed for the silkworms. She asked me if I was not in the
Bubbles. With a sigh, I answered: ‘Yes, that, and my fire had made me
worse than nothing’. Some time after, when I did not think she saw me,
I was biting my nails. She called to me and said: ‘Oh fie! Mr.
Wentworth, you bite your nails very prettily’. I begged her pardon for
doing so in her presence, but said I did it for vexation of my
circumstances, and to save a crown from Dr. Lamb for cutting them.
She said she was sorry I had anything to vex me, and I did well to save
my money. The Prince told her I was one of the most diligent servants
he ever saw. I bowed and smiled as if I thought he bantered me. He
understood me, and therefore repeated again that he meant it seriously
and upon his word he thought that the Queen was happy in having so
good a servant. I told him ’twas a great satisfaction to me to meet with
his Royal Highness’s approbation. He clapped his hand upon my
shoulder and assured me that I had it.
“As we went to Richmond last Wednesday our grooms had a battle
with a carter that would not go out of the way. The good Queen had
compassion for the rascal and ordered me to ride after him and give

him a crown. I desired her Majesty to recall that order, for the fellow
was a very saucy fellow, and I saw him strike the Prince’s groom first,
and if we gave him anything for his beating ’twould be an example to
others to stop the way a purpose to provoke a beating. The Prince
approved what I said, for he said much the same to her in Dutch, and I
got immortal fame among the liverymen, who are no small fools at this
Court. I told her if she would give the crown to anybody it should be to
the Prince’s groom, who had the carter’s long whip over his shoulders.
She laughed, but saved her crown.”

“Kensington, August 14th, 1729.
“The Queen has done me the honour to refer me for my orders to
her Royal Highness Princess Anne, and what is agreed by her will
please her Majesty; the height of my ambition is to please them all. I
flatter myself I have done so hitherto, for Princess Anne has
distinguished me with a singular mark of her favour, for she has made
me a present of a hunting suit of clothes, which is blue, trimmed with
gold, and faced and lined with red. The Prince of Wales, Princess Anne,
the Duke of Cumberland, Princess Mary and Princess Louisa wear the
same, and looked charming pretty in them. Thursday se’nnight,
Windsor Forest will be blessed with their presence again, and since the
forest was a forest it never had such a fine set of hunters, for a world of
gentlemen have had the ambition to follow his Royal Highness’s
fashion.
“On Saturday last at Richmond Park, Major Sylvine made his
appearance by the Queen’s chaise, and she did him the honour to take
notice of him, telling him she was glad to see he could hunt. He
thought to be witty upon me by telling her Majesty I took such delight
in waiting that he thought it a pity to deprive me of that pleasure. My
good and gracious Queen answered him to my satisfaction and to his
mortification, for she said: ‘Does he? So ’tis a sign he loves me, and I
love him the better for’t.’ He replied he hoped her Majesty did not
think the worse of him. She had the goodness to say ‘No,’ but repeated
again that she loved me the better. Princess Amelia, who was in the
chaise with her, turned her head from Sylvine and smiled most
graciously upon me, which I could answer in no other way than by low

bows to mark the sense of the great honour that was done me. And for
my life I could not forbear getting behind the chaise to triumph over
and insult the major, telling him he had got much by being witty upon
me, which Princess Amelia heard, and laughed again upon me.”

“Kensington, August 21st, 1729.
“Yesterday the Queen and all the Royal Family dined at
47
Claremont, and I dined with the Duke (of Newcastle) and Sir Robert
(Walpole), etc. The Prince of Wales came to us as soon as his, and our,
dinner was over, and drank a bumper of rack-punch to the Queen’s
health, which you may be sure I devotedly pledged, and he was going
on with another, but her Majesty sent us word that she was going to
walk in the garden, so that broke up the company. We walked till
candle-light, being entertained with very fine French horns, then
returned to the great hall, and everybody agreed never was anything
finer lit.
“Her Majesty and Princess Caroline, Lady Charlotte Roussie and
Mr. Schütz played their quadrille. In the next room the Prince had the
fiddles and danced, and he did me the honour to ask me if I could
dance a country-dance. I told him ‘yes’; and if there had been a partner
for me, I should have made one in that glorious company—the Prince
with the Duchess of Newcastle, the Duke of Newcastle with Princess
Anne, the Duke of Grafton with Princess Amelia, Sir Robert Walpole
with Lady Catherine Pelham, who is with child—so they danced but
two dances. The Queen came from her cards to see that sight, and
before she said it, I thought he (Sir Robert Walpole) moved
surprisingly genteelly, and his dancing really became him, which I
should not have believed if I had not seen, and, if you please, you may
suspend your belief until you see the same. Lord Lifford danced with
Lady Fanny Manners; when they came to an easy dance my dear duke
took her from my lord, and I must confess it became him better than
the man I wish to be my friend, Sir Robert, which you will easily
48
believe. Mr. Henry Pelham danced with Lady Albemarle, Lord James
Cavendish with Lady Middleton, and Mr. Lumley with Betty Spence.

“I paid my court sometimes to the carders, and sometimes to the
dancers. The Queen told Lord Lifford that he had not drunk enough to
make him gay, ‘and there is honest Mr. Wentworth has not drunk
enough’. I told her I had drunk her Majesty’s health; ‘And my
children’s too, I hope?’ I answered ‘Yes’. But she told me there was
one health I had forgot, which was the Duke and Duchess of
Newcastle’s, who had entertained us so well. I told her I had been
down among the coachmen to see they had obeyed my orders to keep
themselves sober, and I had had them all by the hand, and could
witness for them that they were so, and it would not have been decent
for me to examine them about it without I had kept myself sober, but
now that grand duty was over, I was at leisure to obey her Majesty’s
commands. There stood at the farther end of the room a table with
bottles of wine for the dancers to drink, and I went and filled a bumper
of burgundy and drank the duke’s and duchess’s health to Mr. Lumley,
and told him I did it by her Majesty’s command, and then I went to the
dancers, and he to the Queen, and told her I had done so. When I came
to her again she told me she was glad I had obeyed her commands, and
I thanked Mr. Lumley for the justice he had done me in telling it to the
Queen, which drew this compliment from him, that he should always
be ready to do me justice, or any service in his power. I beg my son
may have no occasion to grieve that I have now and again taken a glass
too much, for in my cups I shall call upon Mr. Lumley to remember
me, and ’tis through these merry companions, or through rich friends
that services are done for people.
“The Queen and the Prince have invited themselves to the Duke of
Grafton’s hunting seat, which lies near Richmond, Saturday. He fended
off for a great while, saying his house was not fit to receive them, and
’twas so old he was afraid ’twould fall upon their heads. But his Royal
Highness, who is very quick at good inventions, told him he would
bring tents and pitch them in his garden, so his Grace’s excuse did not
come off; the thing must be Saturday.
“I have sent you enclosed a copy of my letter I wrote to Lord
Pomfret, which will explain to you how I am made secretary to the
49
Queen, and before dinner, under pretence to know if I had taken her
Majesty’s sense aright, her Royal Highness (the Princess Royal) being

by when I received the orders, I desired leave to show it her. She
smiled and said: ‘By all means let me see it’. She kept it till she had
dined, read it to the Queen, her brothers and sisters, and then sent for
me from the gentlemen ushers’ table, and gave it to me, again thanked
me, and said it was very well writ, and she saw too that I could dine at
that table without being drunk at free cost.”

“Kensington, September 2nd, 1729.
“Yesterday when the Queen was just got into her chaise there came
a messenger who brought her a packet of letters from the King with the
good news that his Majesty was very well. He had left him at the play
this day se’nnight. It also said the guards of Hanover were not to
march, for all differences were accommodated between the King and
50
the King of Prussia, so that I hope now the match will go forward and
that we shall soon have the King here. The Queen opened the letter and
read it as she went along; the Princess [Anne] and the Duke [of
Cumberland] were riding on before, and neither saw nor heard
anything of this. Therefore I scoured away from the Queen to tell them
the good news, and then I rode back and told the Queen what I had
done, and that I had pleasure to be the messenger of good news. She
and they thanked me and commended what I had done. I have sent you
a copy of the orders I have been given to-day that you may see we go
in for a continual round of pleasure.”

“Kensington, September 16th, 1729.
“There was one Mr. W(entworth) who had a very agreeable present
from the Queen. As he went over with her in the ferry boat Saturday
s’ennight she gave a purse to Princess Anne, and bade her give it to Mr.
W(entworth). Then she told him she wished him good luck, and in
order that she might bring it to him, she had given him silver and gold,
a sixpence, a shilling, and a half-guinea. He took the purse, and gave
her Majesty a great many thanks. ‘What,’ said she, ‘will you not look
into’t?’ His answer was: ‘Whatever comes from your Majesty is
agreeable to him;’ though if he had not felt in the purse some paper, he
could not have taken the royal jest with so good a grace. There was a

bank bill in’t, which raised such a contention between him and his wife
that in a manner he had better never have had it. He was willing to give
her half, but the good wife called in worthy Madam Percade to her
assistance, and she determined to give a third to her.
“All this was told the Queen the next day, and caused a great
laugh, but put poor Mr. W(entworth) upon the thought of soliciting the
great Lord L(ifford) for a sum of £15 he had forgotten to pay him in the
South Sea. When the chase was over the Prince clapped Mr.
W(entworth) on the back and wished him joy of his present, and told
him now he would never be without money in his pocket. He replied if
his Highness had not told him so publicly of it, it might have been so,
but now his creditors would tease every farthing from him.”

THE ALTSTADT, HANOVER.
The King who had been at Hanover five months now made ready to
51
return to England. He had greatly enjoyed his visit to the Electorate, and
had given several fêtes, including a farewell masquerade in the gardens of
Herrenhausen, where the hedges of clipped hornbeam acted as screens and

52
the grass as a carpet; the whole scene was illuminated by coloured lights.
The King followed at Hanover the same clockwork rule he had established
in England. “Our life is as uniform as that of a monastery,” wrote one of the
King’s English retinue who was lodged at the Leine Schloss. “Every
morning at eleven and every evening at six we drive in the heat to
Herrenhausen through an enormous linden avenue; and twice a day cover
our coats and coaches with dust. In the King’s society there is never the
least change. At table, and at cards, he sees always the same faces, and at
the end of the game retires into his chamber. Twice a week there is a French
theatre; the other days there is a play in the gallery. In this way, were the
King always to stop in Hanover, one could take a ten years’ calendar of his
proceedings, and settle beforehand what his time of business, meals, and
pleasure would be.”
It was during this visit of George the Second to Hanover that his
dispute with the King of Prussia came to a crisis. The King of England
resented the King of Prussia’s connivance at his son Frederick’s
disobedience, but he could hardly make that the ostensible pretext for a
quarrel, so he raked up the old grievance of the Prussians having kidnapped
some of his tall Hanoverians for the Potsdam regiment of guards, and so
violent grew the altercation, and so insulting were the messages of the King
of Prussia, that the choleric little George sent him word challenging him to
single combat at any place he would name, and leaving him the choice of
weapons. It would have been a boon to Europe in general, and to England
and Prussia in particular, if these two royal combatants had met and killed
one another as they threatened to do, but unfortunately such a desirable
consummation was prevented by Lord Townshend, whose remonstrances
resulted in a compromise being patched up between the illustrious cousins.
In fact, so amicably were matters settled that pretended negotiations were
again set on foot for the marriage of the Prince of Wales with Wilhelmina.
The Prince professed himself most eager for the match, and wrote to
Hotham, the special envoy at Berlin: “Please, dear Hotham, get my
marriage settled, my impatience increases daily, for I am quite foolishly in
love”. Wilhelmina, however, says that she did not credit these romantic
sentiments, and she thought they were due rather to obstinacy than love.
Her father was quite indifferent as to whether the Prince of Wales’s desire to
wed his daughter proceeded from love or obstinacy; all he wished was that

Wilhelmina should be taken off his hands, and given a suitable
establishment. King George had the same feeling about Amelia, whom he
still desired to marry to the Crown Prince. The King of Prussia’s answer to
this was: “I will agree to my son’s marriage if he is made Regent of
Hanover, and allowed to direct the management of the electorate till my
death, and if provision is made for his maintenance”. These terms were, of
course, impossible, and the matter came to an end.
The King quitted Hanover with regret, and commanded that everything
should remain at Herrenhausen precisely the same as when he was there.
The pomp and circumstance of the electoral court suffered no abatement in
his absence; the splendid stables containing eight hundred horses were
maintained at their full strength, and the chamberlains, court marshals, and
others continued to receive their full salaries. The King appointed no regent
over the electorate in his absence; his uncle, the Duke of York was dead,
and his son, the Prince of Wales, was now in England, so he placed the
government of the electorate in the hands of a council of regency, and as a
substitute for his own most gracious presence at the levées the King’s
portrait as Elector was placed upon the vacant throne in the state room at
Herrenhausen. Every Saturday a levée was held as though the Elector (for
they did not officially recognise the King of England at Hanover) had been
there, and the courtiers assembled and made their bow to the picture on the
chair of state just as though it had been the Elector himself. This absurd
ceremony continued through George the Second’s reign, except when he
was at Hanover.
The King landed at Margate on September 11th, and at once posted to
London, where his Queen and Regent was eagerly expecting him. So
anxious was she that when the outriders came on ahead to Kensington
Palace to announce that the King was nearing London, the Queen set out on
foot, accompanied by all her children, and walked from Kensington,
through Hyde Park, down Piccadilly to St. James’s Park where she met the
King’s coach. The King stopped, alighted, and heartily embraced his
consort in the sight of all the people. Then he helped her back into the
coach, when they drove off to Kensington together amid the cheers of the
populace, followed by other coaches containing the King’s suite and the
princes and princesses. The devotion which the Queen showed to the King
and the evident affection he bore her are the best features (one might almost

say the only good features), of the Court of England at this period. Peter
Wentworth, who writes to his brother of this royal meeting, says: “The King
is happily arrived.... You see I am got into the prints by the honour the
Queen did me, alone of all her servants, to send me to meet the King. I was
the only gentleman servant with her when she walked, Monday se’nnight,
with all her royal children, from Kensington Gardens quite to the island of
St. James’s Park. Passages there are better told than writ, which I design
myself the honour to do very soon—though I find virtue retires no more to
cottages and cells, but secure of public triumph and applause, she makes the
British Court her imperial residence.”
The next day, at a meeting of the Privy Council, the Queen, kneeling,
delivered her commission of regency back into the King’s hands, and
rendered him an account of her stewardship.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER V:
39
Daily Post, 5th July, 1729.
40
Lord Townshend to Poyntz, 14th June, 1728.
41
Letter of Peter Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 31st July, 1729.
42
Chamberlain to the Queen.
43
On the 5th September, 1724, King George I., attended by many of the
nobility and gentry, dined with Lord Orkney at Clieveden, where he
was magnificently entertained.
44
Suffolk Correspondence.
45
These letters are preserved in the Manuscript Department of the
British Museum. Some of them have been published in the
Wentworth Papers, but many of those quoted here have never been
printed.

46
One of the Bubble schemes.
47
Claremont was one of the seats of the Duke of Newcastle.
48
The Right Hon. Henry Pelham, son of Lord Pelham and brother of
Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, whose title had been revived in
his favour by George the First.
49
This was probably a practical joke played on Peter Wentworth, as he
never held the office of secretary to the Queen.
50
The double marriage scheme which had cropped up again for a brief
space.
51
Thackeray inaccurately says that “in the year 1729 he (King George
II.) went over two whole years, during which time Caroline reigned
for him in England, and he was not in the least missed by his British
subjects”. The King was only away from March to September, 1729,
and then returned to England, where he remained until 1732, when he
again went to Hanover.
52
Vide Vehse, Geschichte der Deutschen Höfe.

CHAPTER VI.

THE QUEEN AND THE NATION.

1729–1732.

Soon after the King’s return from Hanover, matters came to a crisis between
Townshend and Walpole. Ill-feeling had existed for some time, and the
Treaty of Seville served to irritate it. The King, who had a great regard for a
minister who had served him long and faithfully, was reluctant to let
Townshend go, but the Queen, who saw in him an obstacle to her plans, was
anxious to be quit of him, and when once she made up her mind, it was not
long before she got what she wanted. She suspected that Townshend was in
league with Mrs. Howard, and she could not forgive his having
endeavoured to curtail her powers as Regent. Moreover, Townshend, who
had always treated her with scant respect, had so far forgotten himself as to
make a scene in her presence.
One evening, when the court was at Windsor, the Queen asked
Townshend where he had dined that day, and he told her with Lord and
Lady Trevor. Walpole, who was standing by, said with his usual coarse
pleasantry: “My Lord, madam, I think is grown coquet from a long
widowhood, and has some design upon my Lady Trevor’s virtue, for his
assiduity of late in that family is grown to be so much more than common
civility, that, without this solution, I know not how to account for it.” That
Walpole was only joking was evident from the fact that Lady Trevor,
besides being a most virtuous matron, was very old, and exceedingly ugly.
But Townshend, who was eager to take offence, flew into a passion, and
replied with great warmth: “No, sir, I am not one of those fine gentlemen
who find no time of life, nor any station in the world, preservatives against
follies and immoralities that are hardly excusable when youth and idleness
make us most liable to such temptations. They are liberties, sir, which I can

assure you I am as far from taking, as from approving; nor have I either a
constitution that requires such practices, a purse that can support them, or a
conscience that can digest them.” He went white to the lips as he said this,
his voice shook, and he trembled with rage, and was ready to spring at
Walpole. His answer was intended to be offensive. Walpole led a
notoriously immoral life, and had lately made himself the talk of the town
by his amour with Maria, or Moll, Skerrett, and the caricatures and ballads
of the day teemed with the coarsest allusions to this intrigue. But Walpole
kept his temper, and, with a shrug of his shoulders, answered Townshend
quietly: “What, my Lord, all this for my Lady Trevor!” Townshend would
have retorted with heat, but the Queen, who was exceedingly uneasy at the
scene, turned the subject with a laugh, and began to talk very fast about
something else.
A variety of causes conspired to aggravate Townshend’s jealousy of his
brother-in-law and former friend. Walpole put the case bluntly by saying
that “so long as the firm was Townshend and Walpole things went all right,
but the moment it became Walpole and Townshend things went all wrong;”
but this was not all the truth. Walpole had built a magnificent house at
Houghton in Norfolk, which completely overshadowed Townshend’s at
Rainham, in the same county. At Houghton he gave frequent
entertainments, to which politicians and place-hunters flocked in great
numbers, turning their backs on Townshend. Walpole kept a sort of public
table, which was much frequented by the country gentlemen, and the house
was always full. Scenes of the wildest revelry were enacted at Houghton,
and Walpole’s hospitality often degenerated into drunken orgies disfigured
by licence of conduct and coarseness of speech. His annual parties in the
shooting season were said to cost as much as £3,000. “The noise and
uproar,” says Coxe, his panegyrist, “the waste and confusion were
prodigious. The best friends of Sir Robert Walpole in vain remonstrated
against the scene of riot and misrule. As the Minister himself was fond of
mirth and jollity, the conviviality of their meetings was too frequently
carried to excess, and Lord Townshend, whose dignity of deportment and
decorum of character revolted against these scenes, which he called the
bacchanalian orgies of Houghton, not infrequently quitted Rainham during
53
their continuance.”

To Houghton Walpole often brought his mistress, Maria Skerrett, whom
he maintained openly, notwithstanding that his wife was still alive. He had
54
one daughter by her. Maria Skerrett’s origin was uncertain, though it was
not so obscure as her enemies made out; she was a friend of Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, and her contemporaries have testified to her good heart.
But she was an immoral woman of great licence of speech and behaviour,
and it is doubtful whether Walpole was her first lover. He gave her £5,000
down, and a large allowance. The Prime Minister’s conduct in this matter
gave great disgust to Townshend and the stricter of his supporters. The
Queen, however, made light of it, saying that she “was glad if he had any
amusement for his leisure hours,” but she couldn’t understand how he could
care for a woman who evidently loved him only for his money. While of
Skerrett, she said: “She must be a clever woman to have made him believe
she cares for him on any other score; and to show you what fools we all are
in some point or other, she certainly has told him some fine story or other of
her love and her passion, and that poor man avec ce gros corps, ces jambes
enflées, et ce vilain ventre believes her. Ah! what is human nature!”
As the differences between Walpole and Townshend extended not only
to their political relations but to their private life, it was not long before
matters came to a crisis. They were dining one night with Colonel Selwyn
and his lady in Cleveland Row, opposite St. James’s Palace, and after
dinner, when Walpole, as usual, had drunk too much wine, a dispute arose
in which the Prime Minister so far lost his usual good humour as to reply to
a taunt of Townshend’s by shouting: “My Lord, for once there is no man’s
sincerity whom I so much doubt as your Lordship’s”. Townshend, who was
of a hasty temperament, sprang at Walpole and seized him by the throat; the
Prime Minister laid hold of his antagonist in turn, they struggled together
and clapped hands on their swords. The whole party was in an uproar; Mrs.
Selwyn shrieked and ran out of the house to summon the palace guard, but
she was stopped by Henry Pelham, who entreated her not to make a
scandal, and used the same argument with the two Ministers. After a time
they were pacified a little, and a duel was prevented; but the quarrel was too
serious to be patched up.
Townshend shortly after resigned his office in the Government and
withdrew to Rainham; he embarked no more in politics, but spent the rest of
his days in improving agriculture. His retirement meant more than appeared

on the surface, for he had considerable influence with the King. It involved
also the ascendency of the Queen and the defeat of Mrs. Howard, whose
friend he was. Henceforward there was no one to thwart the influence of the
Queen and Walpole. William Stanhope, who had been created Lord
Harrington for his services in connexion with the Treaty of Seville, was
now made Secretary of State. He was an admirable diplomatist but a poor
speaker, and though he made but an indifferent figure in Parliament, his
moderation, prudence and sagacity made him a very useful minister. Lord
Harrington and the Duke of Newcastle were now the only persons of any
importance in the Government except its chief.
Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, was one of the greatest noblemen
of his time by sheer force of his wealth. He had an enormous rent roll, he
maintained princely establishments, he spent freely on display, yet he was
unable to attach to himself a single friend. “The Duke of Newcastle,” writes
one who knew him, “hath spent half a million and made the fortunes of five
55
hundred men, and yet is not allowed to have one real friend.” But the fact
that he scattered lavish sums at elections to support the Hanoverian
succession, owned a large number of boroughs and had vast patronage,
sufficed to give him many apparent friends, from the King downwards. He
was a poor speaker, he was weak and mean-spirited, and his ignorance of
matters connected with his office was almost incredible. On one occasion
the defence of Annapolis was recommended to him. “Ah!” he said after
some reflection, “to be sure, Annapolis ought to be defended; of course,
Annapolis must be defended. By the by, where is Annapolis?” As we have
seen, the King when Prince of Wales had the strongest aversion to him, but
now the duke stood high in office. Yet the King does not seem to have loved
him. “You see,” he said to one of his friends, “I am compelled to take the
Duke of Newcastle to be my minister, though he is not fit to be a
chamberlain in the smallest court of Germany.” But, however poor the
duke’s capacity might be, he had great wealth and influence, and then, as
now, men of his type were foisted on the public service to the detriment of
the nation.
For the first time since the accession of the House of Hanover to the
throne, the Government had respite from Jacobite intrigues. The Treaty of
Seville (1729) and the second Treaty of Vienna (1731) established friendly
relations between the English Government and all the European powers, so

that none of them, not even Roman Catholic countries like Spain and
Austria, could any longer lend outward support to James. Moreover the
Jacobite party lost, almost at the same time, all their greatest men. Lord Mar
died at Aix-la-Chapelle. The Duke of Wharton, who, while pretending
loyalty to his master, had been negotiating for a return to England, died in
Spain in comparative poverty, and so closed his career of splendid infamy.
Bishop Atterbury, the ablest of all, had fallen out of favour with James,
chiefly because of his wish to bring up the young Prince Charles Edward in
the faith of the Church of England. When James saw the folly of alienating
him it was too late. Atterbury died a few weeks after he had sent to James a
copy of his vindication of the charges brought against him by Lord
Inverness, and the Jacobite cause lost its wisest friend.
James was so unpopular in England at this time, even among his own
supporters, that societies were formed to discuss the propriety of
transferring their allegiance to his son, Prince Charles Edward, and reports
were persistently circulated that the young Prince was to be taken from his
father’s guardianship and brought up in the religion of the Church of
England. This plan was at first supported by Bolingbroke, who did his
utmost to bring it about, and it gained so much credence that in 1733 Sir
Archer Croft declared in the House of Commons that “The Pretender was
the more to be feared because they did not know but that he was then
56
breeding his son a Protestant”. Had this been true it would have been the
severest possible blow for the Hanoverian family. It would have done away
with their reason for occupying the throne, and though they could not have
been expected to abdicate of their own free will, yet the personal
unpopularity of the King after the Queen’s death was so great that the rising
of ’45 would probably have had a different ending. But it was not true, for
in matters of religion James was as great a bigot as his father, and
Atterbury’s death put an end to all such plans.
The Duchess of Buckingham often went to Paris to have conferences
with Atterbury on this question, and the Bishop used his influence with her
to prevent the Duke of Berwick from giving a Roman Catholic tutor to her
son, the young duke. The duchess pretended that her interviews with
Atterbury were wholly connected with her son’s education, but Walpole
knew that was only a pretext to hide her Jacobite intrigues. The duchess had
a great position in England as head of the Jacobite ladies; she was in fact a

sort of Jacobite Duchess of Marlborough, and a rival of that illustrious
dowager, whom in arrogance and pride she strongly resembled. Like her she
possessed enormous wealth, and Buckingham House vied in magnificence
with Marlborough House across the park. Both the duchesses disliked and
despised the Hanoverian family, though from different reasons, and both
masked their dislike, and occasionally did the King and Queen the honour,
as they considered it, of attending their drawing-rooms. The two duchesses
were on friendly terms, but occasionally had their differences. The Duchess
of Buckingham lost her son, and his remains were brought from Rome to be
interred in Westminster Abbey with great pomp. She sent to her neighbour
across the park, the Duchess Sarah, to ask the loan of the funeral car which
had borne the body of the great Duke of Marlborough to St. Paul’s. Sarah
spurned this request with contumely: “It carried my Lord Marlborough,”
she sent word to say, “and it shall never be used for any meaner mortal.” “I
have consulted the undertaker,” wrote back the other duchess, “and he tells
me I can have a finer for twenty pounds.”
The Duchess of Buckingham made frequent journeys to Paris and
Rome to intrigue in favour of the Stuarts, of whom she considered herself
one; she paid visits to Cardinal Fleury at Versailles, but according to a
57
contemporary she got nothing from the cardinal but compliments and civil
excuses, and was laughed at both in Paris and Rome for her pompous
manner of travelling, in which she affected the state of a princess of the
blood royal. On her visits to Paris she always made a pilgrimage to the
church in which the unburied body of James the Second lay, and prayed and
wept over it. Horace Walpole says, with a characteristic touch of malice,
that despite this outward show of grief she allowed the royal pall to rot
itself threadbare through her parsimony. It is more likely that sentiment
prevented her from having it repaired. To Sir Robert Walpole, who knew all
her intrigues almost before she embarked upon them, and who treated her as
a person of no importance, she made extraordinary overtures to induce him
to join with her in effecting the restoration of the Stuarts. She knew that
Walpole was very fond of his daughter by Maria Skerrett, and she hinted to
him that it might be possible to wed her to Prince Charles Edward if he
would embrace the Stuart cause. She asked him if he remembered what
Lord Clarendon’s reward had been for helping to restore the royal family;
Sir Robert affected not to understand, and she said: “Was he not allowed to

match his daughter to the Duke of York?” Walpole smiled and changed the
subject. The King had not the same patience with the Duchess of
Buckingham’s eccentricities as his Prime Minister, and would probably
have taken some action against her had not Caroline counselled the wiser
policy of ignoring her Grace’s quixotic proceedings; but on one occasion
the duchess was really frightened lest the King should discover her little
plots. She had quitted England without having obtained the requisite
permission, and she wrote to Walpole from Boulogne: “I know there is a
usual form, as I take it only to be esteemed, of any peer’s asking permission
of the King (or Queen in the present circumstance) to go out of the
kingdom, but even that ceremony I thought reached not to women, whose
being in and out of their country seemed never to be of the least
consequence”. In the same letter she alludes to her intrigues, and speaks of
them as “nonsensical stories” not worthy of credence. Walpole took her
letter to the Queen, who was then Regent, and they laughed over it together,
but they let “Princess” Buckingham, as they called her, alone.

THE PRINCESS CLEMENTINA (CONSORT OF PRINCE
JAMES FRANCIS EDWARD STUART).
From the Painting in the National Portrait Gallery

While the Stuarts were losing ground Caroline was working hard and
incessantly to make the Hanoverian family acceptable to the English nation.
By birth a foreign princess, one who did not arrive upon these shores until
well into middle life, she could not boast that she was “entirely English”
like Queen Anne, but it is remarkable, considering the great and obvious

disadvantages under which she laboured, how well she succeeded in
impressing her personality upon the English people. She was careful to
express herself in public in warm admiration of the laws, customs and
constitution of this country; she often declared that England owed
everything to its liberties. Yet sometimes when the King abused England, as
he invariably did after a visit to Hanover, speaking of the English people as
“king-killers” and “republicans,” and grumbling at their riches as well as
their rights, she would fall into his vein, and rail against the limited powers
of the Crown, which rendered the King “a puppet of sovereignty” and a
servant of Parliament. It is probable that she chafed against the limitations
to the power of the Sovereign, for she was a woman who loved to rule; but
in theory she was all for liberty and tolerance. But whatever her
predilections, she clearly understood, and acquiesced in, the only possible
terms by which the Hanoverian family were allowed to reign in England. As
she could not increase the limited power of the Crown in political matters,
she determined to increase its unlimited influence in other directions, and to
this end she encouraged everything which helped to promote the well-being
and prosperity of the people, especially those movements which had a
national origin. This was especially the case with home industries. For
example, we read:—
“On Saturday last a considerable body of dealers in bone-lace from the
counties of Bucks, Northampton and Bedford, waited upon her Majesty
with a petition on behalf of their manufacture, and carried with them a
parcel of lace to show the perfection they had brought it to, and when her
Majesty showed her royal intention to encourage the British manufacturer
by receiving them very graciously, and bought a considerable quantity of
lace for the use of the Royal Family, and several ladies followed her
example, the said dealers in lace had the honour to kiss her Majesty’s
58
hand.” And again: “On Wednesday last some of the Trustees for Georgia
and Sir Thomas Loombe waited upon her Majesty with the Georgia silk,
which is to be wove into a piece for her Majesty’s wear, from a beautiful
pattern which her Majesty chose, and she, in a most gracious manner,
expressed satisfaction at the British Colonies having produced so fine a
59
silk.”
She was quick to encourage English inventions and enterprise. For
instance: “On Monday Mr. Clay, the inventor of the machine watches in the

Strand, had the honour of exhibiting to her Majesty at Kensington his
surprising musical clock, which gave uncommon satisfaction to all the
Royal Family present, at which time her Majesty, to encourage so great an
artist, was pleased to order fifty guineas to be expended for numbers in the
intended raffle, by which we hear Mr. Clay intends to dispose of this said
60
beautiful and most complete piece of machinery.” And again: “On
Tuesday a most beautiful hat, curiously made of feathers in imitation of a
fine Brussels lace, was shown to her Majesty, who, for the encouragement
of ingenuity, being the first of the kind ever made in England, was so good
61
as to purchase it, and afterwards presented it to the Princess of Wales.”
There was very little social legislation during Walpole’s tenure of
power, the great Minister going on the principle of letting things alone; but
a few useful reforms were passed from time to time, and in all of them the
Queen took a warm interest. One was effected at the instance of the Duke of
Argyll, who brought in a bill that all proceedings of the courts of justice
should be conducted in English instead of Latin as heretofore. “Our
prayers,” said the Duke of Argyll, “are in our native tongue, so that they are
intelligible; and why should not the laws wherein our lives and properties
are concerned be so, for the same reason?” The measure was carried,
notwithstanding the fact that most of the lawyers strongly opposed the
change; Lord Raymond, for instance, declared that if the bill were passed
the law must likewise be translated into Welsh, since in Wales many
understood no English. Another reform was the purging of the Charitable
Corporation from gross abuses. This corporation had been formed for the
relief of the industrious poor by lending them small sums of money at legal
interest, but had drifted into malpractices and extortionate usury; penalties
were now inflicted upon the malefactors, and the whole system was
reformed.
The Queen’s private charities were very numerous. She would never
refuse a supplicant who sought her aid, in whatever rank of life he might be,
and though her income was large, she spent all of it, chiefly upon others.
She had no sense of the value of money, and with her to have was to spend,
or to give away, not always very wisely perhaps, but always cheerfully. The
journals of the period teem with notices of her liberality; but, even so, they
did not represent a tithe of her charities, for she gave away much in secret,
of which the public never knew. The following extracts from newspapers,

taken almost at random, will serve to show how wide was her sympathy,
and how generous her impulses:—
“Twelve French Protestants, who were made slaves on account of their
religion, having lately been released from the jails of France on the
representation of their Britannic Majesties, and having arrived here, a
charitable collection is making for them, towards which the Queen has
62
given £1,000.”
“Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to give and bestow the sum
of £500, as a mark of her royal bounty and charity, towards the relief of the
63
sufferers in the late dreadful fire at Gravesend in Kent.”
“We hear that her Majesty has ordered a sum of money to relieve poor
64
housekeepers and other families in necessity.”
“Thursday last week, the wife of the drummer at Woolwich, lately
brought to bed of three children, waited on the Queen, and her Majesty
65
ordered her fifty guineas.”
“Mr. James Brown, one of the pages of the presence to her Majesty,
having been ill of the palsy this year, and now lying incapable of doing his
duty, her Majesty has been pleased to order that he should be paid his salary
66
of £40 per annum during his life.”
“On Tuesday last, her Majesty, together with the Duke and the three
Princesses, paid a visit to Mrs. Simpson, whose husband is one of the
keepers of Bushey Park. She is 106 years old, being born in the town of
Cardigan in the year 1625, is now in good health, and has all her senses,
except hearing, perfect. Her Majesty after expressing herself pleased with
the manner of life by which she had preserved herself to this good old age,
67
made her a present of a purse of gold.”
“As soon as her Majesty heard of the misfortune of the country girl’s
breaking both her thigh bones by the overturning of a cart near Hampton
Court, she sent some ladies to enquire the truth of it, and being satisfied
thereof, her Majesty was graciously pleased to order one guinea a week to
be paid for her lodging, nurse and diet, and directed the surgeon to take
68
particular care of the girl, and her Majesty would pay him.”

“Her Majesty being informed of the great benefit the inhabitants of the
city and liberties of Westminster received from the infirmaries established
there for the relief of such of their poor as are sick and lame, has been
graciously pleased to send to each such infirmary a bounty of £100 to
69
promote so useful a charity.”
“We hear that her Majesty has lately given to the hospital near Hyde
70
Park Corner, the sum of £100.”
“Last Saturday when the Royal Family returned from hunting, her
Majesty was told by Lady Deloraine that the Princess Louisa had been
pleased to stand godmother to the twins of Mrs. Palairet, wife of her
Highness’s writing master. Whereupon her Majesty ordered the mother and
children to be brought to her, when her Majesty, finding that Mrs. Palairet
intended to suckle them both herself, was graciously pleased with the
courage and tenderness of the mother in undertaking the hard task, and
71
ordered her a purse of guineas.”
“Last Sunday a great number of the widows of the Navy, whose
husbands died before August, 1732, and were unprovided, waited on the
Queen at Kensington with their humble address of thanks for the provision
they lately received upon their humble petition presented to her Majesty on
72
Sunday, 29th April.”
“Her Majesty going through Hammersmith was pleased to order ten
73
guineas for the poor haymakers, who were very numerous on the road.”
“Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to send fifty guineas towards
the relief of the unhappy sufferers by the late fire in Cecil’s Court in St.
74
Martin’s Lane.”
“Her Majesty has been pleased to declare her royal intention of
bestowing £5,000 towards building and endowing a hospital for foundling
75
children.”
“Her Majesty has been pleased to order the royal gardens at Richmond
to be free to all in the same manner as those at Kensington are when the
Royal Family does not reside there, so that the walks are full of company
76
every evening to the great advantage of the town and the neighbourhood.”

“Her Majesty has been pleased to grant a charter and to give a donation
to the governors of the infirmary at Hyde Park Corner, to establish
themselves into a corporation, the same to be called St. George’s
77
Hospital.”
Queen Caroline was a constant and generous patron of learning; she
twice gave donations of £1,000 to Queen’s College, Oxford, and she tried in
many ways to advance the interests of education. Science, especially
medical science, found in her a warm supporter. Under the guidance of Sir
Hans Sloane, President of the Royal Society, she lent her aid to any
movement to promote the health of the people, and any doctor or man of
science who distinguished himself was sure of receiving notice and
encouragement from her. Perhaps her most notable achievement in the
advancement of science was the support which she gave to Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, who, on her return from the East, introduced inoculation
as a safeguard against smallpox into England. This beneficent discovery
was opposed with great clamour by the clergy, the more ignorant of the
doctors, and the middle and lower classes, and Lady Mary would certainly
have failed had not Caroline stood by her side from first to last. She and her
husband and children were inoculated, and by her example and
determination she prevailed on the higher classes and the more enlightened
people to be inoculated also, and so make the practice general.
Queen Caroline held firmly to the principle that the welfare of the
people should be the first care of princes, and she strove in every way to
ameliorate their lot. Parliament did little for them in Caroline’s day, the era
of social legislation had scarcely begun to dawn. The wars of nations, the
conflicts of dynasties, the strife of creeds absorbed all energies, and in the
noise and heat thus engendered the needs of the people were thrust aside
and forgotten. The condition of the poor not only in the large towns, but in
the country districts, was deplorable in the extreme. Many of them were
sunk in ignorance and vice, and treated like beasts of burden. There was
much talk about the liberties of the nation, but the lower classes of the
people were little better than serfs. Neither Whig nor Tory did anything for
them; they had no votes and the politician passed them by. Under such
conditions the influence of one woman, however highly placed, could do
little. Let it be recorded that in an epoch when the duty of man to his
fellow-man was least understood, when the national selfishness was

greatest and the national ideals were lowest, Queen Caroline did what she
could.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER VI:
53
Coxe’s Life of Walpole.
54
This daughter was eventually given the rank of earl’s daughter, and
married Mr. Churchill, a son of General Churchill. Walpole married
Maria Skerrett after his wife’s death, but she died soon after her
marriage.
55
Dr. King’s Anecdotes of My Own Time.
56
Parliamentary History, vol. viii., p. 1,185.
57
Dr. King’s Anecdotes of My Own Time.
58
Daily Courant, 2nd February, 1730.
59
Hooker’s Miscellany, 6th August, 1735.
60
Daily Post, 1st September, 1736.
61
Weekly Journal, 8th May, 1736.
62
Stamford Mercury, 11th January, 1728.
63
Daily Post, 30th January, 1728.
64
Fog’s Weekly Journal, 7th December, 1728.
65
Weekly Journal, 20th July, 1728.
66
London Journal, 24th April, 1731.

67
Daily Post, 23rd September, 1731.
68
Daily Courant, 1st October, 1733.
69
Hooker’s Miscellany, 20th April, 1734.
70
Reed’s Weekly Journal, 15th June, 1734.
71
Daily Journal, 26th October, 1734.
72
Hooker’s Miscellany, 17th June, 1735.
73
General Evening Post, 17th June, 1735.
74
Hooker’s Miscellany, 12th July, 1736.
75
Reed’s Weekly Journal, 31st July, 1736.
76
Universal Spectator, 11th September, 1736.
77
Reed’s Weekly Journal, 18th September, 1736.

CHAPTER VII.

THE QUEEN AND LITERATURE.

Queen Caroline is distinguished from the other Queens-Consort of England
as the one who took a genuine interest in literature; in this respect she
surpassed all our Queens-Regnant as well, though Elizabeth, and in a far
lesser sense Anne, showed an appreciation of letters. The age of Elizabeth
has been called the golden age of English literature: the reign of Anne the
Augustan period. There can be no doubt as to the correctness of the first of
these designations; the second is open to cavil. But though the English
writers who flourished during the early part of the eighteenth century could
not compare in loftiness or genius to the writers of the reign of Elizabeth,
yet they formed a galaxy of talent—talent amounting in some instances to
positive genius—which England has never witnessed since. This galaxy
shone throughout the reigns of Anne and George the First, but soon after
Caroline came to the throne its brilliance began to wane. Some of the
greatest writers were dead, and others had already given their best work to
the world.
It must be admitted that Queen Caroline’s judgment in literature was
not always as sound as her interest was genuine—in English literature at
least. Her imperfect knowledge of the English language had something to
do with this; one can hardly master the literature of a country if one does
not begin to speak its language until middle life. In French and German
literature she was far better equipped. She had read much and widely of
them both, and of her favourite studies of metaphysics, philosophy and
theology had perhaps taken in more than she could assimilate. Her
correspondence with learned and scientific men kept her abreast of the best
thought of the time, and no work of conspicuous merit made its appearance
in Europe without Caroline’s coming, directly or indirectly, in touch with its
author. When Voltaire, for instance, visited England he received ready help
and generous appreciation at Caroline’s hands.

Voltaire came to England in 1726, after his quarrel with the Duke de
Sully. Some months’ detention in the Bastille, followed by an order to quit
Paris, had driven him into exile. In the warmth of his welcome to England
he found a balm for his wounded feelings, and he stayed in this country
more than two years. He found in England many congenial spirits, and
delighted in the freedom of discussion and latitude of opinion everywhere
prevalent, from the Court downwards, especially in the brilliant literary
circle where he foregathered. He warmly admired the religious and civil
liberty of England, and testified his admiration in his Lettres
Philosophiques, also called Lettres sur les Anglais. He wrote in England his
Tragedy of Brutus, and here also he brought out, in 1728, the first edition of
his poem La Henriade. To Caroline, who often received him at Leicester
House as Princess of Wales, and who welcomed him with equal cordiality at
court when she became Queen, he dedicated this edition of La Henriade.
The dedication, in English, ran as follows:—

“To the Queen.
“Madam—It was the fate of Henry the Fourth to be protected by
an English Queen. He was assisted by the great Elizabeth, who was in
her age the glory of her sex. By whom can his memory be so well
protected as by her who resembles so much Elizabeth in her personal
virtues?
“Your Majesty will find in this book bold, impartial truths;
morality unstained with superstition; a spirit of liberty, equally
abhorrent of rebellion and of tyranny; the rights of kings always
asserted, and those of mankind never laid aside.
“The same spirit in which it is written gave me the confidence to
offer it to the virtuous Consort of a King who, among so many crowned
heads, enjoys almost alone the inestimable honour of ruling a free
nation; a King who makes his power consist in being beloved, and his
glory in being just.
“Our Descartes, who was the greatest philosopher in Europe before
Sir Isaac Newton appeared, dedicated the Principles to the celebrated
Princess Palatine Elizabeth; not, said he, because she was a princess
(for true philosophers respect princes, and never flatter them); but

because of all his readers she understood him the best, and loved truth
the most.
“I beg leave, Madam (without comparing myself to Descartes), to
dedicate La Henriade to your Majesty upon the like account, and not
only as the protectress of all arts and sciences, but as the best judge of
them.
“I am, with that profound respect which is due to the greatest
virtue as well as the highest rank, may it please your Majesty, your
Majesty’s most humble, most dutiful, and most obliged servant,
“Voltaire.”

Even if we allow for flattery, and Voltaire was not given to flattering
princes, this dedication is a remarkable tribute to Caroline’s mental powers
and her interest in the arts. Voltaire must have known of her friendship with
Sir Isaac Newton; he had probably heard of her admiration for Queen
Elizabeth; and he skilfully wove allusions to both in his dedication.
The first edition of La Henriade was sold to subscribers at one guinea a
copy, and had a great success. The Queen herself solicited subscriptions for
it among her friends, and the edition was soon exhausted. Nor did her
interest stop here. She persuaded the King to give Voltaire a present of two
thousand crowns, equal to £500, and she added to this a further present of
£200 from her privy purse, and sent Voltaire her portrait.
English men of letters were not so fortunate as Voltaire in winning the
favour of the court. When she was Princess of Wales Caroline made
welcome any literary man of eminence to Leicester House whatever his
creed or party, Papist or Arian, Jacobite, Whig or Tory. George the First’s
contempt for literature made her graciousness the more marked, and
perhaps it was her affability and eagerness to please that gave rise to
expectations which were later unfulfilled. For it is certain that many
eminent writers of prose and verse expected great things when Caroline
became Queen; and it is equally certain that they were grievously
disappointed. Whether with all the goodwill in the world, and all the power,
the Queen could have satisfied every one of them may be doubted, for the
literary mind is not prone to underrate its merits. As events turned out she
could do little or nothing for any man of letters, unless he were eligible for

preferment in the Church. She found herself as Queen in a position of less
freedom and greater responsibility. She was as anxious as ever to befriend
literary men, but in this respect she found herself thwarted by the King and
opposed by Walpole; her difficulties too were increased by the fact that
nearly every writer of talent was either openly or secretly hostile to the
Government.
For this hostility Walpole was to blame; he had inaugurated a new
policy. During the reign of William and Anne, and even in the reign of
George the First while Townshend and Stanhope were Prime Ministers,
literary men were courted and caressed by those in authority. In short it has
been well said that “though the Sovereign was never an Augustus every
minister was a Mæcenas”. Lucrative places were found for many writers in
departments of the civil service, and others were aided to enter Parliament
or diplomacy.
But when Walpole became Prime Minister in 1721 he changed all this,
and set his face like a flint against employing literary men in the public
service in any capacity whatsoever. In this he was supported by George the
First, and his successor George the Second, who both despised literature
and never opened a book. The number of readers was far more limited then
than now (though perhaps they were more discriminating), and writing
books was consequently less lucrative. When men of talent and genius saw
the avenues of patronage and of usefulness in the State suddenly closed to
them by the Prime Minister, it is no wonder that they placed their pens at
the service of the Opposition, led as it was by two men so appreciative of
the claims of literature as Bolingbroke and Pulteney. But Walpole did not
heed, and for twenty years followed the same policy. “No writer need
apply” was written over every door that led to preferment in the State. But
in the long run the writers had their revenge, and his neglect of the
pamphleteers was one of the chief causes that led to Walpole’s fall.
Queen Caroline had promised so fair when Princess of Wales, and her
influence over her husband was known to be so great, that many literary
men looked forward to her coming to the throne as likely to bring about a
revival of the Augustan age of Queen Anne. They were bitterly disappointed
when they found her in close accord with the Minister who had slammed
the door of patronage in their faces, and many considered that she had
betrayed them. They forgot that in an alliance like that between the Queen

and Walpole each had to yield something, and the Queen yielded some of
her interest in letters for the larger interests she had at stake. It was a pity
that with so real a desire to help literature Caroline was able to do so little.
It was a still greater pity that after she became Queen her relations with
some of the greatest English men of letters, like Swift, Gay and Pope, were
strained to breaking point. The fault was not all on her side, and in some
cases the breach was inevitable, but it was none the less unfortunate.

MRS. CLAYTON (VISCOUNTESS SUNDON).
Swift, who had fallen with Bolingbroke in 1714, visited England in
1726, for the first time since the death of Queen Anne, probably with the
object of effecting a reconciliation with the reigning dynasty. He made the

acquaintance of Mrs. Howard through his friends Pope and Gay, and was
introduced by her to Caroline, then Princess of Wales. Writing years later to
the Duchess of Queensberry, who hated Caroline, Swift declared that “a
nameless person” (the Queen) “sent me eleven messages before I would
yield her a visit”. This was surely an exaggeration, and it was written at a
time when Swift, having lost all hope of preferment from the Queen, was
paying his court to the duchess. Swift no doubt was quite as ready to have
an audience as Caroline was to grant him one. He began the conversation
by saying that he knew the Princess loved to see odd persons, and having
seen a wild boy from Germany, he supposed she now had a curiosity to see
a wild dean from Ireland. Caroline laughed, and found in his genius an
excuse for the lack of courtly manners. He came several times to Leicester
House.
Swift returned to Ireland well pleased with his reception, though no
definite promise of what he desired, English preferment, had been given
him. He came again to England early the following year, 1727, as it proved
for the last time. His coming was heralded by the publication of his famous
satire, Gulliver’s Travels. Caroline read the book with delight, and when the
author presented himself at Leicester House welcomed him most
graciously. She accepted from him a present of Irish poplins, and promised
him a medallion of herself in return. Swift was also a constant and welcome
guest in the apartments of Mrs. Howard, and met there, besides many men
of letters, politicians of the stamp of Townshend and Compton. He was in
England at the time of George the First’s death, and kissed the hands of the
new King and Queen. For a time he was full of hope, but his expectations
received a shock when he found Walpole, “Bob the poet’s foe,” confirmed
in power. He went back to Ireland, cast down but not dismayed, and waited
there for the summons that never came.
For some time the dean placed faith in Mrs. Howard, and more
especially in the Queen’s graciousness. He knew also the Queen’s views on
Church matters, and his unorthodoxy, which had hindered Anne from
making him a bishop, would, he thought, be a point in his favour with
Caroline. His commanding literary abilities ought certainly to have given
him a strong claim upon her consideration. But Swift, the friend of
Bolingbroke, was disliked by Walpole, and Caroline distrusted every one
who was intimate with Bolingbroke. Moreover Swift thought, like so many

others, that the way to the King’s favour lay through his mistress rather than
his wife, and on both his visits to England he paid great court to Mrs.
Howard, visiting her frequently, flattering her, telling her some of his best
stories, and writing her some of his wittiest letters. Caroline, who knew of
this friendship, resented it, and though she gave the great dean audience,
and was affable to him as she was to every one, she made a mental note
against his name, and never helped him to realise his wish of obtaining
English preferment. She had never promised to give it to him, but she had
promised to send him her medallion. Swift, who for some time after his
return to Ireland, kept up a correspondence with Mrs. Howard, wrote to her
recalling the Queen’s promise.
“First, therefore,” he writes, “I call you to witness that I did not attend
on the Queen until I had received her repeated messages, which, of course,
occasioned my being introduced to you. I never asked anything till, upon
leaving England for the first time, I desired from you a present worth a
guinea, and from her Majesty one worth ten pounds, by way of a memorial.
Yours I received, and the Queen, upon taking my leave of her, made an
excuse that she had intended a medal for me, which not being ready, she
would send it me the Christmas following: yet this was never done, nor at
all remembered when I went back to England the next year, and attended
her as I had done before. I must now tell you, madam, that I will receive no
medal from her Majesty, nor anything less than her picture at half-length,
drawn by Jervas; and if he takes it from another original, the Queen shall at
least sit twice for him to touch it up. I desire you will let her Majesty know
this in plain words, although I have heard I am under her displeasure....
“Against you I have but one reproach, that when I was last in England,
and just after the present King’s accession, I resolved to pass that summer
in France, for which I had then a most lucky opportunity, from which those
who seemed to love me well, dissuaded me by your advice. And when I
sent you a note, conjuring you to lay aside the character of a courtier and a
favourite upon that occasion, your answer positively directed me not to go
at that juncture; and you said the same thing to my friends who seemed to
have power of giving me hints, that I might reasonably have expected a
78
settlement in England, which, God knows, is no great ambition
considering the station I should leave here, of greater dignity, which might
easily have been managed to be disposed of as the Crown pleased....

“I wish her Majesty would a little remember what I largely said to her
about Ireland, when before a witness she gave me leave, and commanded
me to tell here what she spoke to me upon that subject, and ordered me, if I
lived to see her in her present station, to send her our grievances, promising
to read my letter, and do all good offices in her power for this most
miserable and most loyal kingdom, now at the brink of ruin, and never so
near as now.
“As to myself, I repeat again that I have asked nothing more than a
trifle as a memorial of some distinction, which her Majesty graciously
seemed to make between me and every common clergyman; that trifle was
forgot according to the usual method of princes, although I was taught to
79
think myself upon a footing of obtaining some little exception.”
Whether Mrs. Howard laid this letter before the Queen, as the dean
evidently intended her to do, or spoke to the Queen on the subject, is not
known; in any case Swift would have done better to have written directly to
the Queen herself, or if that were impossible, to have chosen some more
congenial channel of communication than Mrs. Howard. The Queen was
jealous of her influence, and Mrs. Clayton, who disliked Swift, had been
taught to think that ecclesiastical recommendations were especially within
her province. For Mrs. Howard to have asked the Queen for the meanest
curacy for one of her favourites would have been resented. So it came about
that after Swift had waited a few years longer, heart-sick with deferred
hope, he turned on Mrs. Howard as well as her mistress, though in the
former case he was not only ungrateful but unjust, for the poor lady had not
the power, though she had the will, to help him. But Swift in his Irish exile
could not be expected to know the true inwardness of affairs at Court. “As
for Mrs. Howard and her mistress,” he wrote, “I have nothing to say but that
they have neither memory nor manners, else I should have had some mark
of the former from the latter, which I was promised about two years ago;
but since I made them a present it would be mean to remind them.” He was
extremely sensitive to slights, and he resented the Queen’s forgetfulness
about the medal almost as much as the fact that she omitted him from her
list of preferments. Years after, in a poem which he wrote on his own death,
the old grievance of the medals crops up again:—

From Dublin soon to London spread,
’Tis told at Court “the Dean is dead,”
And Lady Suffolk in the spleen
Runs laughing up to tell the Queen.
The Queen, so gracious, mild and good,
Cries: “Is he gone? ’tis time he should.
He’s dead, you say—then let him rot;
I am glad the medals were forgot.
I promised him, I own; but when?
I only was the princess then;
And now the consort of a King,
You know, ’tis quite another thing.”

Swift never forgave the Queen’s neglect, and for years, until her death,
Caroline was the subject of his sharpest satirical attacks. But his satire
failed to move her, any more than his presents and compliments had done.
The great dean was left to drag out the remainder of his days in Ireland,
embittered by disappointment and darkened by despair. Probably Walpole
interposed his veto also. It was felt that such a firebrand was safer in
Ireland, and his presence in England might seriously embarrass the
Government. No doubt there was something to be said from that point of
view. But the way in which those in authority neglected this great genius,
until baffled ambition drove him to drink and madness, will ever remain
one of the most tragic pages in the history of literature.
Gay, like Swift, also had a grievance against the Queen, though if Swift
had any reason on his side, Gay certainly had none. Caroline had frequently
showed him kindness when Princess of Wales, and had promised to help
him when it was in her power. This promise she redeemed within a few
weeks of the King’s accession. She laughingly told Mrs. Howard that she
would now take up the “Hare with many friends”—an allusion to one of
Gay’s fables—and she offered him the post of gentleman usher to the little
Princess Louisa, a sinecure with a salary of £200 a year, which would be
equivalent to £400 in the present day. There was little else that the Queen
could offer him: the public service was now closed to writers, and as Gay
was not in holy orders, he could not be provided for in the Church. This

appointment, she thought, would secure him from want, and give him
leisure for his pen. But Gay, whose head was quite turned by the adulation
of foolish women, not only refused the Queen’s offer, but resented it as an
insult. Soon after he was taken up by the Duke and Duchess of
Queensberry, who were among his kindest friends.
The Duchess of Queensberry was one of the most beautiful and
graceful women of her day; she was a daughter of Lord Clarendon, and
therefore cousin of the late Queen Anne. She was of a haughty disposition,
and considered herself quite equal, if not superior, to the princes of the
House of Hanover. The fact that Gay had been slighted (as he considered)
by Queen Caroline was enough to make her champion his cause more
warmly. Gay soon declared war against the court and the Government in his
famous Beggars’ Opera, which teemed with topical allusions and covert
political satire. The character of “Bob Booty,” for instance, was understood
to be Sir Robert Walpole, and was especially a butt for ridicule. The
Beggars’ Opera took the town by storm; it enjoyed not only an
unprecedented run in London, but was played in all the great towns of
England, Ireland and Scotland. It became a fashionable craze; ladies sang
the favourite songs and carried about fans depicting incidents and
characters in the piece; pictures of the actress, Miss Fenton, who played the
leading part, were sold by the thousand, and songs and verses were
composed in her honour; she became a popular toast and a reigning beauty,
and finally married the Duke of Bolton, who ran away with her. But the
Queen and Walpole resented the covert sarcasm in the play, and when Gay,
encouraged by the success of The Beggars’ Opera, wrote a sequel called
Polly, and had it ready for rehearsal, the Duke of Grafton, Lord
Chamberlain, acting under the orders of the King, who was instigated by
the Queen, refused to license the performance. It was said that Walpole was
satirized in Polly under a thin disguise as a highwayman, but whatever the
reason, the prohibition of the play only made it more popular. If it could not
be played it could be read, and every one who had a grudge against
Walpole, or the court, bought it when it came out in book form. The
Duchess of Marlborough gave £100 for a single copy, and the Duchess of
Queensberry solicited subscriptions for it within the very precincts of St.
James’s, and at a drawing-room went round the room and asked even the
officers of the King’s household to buy copies of the play which the King
had forbidden to be played. The King caught her in the act, and asked what

she was doing? She replied: “What must be agreeable, I am sure, to one so
humane as your Majesty, for I am busy with an act of charity, and a charity
to which I do not despair of bringing your Majesty to contribute”. The King
guessed what the charity was, and talked the incident over with the Queen,
who so resented the duchess’s action, which she rightly guessed was aimed
more particularly at herself, that the King’s vice-chamberlain was sent to
request her not to appear at court again. The vice-chamberlain’s message
was verbal; but the duchess immediately wrote a spirited reply:—
“The Duchess of Queensberry is surprised and well pleased that the
King hath given her so agreeable a command as to stay from Court, where
she never came for diversion, but to bestow a great civility on the King and
Queen; she hopes that by such an unprecedented order as this is, that the
King will see as few as he wishes at his Court, particularly such as dare to
think or speak truth. I dare not do otherwise, and ought not, nor could have
imagined that it would not have been the very highest compliment that I
could possibly pay the King to endeavour to support truth and innocence in
his house, particularly when the King and Queen both told me that they had
not read Mr. Gay’s play. I have certainly done right, then, to stand by my
own words rather than his Grace of Grafton’s, who hath neither made use of
truth, judgment, nor honour, through this whole affair, either for himself or
his friends.”
The duchess told the vice-chamberlain to take the letter to the King at
once; the vice-chamberlain read it, and thought it so disrespectful that he
begged her to reconsider the matter. Thereupon she sat down and wrote a
second letter which was even worse, so he took the first after all. The King
was beside himself with passion when he received it, and uttered the most
appalling threats. But the duchess went about unharmed, and laughed him
to scorn. She was glad to have this opportunity of showing her contempt for
the “German Court,” as she called it, and her husband supported her action
by resigning his office of Vice-Admiral of Scotland. Poor Mrs. Howard was
the only sufferer, for Gay and the duchess were both her friends, and she
therefore got the full brunt of the King’s ill temper. Most people took the
duchess’s part, thinking that the court had been impolitic in noticing her
action on behalf of Gay, who became for the moment a popular martyr. “He
has got several turned out of their places,” wrote Arbuthnot to Swift, “the
greatest ornament of the Court banished from it for his sake, and another

great lady (Mrs. Howard) in danger of being chassée likewise, about seven
or eight duchesses pushing forward like the ancient circumcelliones in the
church to see who shall suffer martyrdom on his account first; he is the
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darling of the city.”
Gay certainly did not suffer from the Lord Chamberlain’s action, for
the subscriptions to Polly brought him in £1,200, whereas by The Beggars’
Opera, with all its success, he had only gained £400. Therefore, as Dr.
Johnson says, “What he called oppression ended in profit”.
The Queen’s difference with Pope arose out of the political exigencies
of the hour. Unlike Swift and Gay he expected nothing from her, and had
therefore no disappointment. As a Roman Catholic he was debarred from all
places of honour and emolument, though in the reign of George the First
Secretary Craggs offered him a pension of £300 a year, to be paid from the
secret service money. Pope had been a familiar figure at Leicester House
and Richmond Lodge. He was a great friend of Mrs. Howard, and a
favourite with the maids of honour. Caroline, as Princess of Wales, had
shown him many courtesies, and recognised his genius and admired his
work. But Pope’s friendship with Bolingbroke and hatred of Walpole
necessarily led to a breach between him and the Queen. As Mrs. Howard’s
influence waned and Walpole’s became greater, Pope came no more to
court, and had nothing for the Queen but sneers and ridicule.
His famous quarrel with Lord Hervey also did much to widen the
breach, for the Queen naturally took her favourite’s side. A friend of Lord
Hervey’s in the House of Commons spoke of Pope as “a lampooner who
scattered his ink without fear or decency”. This was true of both
combatants, who showed in a most unamiable light in this sordid quarrel.
The origin of the feud is involved in obscurity, but Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu was undoubtedly in part responsible for it.
Lady Mary, since her return from Constantinople in 1718, had occupied
a unique position in society. She was a chartered libertine, her conversation
grew broader with advancing years, and her wit had more licence. Between
her and Lord Hervey there existed one of those curious friendships which
may sometimes be witnessed between an effeminate man and a masculine
woman, and there seems no doubt that it was of the kind which is known as
“Platonic,” for, after Lord Hervey’s death, when his eldest son sealed up

and sent Lady Mary the letters she had written to his father, assuring her
that he had not looked at them, she wrote to say that she almost regretted he
had not, as it would have proved to him what most young men disbelieved,
“the possibility of a long and steady friendship subsisting between two
persons of different sexes without the least mixture of love”.
Lady Mary took a house at Twickenham not far from Pope’s beautiful
villa, and, though she was warned not to have anything to do with “the
wicked wasp of Twickenham,” she renewed her friendship with the poet,
and became as intimate with him as before. “Leave him as soon as you can”
wrote Addison to her, “he will certainly play you some devilish trick else.”
But Lady Mary took no heed, perhaps the danger of the experiment tempted
her, and she fooled the little poet to the top of his bent. Pope, with all his
genius, had an undue reverence for rank; he was flattered by the notice
which this clever woman extended to him, and he genuinely admired her
wit and vivacity. Lady Mary’s house was the rendezvous of many of the
courtiers and wits of the day, and here Pope often met Lord Hervey. Lady
Mary delighted in the homage the poet gave to her ungrudgingly; it flattered
her vanity that such a genius should be at her feet. She wrote to him
effusive letters, and in one of them declared that he had discovered the
philosopher’s stone, “since by making the Iliad pass through your poetical
grasp into an English form, without losing aught of its original beauty, you
have drawn the golden current from Patoclus to Twickenham”. Pope also
wrote her the most extravagant epistles. In one, referring to her portrait,
which had been painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, he says: “This picture
dwells really at my heart, and I made a perfect passion of preferring your
present face to your past”. Again he tells her, “I write as if I were drunk; the
pleasure I take in thinking of your return transports me beyond the bounds
of common decency”.
After a time Lady Mary began to grow rather weary of her poet, but he,
on the contrary, became even more arduous, and was at last led into making
her a passionate declaration of love. She received it by laughing in his face.
Pope was keenly sensitive to ridicule, his deformity made him more so than
most men; he was of a highly strung disposition, and Lady Mary’s outburst
of hilarity was a thing he could neither forget nor forgive. He withdrew
deeply mortified and offended. His vanity could not understand how the
beautiful Lady Mary could reject him with such disdain if another had not

stolen her from him. He formed the idea that Lord Hervey was his rival, and
against him therefore directed all his malice, spleen and hatred. A scurrilous
paper war began. Lord Hervey dabbled in poetry, not of great merit, and
Pope savagely attacked it. Speaking of one of his own satires, against which
he pretended a charge of weakness had been brought, he says:—

The lines are weak, another’s pleased to say,
Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day.

And again:—

Like gentle Fanny’s was my flow’ry theme
A painted mistress, or a purling stream.

Hervey, who thought his namby-pamby verses really poetry, was stung to
the quick by this contemptuous allusion, and, smarting under the satire, was
foolish enough to retaliate upon Pope in a poor effusion addressed “To the
Imitator of the Satires of the Second Book of Horace”. It runs:—

Thus, whilst with coward hand you stab a name,
And try at least t’ assassinate our fame;
Like the first bold assassin’s be thy lot;
And ne’er be thy guilt forgiven, or forgot;
But as thou hat’st, be hated by mankind,
And with the emblem of thy crooked mind
Marked on thy back, like Cain, by God’s own hand,
Wander, like him accursed, through the land.

In the same poem Pope was told:—

None thy crabbed numbers can endure
Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure.

This brutal allusion to Pope’s physical infirmities and his birth stung the
most sensitive of poets to the quick. In this duel of wits, Hervey had chosen
verse as his weapon, forgetting that in this line his adversary had no equal,
and Pope seized the advantage. Hervey had set him an unworthy example,
which he did not hesitate to follow, and he raked up everything which
approached physical hideousness, weakness, or deformity in the person and
mind of his adversary. According to Lord Hailes, “Lord Hervey, having felt
some attacks of epilepsy, entered upon and persisted in a very strict
regimen, and thus stopped the progress and prevented the effects of that
dreadful disease. His daily food was a small quantity of ass’s milk and a
flour biscuit. Once a week he indulged himself with eating an apple; he
used emetics daily. Lord Hervey used paint to soften his ghastly
appearance.” All these weaknesses were seized upon by Pope, and put into
a poem wherein Lord Hervey was satirized as “Sporus”.

Let Sporus tremble! what! that thing of silk!
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk!
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way
Whether in florid impotence he speaks
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or, at the ear of Eve, familiar toad
Half froth half venom, spits himself abroad:
In puns or politics, in tales or lies
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies;
His wit all see-saw between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart;
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the Board,
Now trips a lady and now struts a lord.
Eve’s tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed,
A cherub’s face and reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

Coxe, alluding to the portrait of Sporus, writes: “I never could read this
passage without disgust and horror, disgust at the indelicacy of the
allusions, horror at the malignity of the poet in laying the foundation of his
abuse on the lowest species of satire, personal invective, and what is still
worse, sickness and debility”. This condemnation is true of Pope’s verses

on Hervey, but it is equally true of Hervey’s verses on Pope—and it was
Hervey who began the personal abuse.
Lady Mary did not escape either. Pope depicted her as a wanton,
scoffed at her eccentricities, and hinted that she conferred her favours on “a
black man,” the Sultan Ahmed of Turkey.

JOHN, LORD HERVEY.
Pope also addressed a prose letter to Lord Hervey, which was, if
possible, more bitter and vindictive than his character of “Sporus”. He
thought very highly of his letter, which Wharton styles “a masterpiece of

invective”. To one of his friends Pope wrote: “There is woman’s war
declared against me by a certain lord; his weapons are the same which
women and children use—a pin to scratch, and a squirt to bespatter. I writ a
sort of answer, but was ashamed to enter the lists with him, and after
showing it some people, suppressed it; otherwise it was such as was worthy
of him and worthy of me.” The reason Pope gives for suppressing this letter,
which was not published until after his death, though privately shown to
many, was not the true one. Queen Caroline got hold of a copy of the
epistle, and it was at her express desire that Pope withheld it. She feared lest
it should render her favourite contemptible in the eyes of the world, and
though she was greatly incensed against Pope, she dissembled her anger,
and used her influence to end this wordy war, in which there could be no
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doubt that Pope was the victor.
But though Caroline was unfortunate in her relations with Swift, Gay
and Pope, men whose writings shed a lustre on her era, she was the means
of helping other writers who were eminent in a different way. Butler, the
author of the Analogy, and Berkeley, who wrote The Minute Philosopher,
she preferred to high office in the Church. For other writers who were not in
holy orders she did what she could. She befriended Steele at a time when, to
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use his own words, he was “bereft both of limbs and speech”. She had
often befriended him before in the course of his chequered career. She
reprieved Savage, the natural son of that unnatural mother the Countess of
Macclesfield, when he lay under sentence of death. And after his wonderful
poem, The Bastard, was written, she helped him again with a pension of
£50 from her privy purse. She patronised Somerville, author of The Chase,
no mean poet in the opinion of Dr. Johnson; and she sought to support that
luckless playwright William Duncombe. It was one of her sayings that
“genius was superior to the patronage of princes,” but she had a great
sympathy for literary endeavour, however humble. But her patronage of
minor writers was more often dictated by the kindness of her heart than by
the soundness of her judgment. An instance of this was afforded by her
patronage of Stephen Duck, whose fate has been not inaptly compared to
that of Burns—without the genius.
Stephen Duck was the son of a peasant in Wiltshire, and worked as a
day labourer and thresher on a farm at Charlton. He must have had some
ability and a good deal of application, for when his day’s work was done, he

taught himself the rudiments of grammar and a smattering of history and
science. These labours bore fruit in poetry; but the poems remained
unpublished until Duck reached the age of thirty, when he had the good
fortune to attract the notice of a country clergyman named Spence, who not
only lent him books, but found the means for him to print some of his
poems in pamphlet form, including The Thresher’s Labour, a poem
descriptive of his own life, and The Shunamite. These poems found their
way into the hands of Lord Tankerville and Dr. Alured Clarke, Prebendary
of Winchester, who thought so highly of their merits that they got up a
subscription to aid the author. Dr. Alured Clarke did more; he wrote to his
friend Mrs. Clayton telling her the story of Duck’s life, and begging her to
bring his poems before the notice of the Queen. By this time Duck had quite
a little coterie of admirers in his own county, who, as Dr. Alured Clarke
wrote, thought “the thresher, with all his defects, a superior genius to Mr.
83
Pope”.
Caroline was much interested in the fact that these poems were written
by a poor thresher, and when the court was at Windsor she commanded that
Duck should be brought there. She was so pleased with his manner and
address that she settled a small annual pension on him, and in 1733 made
him one of the yeomen of the guard. Dr. Alured Clarke, by this time one of
the royal chaplains, and Mrs. Clayton acted as the sponsors of the poet,
whose work now became well-known. The most extravagant ideas were
formed concerning it, some considering The Thresher’s Labour superior to
Thomson’s Seasons, and others declaring that the author of The Shunamite
was the greatest poet of the age. Thus encouraged, Duck wrote more poems,
and the Queen’s patronage secured for them a large sale. Naturally many
were in praise of his generous benefactress. Duck in due time took holy
orders, to which he had always a leaning—he was ordained, as a literate, by
the Bishop of Salisbury. Shortly after his ordination, the Queen appointed
him keeper of Merlin’s Cave, a fanciful building she had erected at
Richmond. Both Merlin’s Cave and Duck came in for a great deal of satire
from “the epigrammatic Mæcenases,” as Dr. Alured Clarke calls them, who
regarded both the cave and the patronage of the poet as proofs of the
Queen’s folly rather than her wisdom. Pope wrote:—

Lord! how we strut through Merlin’s Cave, to see
No poets there, but Stephen, you and me.

Swift, writhing under neglect, penned a very caustic epigram:—

The thresher Duck could o’er the Queen prevail:
The proverb says, “No fence against a flail,”
From threshing corn he turns to thresh his brains
For which her Majesty allows him grains,
Though ’tis confessed that those who ever saw
His poems, think them all not worth a straw.
Thrice happy Duck! employed in threshing stubble
Thy toils were lessen’d and thy profits doubled.

Close by Merlin’s Cave the Queen raised another quaint conceit known
as the “Hermitage,” in which she placed busts of Adam Clarke, Newton,
Locke and other dead philosophers. These busts excited the ire of living
worthies. Swift in his Elegant Extracts wrote:—

Lewis, the living genius fed
And rais’d the scientific head:
Our Queen, more frugal of her meat,
Raises those heads that cannot eat.

This drew forth the following repartee, addressed to Swift:—

Since Anna, whom bounty thy merits had fed,
Ere her own was laid low, had exalted your head,
And since our good Queen to the wise is so just,
To raise heads from such as are humbled in dust,
I wonder, good man, that you are not envaulted;
Pr’y thee, go and be dead, and be doubly exalted.

Whereto the dean wittily replied:—

Her Majesty never shall be my exalter;
And yet she would raise me I know, by—a halter.

Stephen Duck’s poetry was popular in its day, but it owed its popularity
to the favour of the Queen rather than to its intrinsic merit. His talent was
not sufficient to overcome the defects of his early education. Duck realised
this far more than his friends, and he was keenly sensitive to the satire
which great writers like Swift and Pope thought it worth their while to pour
upon him. The Queen remained his constant friend, and preferred him
successively to a chaplaincy at Kew and the rectory of Byfleet in Surrey.
But Duck was not a happy man; his education began too late in life, and he
could never accommodate himself to his altered circumstances. He ended
his career by committing suicide, a few years after the death of his royal
patroness.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER VII:
78
A living.
79
Dean Swift to Mrs. Howard, Dublin, 21st November, 1730. Suffolk
Correspondence.
80
Dr. Arbuthnot to Swift, 19th March, 1729.
81
In his Memoirs Lord Hervey makes no mention of his quarrel with
Pope or his duel with Pulteney, and slips over the years 1730–1733
without a line of comment. This seems to show that he was not proud
of either of these achievements.
82
Sir Richard Steele to Mrs. Clayton, May, 1724.

83
Dr. Alured Clarke to Mrs. Clayton, Winchester, 18th August, 1730.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EXCISE SCHEME.

1732–3.

In May, 1732, the King made his second visit to Hanover, and was absent
from England four months. He invested the Queen with full powers of
Queen-Regent as before. George the Second’s visit to Hanover was again
exceedingly unpopular with the nation, but he was determined to go, and it
was useless to thwart him. This, Caroline’s second regency, was uneventful,
though in it she managed to do something to advance the cause of prison
reform. Knowing the injustices and anomalies of the criminal law, the
Queen’s influence was all on the side of mercy. She showed a particular
distaste to signing death warrants in her capacity as Regent, and whenever
she could possibly do so she pardoned the criminals. For instance, we read:
“On Tuesday the report of the four criminals who received sentence of
death at the late Sessions at the Old Bailey was made to her Majesty in
Council by Mr. Sergeant Raby, and her Majesty was graciously pleased to
show mercy and pardon them”. In the reform of the prison system the
Queen took a direct interest. She was always anxious, when it was in her
power, to release prisoners, and to make penalties easier for debtors and
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other offenders, and she was determined that something should be done to
85
remedy the deplorable condition of the public prisons. She had taken up
this question the year after the King’s accession to the throne, and during
her regency an inquiry was instituted, which laid bare a frightful system of
abuses; gaolers and warders connived at the escape of rich prisoners, and
subjected poor ones, who could not pay their extortionate demands, to every
sort of cruelty, insult and oppression.

The reports of the Select Committees of the House of Commons teem
with such cases. One report stated that “The Committee saw in the women’s
sick ward many miserable objects lying, without beds, on the floor,
perishing with extreme want; and in the men’s sick ward yet much worse....
On the giving of food to these poor wretches (though it was done with the
utmost caution, they being only allowed at first the smallest quantities, and
that of liquid nourishment) one died; the vessels of his stomach were so
disordered and contracted, for want of use, that they were totally incapable
of performing their office, and the unhappy creature perished about the time
of digestion. Upon his body a coroner’s inquest sat (a thing which, though
required by law to be always done, hath for many years been scandalously
omitted in this gaol), and the jury found that he died of want. Those who
were not so far gone, on proper nourishment being given them, recovered,
so that not above nine have died since the 25th March last, the day the
Committee first met there, though, before, a day seldom passed without a
death; and upon the advancing of the spring not less than eight or ten
86
usually died every twenty-four hours.” The prison referred to was a
London prison, but in the provinces matters were no better. There was, for
example, a petition to the House of Commons, 1725, from insolvent debtors
in Liverpool gaol, stating that they were “reduced to a starving condition,
87
having only straw and water at the courtesy of the sergeant”. The Queen
was horrified and indignant at these revelations, and she repeatedly urged
on Walpole the reformation of the prison system, and the revision of the
criminal code. But Walpole was averse to any legislation unless it was
demanded by political exigencies, and the utmost the Queen achieved was a
more vigorous inspection of prisons and the punishment of gaolers detected
in cruelty.
In September the King returned from Hanover and took over the reins
of government, an easy task, for Walpole and the Queen had managed so
well that this was a period of peace abroad and prosperity at home.
Walpole was now at the zenith of his power; in the country everything
was quiet, in the Cabinet all his colleagues were submissive. He enjoyed the
fullest confidence of the King and Queen, and he had apparently complete
ascendency in both Houses of Parliament. The Opposition, though able and
active, both in Parliament and out of it, were unable to lessen the
Ministerial majority. “What can you have done, sir, to God Almighty to

make him so much your friend?” exclaimed an old Scottish Secretary of
State at this time to Walpole. The Prime Minister’s ascendency might have
continued serenely had he not the following year (1733) been so unwise as
to depart from his policy of letting sleeping dogs lie. He brought forward
his celebrated excise scheme. To explain it briefly, Walpole proposed to
bring the tobacco and wine duties under the law of excise, and so ease the
land tax. This land tax, ever since the Revolution of 1688, had borne the
great burden of taxation, and during the wars of Marlborough had risen to
as much as four shillings in the pound. In consequence of the peace and
prosperity enjoyed by the nation the last few years it has been reduced to
two shillings in the pound, and Walpole’s proposed changes would have the
effect of further reducing it or abolishing it altogether. Walpole hoped by
this means to conciliate the landowners and country gentlemen, who
considered that they had to bear an unfair share of the burdens of the State.
Customs had always been levied on wine and tobacco, and the change
proposed had regard chiefly to the method of collection. An active system
of smuggling was carried on, and connived in and winked at by many
people, so that the duties on wine and tobacco fell very far short of the
estimates. Under Walpole’s scheme this system of wholesale smuggling
would be to a great extent stopped, and he estimated that the excise duties
would rise by one-sixth, which would be more than sufficient to meet the
deficit caused by easing the land tax. He had the hearty support of the court,
for the King’s Civil List depended to some extent on the duties on tobacco
and wine, and if they were increased, the royal income would increase also.
Walpole at first was confident that he would be able to carry this
scheme through without much opposition, but as soon as its purport became
known, even before it was introduced into Parliament, it was evident that
the Prime Minister had seriously miscalculated public opinion. Both in and
out of Parliament the opposition to any extension of the excise was
tremendous; the whole nation rose against it. The people persisted in
regarding the proposed extension as the first step in a scheme of general
excise, in which every necessary of life would be taxed, and the liberties of
the subject interfered with by excise officers coming into private houses
whenever they pleased. It was in vain for Walpole to vow that “no such
scheme had ever entered his head”; it was in vain to reason or expostulate.
Popular indignation burned to a white heat, and there were plenty of able
men ready to fan the flame. The Craftsman declared that the Prime

Minister’s scheme would ruin trade, destroy the liberties of the people,
abrogate Magna Charta, and make the Crown absolute. The Jacobites and
the Tories, though largely drawn from the landed classes who were to be
benefited by this scheme, rejected with contumely the proffered “bribe” as
they called it. Not only every Jacobite and every Tory, but all the
discontented Whigs, all the politicians who had wished for office and had
not obtained it, all the peers and members of Parliament whom Walpole at
different times had insulted and aggrieved, precipitated themselves on this
opportunity of attacking him.
The Prime Minister was also betrayed in the house of his friends; there
were several great peers holding minor offices under the Crown who were
secretly hostile to Walpole, though they had hitherto masked their
animosity. They now seized this opportunity to undermine him. Among
them were the Dukes of Argyll, Montrose, and Bolton, the Earls of Stair and
Marchmont, and Lords Chesterfield and Clinton. These malcontents held a
secret meeting, and determined to send Lord Stair to the Queen, to set forth
to her the unpopularity of the excise scheme, and the danger which the
Crown ran in supporting it. Lord Stair had fought in Marlborough’s
campaign, and for many years had served his country with great credit as
ambassador to France. Walpole had treated him shabbily in recalling him
from Paris when he came into collision with Law, the financier, and for a
long time there had been a great deal of ill-feeling. When the Duke of
Queensberry resigned, Walpole sought to make amends by giving the ex-
ambassador the post of Vice-Admiral of Scotland; this post Lord Stair still
held, but he had not forgotten his resentment against Walpole.
The Queen gave Lord Stair an audience one evening in her cabinet in
Kensington Palace. He burst forth into violent invective against the Prime
Minister, saying: “But, madam, though your Majesty knows nothing of this
man but what he tells you himself, or what his creatures and flatterers,
prompted by himself, tell you of him, yet give me leave to assure your
Majesty that in no age, in no reign, in no country, was ever any Minister so
universally odious as the man you support.... That he absolutely governs
your Majesty nobody doubts, and very few scruple to say; they own you
have the appearance of power, and say you are contented with the
appearance, whilst all the reality of power is his, derived from the King,
conveyed through you, and vested in him.”

He then referred to a personal grievance he had against Walpole, in that
Lord Isla, brother of the Duke of Argyll, had been preferred before him, and
given important appointments which he (Lord Stair) ought to have filled.
He quoted this as a proof of Walpole’s power over the Queen, and said:
“For what cannot that man persuade you to, who can make you, madam,
love a Campbell? The only two men in this country who ever vainly hoped
or dared to attempt to set a mistress’s” (Mrs. Howard’s) “power up in
opposition to yours were Lord Isla and his brother, the Duke of Argyll; yet
one of the men who strove to dislodge you by this method from the King’s
bosom is the man your favourite has thought fit to place the nearest to his.”
This, however, was a little too much for the Queen, who was extremely
sensitive of any mention of the peculiar relations which existed between
Mrs. Howard and the King. She sharply rebuked Lord Stair, and desired
him to remember that “he was speaking of the King’s servant, and to the
King’s wife”. Lord Stair therefore said no more on that point, but proceeded
forthwith to the excise scheme, declaring that it would be impossible to
force the measure through the Lords, though corruption might carry it
through the Commons. He added that even if it were possible to carry it into
law, “yet, madam, I think it so wicked, so dishonest, so slavish a scheme,
that my conscience would no more permit me to vote for it than his”
(Walpole’s) “ought to have permitted him to project it”. The Queen again
interrupted him by crying out: “Oh, my lord, don’t talk to me of your
conscience; you make me faint!” This so nettled Lord Stair that he spoke
plainer than ever.
When he had quite talked himself out, it was the Queen’s turn to let
Lord Stair know her mind, which she did with a vigour and directness that
left nothing to be desired.
“You have made so very free with me personally in this conference, my
lord,” she said, “that I hope you will think I am entitled to speak my mind
with very little reserve to you; and believe me, my lord, I am no more to be
imposed upon by your professions than I am to be terrified by your threats.”
She then reminded Lord Stair of the part he had played in supporting the
Peerage Bill in the last reign, which, she held, was against the interests of
the Prince of Wales and the liberties of the people, and went on to say: “To
talk therefore in the patriot strain you have done to me on this occasion can
move me, my lord, to nothing but laughter. Where you get your lesson I do

not want to know. Your system of politics you collect from the Craftsman,
your sentiments, or rather your professions, from my Lord Bolingbroke and
my Lord Carteret—whom you may tell, if you think fit, that I have long
known them to be two as worthless men of parts as any in this country, and
whom I have not only been often told are two of the greatest liars and
knaves in any country, but whom my own observation and experience have
88
found so.”
All this the Queen said, and much more to the same effect, which
convinced Lord Stair that she would do nothing against Walpole, so he took
his leave saying: “Madam, you are deceived, and the King is betrayed”. He
went back to the malcontent peers to tell them of the interview, from which
he was fain to confess he had no results to show; but he boasted that he had
at least told the Queen some home truths which she would not be likely to
forget.
Finding that Walpole was determined, despite remonstrance, to
introduce his excise scheme, and was supported by the King and Queen, the
Opposition organised a popular agitation against it. The whole country was
flooded with pamphlets, and meetings were everywhere held. Disaffection
to the Government ran like wildfire throughout the land, and from all parts
of the kingdom the cry was: “No slavery, no excise, no wooden shoes”—
this last was aimed at the German tendencies of the court. Public agitation
rose to a greater height than it had done since the Jacobite rising of 1715.
The city of London and nearly every borough in England held meetings to
protest against the scheme, and passed resolutions commanding their
representatives to oppose any extension of the excise in any form whatever.
The agitation went on for months, increasing in volume and in violence,
though the scheme was yet in embryo, and the measure had not been laid
before Parliament. The more timid among Walpole’s supporters took alarm
and urged him to abandon the contemplated measure. But the Prime
Minister, who during these years of almost absolute power had become a
dictator, refused to listen. He paid little heed to the press, and declared that
the whole agitation was a got-up job. If he yielded to clamour in this matter
he would have to do so in others and would be left, he said, with only the
shadow of power.

PHILIP STANHOPE, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD.
From the Painting in the National Portrait Gallery.

Walpole introduced his Excise Bill into Parliament on March 14th,
1733, in a speech conspicuous for its moderation. He stoutly denied the

report that he intended to propose a general excise. He sketched the details
of his measure as one which affected solely the duties on tobacco and wine
and sought to put down smuggling. “And this,” he wound up, “is the
scheme which has been represented in so dreadful and terrible a light—this
the monster which was to devour the people and commit such ravages over
the whole nation.” The Prime Minister’s eloquence was of no avail; his
denials were not believed, his moderation was regarded as a sign of
weakness. The Opposition rose in their wrath and denounced the measure
root and branch. Pulteney mocked, Barnard thundered, Wyndham
stigmatised excises of every kind as “badges of slavery”. And the cheers
which greeted these denunciations within the House were caught up by the
multitude outside. The doors of Westminster were besieged by frenzied
crowds hostile to the excise who cheered every member of Parliament
opposed to the Bill, and hooted and yelled at every one who favoured it. To
these Walpole incautiously alluded in his reply, “Gentlemen may give them
what name they think fit; it may be said they come hither as humble
supplicants, but I know whom the law calls sturdy beggars”. The
Opposition seized on this unlucky phrase as showing the arrogant
Minister’s indifference to the poverty of the people, and his desire to deny
their right of petition. Through the rest of his political career Walpole never
heard the last of the “sturdy beggars”. The expression so exasperated the
mob that the same night, when, after thirteen hours’ debate, Walpole was
leaving the House, some of the “sturdy beggars” made a rush at him and
would have torn him to pieces had not his friends interposed and carried
him off in safety.
The King and Queen were intensely interested in the progress of the
measure. Indeed it was said that if their being sent back to Hanover had
depended on the fate of this Bill they could not have been more excited.
Walpole’s friends fell off one by one, and new enemies declared themselves
every day. Yet still the King and Queen stood by their favourite Minister
undismayed. Violent personal attacks were made upon Walpole during the
debate, to which the Prime Minister vigorously retorted. The King delighted
to hear of these retorts, and would rap out vehement oaths and cry with
flushed cheeks and tears in his eyes: “He is a brave fellow; he has more
spirit than any man I ever knew”. The Queen would join in these
acclamations.

Thus matters went on for nearly a month, things going from bad to
worse, majorities in Parliament getting smaller and smaller, supporters
falling off one by one, and the popular ferment growing higher and higher.
Petitions against the Bill poured in from all the large towns, that of the
Common Council of London being the most violent of all. And the paper
war raged unceasingly. “The public,” says Tindal, “was so heated with
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papers and pamphlets that matters rose next to a rebellion.” But despite
dwindling majorities and popular clamour, Walpole remained stubborn. At
last, when the storm was at its worst, it was the Queen who saw the
hopelessness of contending against it. In despair she asked Lord
Scarborough, who had always been a personal friend of the King and
herself, and who now threatened to resign his office, what was to be done.
He replied: “The Bill must be dropped, or there will be mutiny in the army.
I will answer for my regiment,” he added, “against the Pretender, but not
against the excise.” Tears came into the Queen’s eyes. “Then,” said she,
90
“we must drop it.”
The resolution was arrived at none too soon. On April 9th, after a
furious debate in the House, Walpole went to St. James’s and had a
conference with the King and Queen. It was then agreed to drop the Bill,
though it was resolved not to make the intention known for a day or two
longer. Walpole then had a private interview with the Queen, and offered to
resign. It was necessary, he said, that some one should be sacrificed to
appease the fury of the populace, and it was better that he should be the one.
The Queen knew well what he meant, for she had so identified herself with
Walpole’s policy that half the attacks of the Opposition on the Prime
Minister were really veiled attacks upon her. But she refused to listen to
such a suggestion and upbraided Walpole for having thought her “so mean,
so cowardly, so ungrateful,” as to accept of such an offer, and she assured
him that as long as she lived she would not abandon him. Walpole then
made a similar proposition to the King, but George the Second replied in
much the same words as the Queen had done. Both the King and Queen
were greatly distressed at the turn events had taken. The Queen wept
bitterly, but put a bright face on the matter in public, and held her evening
drawing-room as usual. She was, however, so anxious, that she was forced
to pretend a headache and the vapours, and break up the circle earlier than
usual.

The next day, April 10th, was the crucial day. The City of London,
headed by the Lord Mayor in full state, petitioned Parliament against the
Bill, and the citizens attended in such numbers that the string of coaches ran
from Westminster all the way to Temple Bar. When the division was taken
that night, it was found that the Government had a majority of only sixteen
votes, which was a virtual defeat. The Opposition were wildly excited over
their victory, which they confidently hoped would involve Walpole’s fall
and disgrace. Lord Hervey, who had been sent down to the House to report
progress, hastened back to the King and Queen to tell them the bad news.
The tears ran down the Queen’s cheeks, and for some time she could not
speak. The King cross-questioned Hervey as to who were the members who
had seceded from the Government ranks and helped to swell the Opposition
figures, and as he heard the names, he commented on them one by one in
expressions such as: “A fool!” “An Irish blockhead!” “A booby!” “A
whimsical fellow!” and so forth. But though the King might swear and the
Queen might weep, it was clear that the game was up, and the sooner they
acted upon their intention of abandoning the Bill the better.
Walpole, too, fully realised this at last, and the howls of public
execration that pursued him might well have daunted even his stout heart. If
there is any truth in Frederick the Great’s story, it was on this eventful night
that Walpole escaped from the infuriated crowd around Westminster
disguised under an old red cloak, and shouting “Liberty, liberty; no excise!”
and made his way to St. James’s to acquaint the King and Queen of the
result of the division. He found the King armed at all points; he had donned
the hat he wore at Malplaquet and was trying the temper of the sword he
had fought with at Oudenarde. He was ready to put himself at the head of
his guards and march out upon his rebellious and mutinous subjects. But
Walpole besought him to be calm and vowed it was a “choice between
abandoning the Excise Bill or losing the crown”. But this story is probably
apocryphal. What is certain is that Walpole, the evening of the division, had
a small gathering of his staunchest supporters at his house in Arlington
Street. After supper he got up and said: “Gentlemen, this dance it will no
further go”; and announced his intention of sounding a retreat on the
morrow, no doubt to their relief.
On the morrow, April 11th, the House of Commons was crowded from
end to end, and the people thronged not only the approaches to Westminster,

but forced their way into the lobby. Walpole got up in the House and
announced his intention of postponing the measure for two months. This,
though a virtual confession of defeat, was not enough for the Opposition,
who made a great uproar, and the chamber resounded with hissings,
howlings and shouts, which were taken up by the mob outside, and the
threatening murmurs of the multitude could be distinctly heard within the
House itself, rising and falling like the surge of the sea. So violent and
threatening was the mob that at the close of the debate it was suggested to
Walpole that he should make good his escape from the House by the back
way. But the Prime Minister said he would not shrink from danger, and,
surrounded by a body of chosen supporters, he made his way through a lane
of constables. In the lobby there was great jostling and hustling, and many
blows were struck. Several of Walpole’s supporters were struck and
wounded, but the Minister himself managed to get through unhurt, found
his coach and got safely home.
The scenes in the streets of London that night were unparalleled; the
whole city seemed to be on foot; the guards were called out and put under
arms; magistrates were ready to read the Riot Act; and bodies of constables
were drafted in all directions. Had the Bill not been dropped it is certain that
a fearful riot would have broken out, and London might have presented
scenes almost parallel to those witnessed in Paris nearly a century later. But
since the excise was abandoned the excitement of the populace found vent
in jubilations. The Monument was illuminated, bonfires were lighted in the
streets (and within a day or two, as the news travelled, in every town in
England), nearly all the houses were lighted up, and at Charing Cross
Walpole and a fat woman, representing the Queen, were burnt in effigy,
amid the howls and shrieks of the multitude.
Walpole was not a man to do things by halves, and having found that
public opinion was dead against him on the excise, he determined to drop
the scheme altogether. When, in the next session, Pulteney endeavoured to
fan the flame of opposition by insinuating that it would be revived, in some
form, Walpole out-manœuvred him by frankly confessing his failure. “As to
the wicked scheme,” he said, “as the honourable gentleman was pleased to
call it, which he would persuade us is not yet laid aside, I for my own part
can assure this House I am not so mad as ever again to engage in anything
that looks like an excise, though in my own private opinion I still think it

was a scheme that would have tended very much to the interests of the
91
nation.” This frank confession of defeat prevented the Opposition from
harping any longer on the iniquity of the excise. But it reasonably gave
them hope that a Minister who, by his own confession, had brought forward
a scheme which had been rejected with contumely by the nation should
constitutionally be compelled to resign. Popular execration had been
directed not only against the scheme but against its author, and it was a
Pyrrhic victory indeed which routed the host but left the commander in
possession of the field. But Queen Caroline was as good as her word; she
determined never to part with Walpole as long as she lived, and the King
echoed her sentiments. In vain did the Opposition invoke the sacred ark of
the Constitution; they only broke themselves against the rock of the
Queen’s influence.
The group of peers who held office under the Crown and yet had
arrayed themselves against Walpole, in the confident hope that he would be
forced to resign, now found themselves in a peculiarly difficult position.
The King and Queen were indignant with them, nor did Walpole treat them
with magnanimity. He forgave the repugnance of the nation to his scheme;
he could not forgive the repugnance of his colleagues. Always domineering
and impatient of opposition, he now gave his vengeance full swing. Lord
Chesterfield, who held the office of Lord Steward of the Household, was
the first to feel his resentment. Chesterfield was going up the great staircase
of St. James’s Palace two days after the Excise Bill was dropped, when an
attendant stopped him from entering the presence chamber, and handed him
a summons requesting him to surrender his white staff. In this might be seen
also the hand of the Queen. The same day Lord Clinton, lord of the
bedchamber, Lord Burlington, who held another office, the Duke of
Montrose and Lord Marchmont, who held sinecures in Scotland, and Lord
Stair were dismissed. Other peers were also deprived of their commissions,
including the Duke of Bolton and Lord Cobham. Thus did Walpole triumph
over his enemies.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER VIII:
84
Last Friday her Majesty was most graciously pleased to extend her
mercy to William Bales, under order for transportation for fourteen
years, who sometime since was condemned on the Black Act.—Daily
Gazetteer, 26th July, 1736.
Her Majesty has been pleased to pardon the three following
condemned to transportation for fourteen years—viz., Thomas
Ricketts, for stealing a silver hilted sword, and Thomas Morris and
John Pritchard, for housebreaking.—Daily Gazetteer, 7th August,
1736.
The day before the Court removed from Windsor to Richmond her
Majesty gave £80 for discharging poor debtors confined in the town
jail.—Daily Post, 19th October, 1730.
85
Petitions have lately been presented to her Majesty from insolvent
debtors confined in the prisons of this city, the numbers of whom are
so great that several have died lately of the prison distemper, and
others through want.—Craftsman, 18th May, 1728.
86
Second Report of the Select Committee, presented 14th May 1729.
87
Commons’ Journals, vol. xx.
88
Hervey’s Memoirs.
89
Tindal’s History.
90
Maby’s Life of Chesterfield.
91
Parliamentary History, vol. ix., p. 254.

CHAPTER IX.

FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES.

There was another and more dangerous enemy whom Walpole could not
touch, and of whose dislike he was at this time not fully aware—the Prince
of Wales. Throughout the excise agitation the Prince had silently and
stealthily worked against his parents and the Prime Minister. He had now
become more familiar with the position of affairs in England, and had learnt
the importance of his position in the state.
The Prince was a constant source of trouble to the King, nor was the
blame wholly on Frederick’s side. The Queen urged the advisability of
giving the Prince a separate establishment, and went to look at a house for
him in George Street, Hanover Square, but the King stubbornly refused to
give the necessary money, and so Frederick had perforce to live with his
parents in apartments in one of the palaces, and to be a daily recipient of his
father’s slights. Such a position would have been trying for the most
virtuous and dutiful of sons, and the Prince was neither virtuous nor dutiful.
Moreover, though Parliament granted the King £100,000 for the Prince of
Wales, yet Frederick received only a small allowance from his father, and
even that was uncertain. Under these circumstances he quickly accumulated
debts, which the King refused to pay. The Queen interceded for him, but in
vain, and she received no gratitude from her son, who resented, as far as he
dared, her being appointed Regent in the King’s absence instead of himself.
As he was entirely dependent on his father for money, he did not venture to
make a public protest, but he cherished a grudge against his mother for
superseding him.
With all these grievances, Frederick soon followed his father’s example
of caballing against his sire, and he found plenty of sympathy from those
who were in opposition to the court and the Government. He had not been
long in England before an opportunity was afforded him of playing to the

popular gallery by an unpopular demand of the Crown to Parliament to
make good a pretended deficiency in the Civil List of £115,000; it was
really a veiled form of making the King a further grant. The measure was
violently opposed by the Opposition, but Walpole succeeded in carrying it
through the House of Commons. A great deal of ill-feeling against the court
was produced in the country by this extortionate demand, and the
Craftsman did its best to fan the flame of discontent. The Prince of Wales,
who was exceedingly sore at his father’s meanness towards him, pretended
to disapprove of the King’s conduct in making this demand, and was
inconsiderate enough to say so to certain personages, and his words,
repeated from mouth to mouth, did not lose in the journey. Pulteney and
Bolingbroke, and other prominent members of the Opposition, quoted with
approval what the Prince had said, and condoled with him on the way in
which he was treated by his father. The rumour of this reaching the King’s
ears incensed him the more against his son, but he could not act merely on
hearsay. He had no tangible ground of complaint against him, for the Prince
was cautious.
Another cause which drew the Prince towards the Opposition was his
liking for literature and talent. He seems to have had a genuine taste for les
belles lettres, he wrote poetry in French and English, some of it not
92
absolutely indifferent. The cleverest writers sided with the Opposition and
the polished periods of Bolingbroke, the eloquence of Wyndham, and the
wit of Chesterfield and Pulteney, all appealed to him. Bolingbroke,
especially, gained influence with the Prince, and in time became his
political mentor. Apart from the political aspect of the union, there seems to
have been a sincere friendship between the two. Soon after Frederick came
to England, Bolingbroke made overtures to him, to which the Prince
responded graciously, and the first interview between them, a secret one,
took place by appointment at the house of a mutual friend. Bolingbroke
who was the first to arrive, was shown into the library, and was passing the
time by turning over the leaves of a bulky tome. The Prince entered the
room unannounced. The book fell to the floor, and in his haste to bend the
knee, Bolingbroke’s foot slipped, and had not the Prince stepped forward to
support him he would have fallen to the ground. “My lord,” said Frederick,
with exquisite tact, as he raised him, “I trust this may be an omen of my
succeeding in raising your fortunes.”

The Prince had charming manners, which he inherited from his mother,
and he had other gifts which won for him popularity, notably his generosity,
which verged on extravagance. He had that easy and affable address which
sits so well on a royal personage, and he was popular with the people. It
pleased them to see the heir apparent walking about the streets unguarded,
and followed only by a servant. And Frederick had always a bow and a
smile for the meanest of his father’s subjects who recognised him.
The Prince’s chief favourite and counsellor was George Budd
Doddington, a curious man, whose geniality and vanity were in marked
contrast to his political intrigues. He was the nephew of Doddington, one of
the wealthiest land owners in England, whose sister had made a mésalliance
with one Bubb, an apothecary of Carlisle. On the death of Bubb, his widow
was forgiven, and her son George succeeded to his uncle’s vast estates, and
assumed the name of Doddington by royal licence. As he owned two
boroughs, he entered the House of Commons and attached himself to
Walpole, but on being refused a peerage by that statesman he turned against
him. He made the acquaintance of the Prince of Wales soon after his arrival
in England, and threw in his lot with him. Doddington was a useful friend
to the Prince in many ways, for, in addition to his social qualities and
knowledge of men, his wealth was of use. Doddington not only placed his
purse at the Prince’s service, but suffered himself to become the butt of
Frederick’s not very refined jests and practical jokes. “He submitted,” says
Horace Walpole, “to the Prince’s childish horseplay, being once rolled up in
a blanket and trundled downstairs. Nor was he negligent of paying more
solid court by lending his Royal Highness money.” Frederick once observed
to some of his boon companions: “This is a strange country, this England. I
am told Doddington is reckoned a clever man, yet I got £5,000 out of him
this morning; he has no chance of ever seeing it again.” But Doddington
was keenly alive to the social distinction which the Prince’s friendship
conferred upon him, and no doubt received what he considered an
equivalent for the money.
In the Prince’s next move for popularity Doddington played a passive
part. He was generally understood to represent the Prince in the House of
Commons, and when therefore he declined to speak in the House in favour
of the excise, it was regarded as a proof of the Prince’s lukewarmness; and
when another favourite, Townshend, who was the groom of the bedchamber

to the Prince, actually voted against the scheme, it was understood that the
Prince was hostile to it. Wyndham emphasised this in one of his attacks on
Walpole. He denounced corruption and tyranny, and recalled certain
unworthy king’s favourites of former times: “What was their fate?” he
asked. “They had the misfortune to outlive their master, and his son, as soon
as he came to the throne, took off their heads.” The Prince of Wales was
sitting under the gallery listening to the debate, and the allusion was
cheered to the echo by the Opposition. The Prince’s attitude was further
shown by his exceeding graciousness to Lord Stair, who had told the Queen
his mind, and to Lord Chesterfield, who had offended her past forgiveness.
The King was exceedingly angry, and threatened to turn Townshend out
of the little appointment he held under the Prince, but Walpole counselled
letting him alone. Walpole would have punished Doddington had he dared,
for he regarded him as the chief instigator of the Prince’s rebellious
conduct. This was most unfair, for Doddington’s advice was always on the
side of caution, and his influence had more than once prevented the Prince
from rising in open revolt against his parents. Walpole forgot for the
moment that behind the Prince was one much greater than Doddington
whose enmity never slept, and that one was Bolingbroke. Though debarred
from his seat in the House of Lords, and unable to raise his voice or vote,
Bolingbroke yet, by his genius for intrigue, the vigour of his political
writings and his consummate power of organisation, had done more than
any man to stir up public feeling against the excise, and to bring Walpole
within measurable distance of his fall. Most of the Opposition were puppets
moved by this master mind, Wyndham was his mouthpiece, even Pulteney
at this time was wholly under his spell. And under the ordinary working of
the Constitution, Bolingbroke would have led his hosts to victory had not
the King and Queen, unconstitutionally, it must be admitted, retained their
Prime Minister.
Meanwhile, though the Prince was proving himself a thorn in the side
of his father and the Government, and though the Opposition championed
his cause with fervour, he could not get his allowance increased, and he
sank deeper and deeper into debt. It came to the ears of old Sarah, Duchess
of Marlborough, that the Prince was in pecuniary distress, and she
bethought herself of a scheme which would at once gratify her ambition and
wound the feelings of the King and Queen. She asked the Prince to honour

her with a visit to Marlborough House, and, when he came, she offered him
the hand of her favourite granddaughter, Lady Diana Spencer, in marriage,
and promised to give him £100,000 as her portion. Lady Diana was a young
lady of much wit and beauty, and the Prince, partly because he wanted the
money, and partly because he knew the alliance would anger his father and
mother beyond measure, accepted the offer. All arrangements were made.
The day of the marriage was actually fixed, and the Prince was to be
secretly wedded to Lady Diana by Duchess Sarah’s chaplain in the
duchess’s private lodge in Windsor Great Park. The Royal Marriage Act,
which made illegal the marriage of a member of the royal family without
the consent of the reigning monarch, was not then in existence, and the
marriage, if it had been contracted, would have been valid, and impossible
to annul, except perhaps by a special Act, which would have had no chance
of passing through Parliament. There would have been nothing
objectionable about the marriage except its secrecy, for Lady Diana Spencer
(who afterwards became Duchess of Bedford) was by birth and fortune, as
by wit and beauty, far superior to the petty German princess whom the
Prince afterwards married. But Walpole got to hear of the plot in time, and
was able to prevent the marriage. It is a pity that it did not take place, for
the subsequent interview of the parents with old Duchess Sarah on the one
side and Queen Caroline on the other would have been one of the most
interesting in history.
An early and congenial marriage might have been the saving of the
Prince of Wales. Like his father and grandfather he affected a reputation for
gallantry, and he was always involved in affairs of a more or less
disreputable nature. In pursuit of adventures of this kind he behaved more
like a schoolboy than a prince arrived at years of discretion. Peter
Wentworth gives an account of one of his absurd escapades. He writes:—
“Thursday morning, as the King and Queen were going to their chaise
through the garden, I told them the Prince had got his watch again. Our
farrier’s man had found it at the end of the Mall with the two seals to’t. The
Queen laughed and said: ‘I told you before ’twas you who stole it, and now
’tis very plain that you got it from the woman who took it from the Prince,
and you gave it to the farrier’s man to say he had found it, to get the
reward’. (This was twenty guineas, which was advertised with the promise
of no questions being asked.) I took her Majesty’s words for a very great

compliment, for it looked as if she thought I could please a woman better
than his Highness. Really his losing his watch, and its being brought back in
the manner it has been, is very mysterious, and a knotty point to be
unravelled at Court, for the Prince protests he was not out of his coach in
the park on the Sunday night it was lost. But by accident I think I can give
some account of this affair, though it is not my business to say a word of it
at Court, not even to the Queen, who desired me to tell her all I knew of it,
with a promise that she would not tell the Prince. (And I desire also the
story may never go out of Wentworth Castle again.) My man, John Cooper,
saw the Prince that night let into the park through St. James’s Mews alone,
and the next morning a grenadier told him the Prince was robbed last night
of his watch and twenty-two guineas and a gold medal by a woman who
had run away from him. The Prince bid the grenadier run after her and take
the watch from her, which, with the seals, were the only things he valued;
the money she was welcome to, he said, and he ordered him, when he had
got the watch, to let the woman go. But the grenadier could not find her, so
I suppose in her haste she dropped it at the end of the Mall, or laid it down
there, for fear of being discovered by the watch and seals, if they should be
93
advertised.”
The Prince also followed his forbears’ example in setting up an
accredited mistress. His first intrigue was with Miss Vane (the beautiful
Vanilla), daughter of Lord Barnard, and one of the Queen’s maids of
honour, who, it was wittily said, “was willing to cease to be one on the first
opportunity”. Miss Vane had many admirers. Lord Harrington was one of
them, and Lord Hervey declared himself to be another. But Lord Hervey
was fond of posing as a gallant, and his testimony on the subject of his
conquests is of little worth. Miss Vane had a good deal of beauty, but little
understanding, and her levity and vanity led her into a fatal error. About a
year after the Prince had come to England she gave birth to a son in her
apartments in St. James’s Palace, and the child was baptised in the Chapel
Royal, and given the name of Fitz-Frederick Vane, which was, of course,
tantamount to explaining to all the world that the Prince of Wales was its
father, a fact which the Prince in no wise sought to deny.
Queen Caroline at once dismissed Miss Vane from her service, and
sharply reprimanded the Prince, telling him that in future he must carry on
his intrigues outside the circle of her household. No such scandal had

occurred since the disgrace of Miss Howe. Miss Vane’s family likewise cast
her off. The Prince took a house for her, and made her an allowance. But the
unfortunate girl soon had experience of the fickleness of men in general,
and of princes in particular. Frederick neglected her, and began to pay
marked attentions to Lady Archibald Hamilton. Lady Archibald was no
longer young, she was five and thirty, and the mother of ten children, and,
unlike Miss Vane, she had no great beauty. But she was clever and
intriguing, and soon gained great ascendency over her royal lover, whose
attentions to her became of the most public description. “He,” says Lord
Hervey, “saw her often at her own house, where he seemed as welcome to
the master as the mistress; he met her often at her sister’s; walked with her
day after day for hours together tête-à-tête in a morning in St. James’s Park;
and whenever she was at the drawing-room (which was pretty frequently)
his behaviour was so remarkable that his nose and her ear were
inseparable.”
Miss Vane had small chance with so clever a rival, and Lady Archibald
urged the Prince to get rid of her. In this the Queen concurred, for she
resented the indiscretion of her ex-maid of honour, and as there was some
thought of marrying the Prince at this time, she thought it best that he
should be clear of affairs of this kind. She did not reflect, or did not know,
that by getting rid of Miss Vane she was merely paving the way for a far
more dangerous woman to take her place. The Prince was easily persuaded
to part with Miss Vane. He sent Lord Baltimore, one of his lords in waiting,
to her with a message desiring her to go abroad for two or three years, and
leave her son to be educated in England. If she complied the Prince was
willing to allow her £1,600 a year for life, the sum he had given her
annually since she had been dismissed from court; if she refused, the
message wound up by saying that: “If she would not live abroad she might
starve for him in England”. The unfortunate young lady was much hurt by
the matter and manner of the communication. She declined to send any
answer by Lord Baltimore, on the ground that she must have time to think.
Lord Hervey says that she then sent for him, and asked him as a friend to
advise her what was best to be done. He and Miss Vane composed a letter to
the Prince, in which the betrayed lady was made to say to her betrayer:—

FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES.
“Your Royal Highness need not be put in mind who I am, nor whence
you took me: that I acted not like what I was born, others may reproach me;
but you took me from happiness and brought me to misery, that I might

reproach you. That I have long lost your heart I have long seen, and long
mourned: to gain it, or rather to reward the gift you made me of it, I
sacrificed my time, my youth, my character, the world, my family, and
everything that a woman can sacrifice to a man she loves; how little I
considered my interest, you must know by my never naming my interest to
you when I made this sacrifice, and by my trusting to your honour, when I
showed so little regard, when put in balance with my love to my own. I
have resigned everything for your sake but my life; and, had you loved me
still, I would have risked even that too to please you; but as it is, I cannot
think, in my state of health, of going out of England, far from all friends
and all physicians I can trust, and of whom I stand in so much need. My
child is the only consolation I have left; I cannot leave him, nor shall
anything but death ever make me quit the country he is in.”
When Frederick received this letter, instead of being touched by its
pathos, he flew into a rage, and swore that the minx could never have
written it, and he would be revenged on the rascal who helped her to
concoct it. He took all his friends into his confidence, and Miss Vane took
all hers, and the matter soon became the principal topic of conversation at
court, from the Queen and the Princesses downwards. Miss Vane gained
much sympathy by repeating the Prince’s brutal message, that “if she would
not live abroad she might for him starve in England”. Everybody
sympathised with her, and everybody blamed the Prince, who thereupon
threw over Lord Baltimore, and declared that he had never sent such a
message; he must have been misunderstood. On hearing this, Miss Vane,
acting on the advice of Pulteney, who was thought by many to have written
for her the first letter, and other friends, wrote a more submissive letter to
the Prince. In it she declared that she had certainly received the message
from Lord Baltimore, though she could hardly believe that it came from the
Prince’s lips. It was for him to show whether he had said those words or
not. If he had not, she felt sure he would treat her fairly; if he had, then all
the world would know how she had been ill-treated and betrayed.
Meanwhile the affair from being the gossip of the court became the talk
of the town, and ballads and pamphlets on the fair Vanilla were everywhere
circulated, under such titles as “Vanilla on the Straw,” “Vanilla, or the
Amours of the Court,” “Vanessa, or the Humours of the Court of Modern
Gallantry,” etc. The Prince seeing that he could not abandon the lady

without considerable discredit, at last agreed to settle on her £1,600 a year
for life, to give her the house in Grosvenor Street which she had occupied
since she had been dismissed from court, and to allow her son to remain
with her—in short, he yielded all her terms.
Poor Miss Vane did not long enjoy her fortune. Perhaps she really loved
her faithless wooer; she died at Bath soon after, her friends said of a broken
heart. Her child died about the same time. The Queen and Princess Caroline
declared that the Prince showed more feeling at the loss of this child than
they had thought him capable of possessing. Perhaps it was remorse.
The two elder Princesses, Anne and Amelia, were always quarrelling
with their brother. Amelia at first pretended to be his friend, and then
betrayed him to the King. When the Prince found this out he hated her, and
when the King discovered it he despised her; so she became disliked by
both. Anne, Princess Royal, was at perpetual feud with her brother, and
their strife came to a head, strangely enough, over music. The Princess had
been instructed by Handel, and helped him by every means in her power.
When Handel took over the management of the opera at the Haymarket, the
Princess induced the King and Queen to take a box there, and to frequently
attend the performances. All those who wished to be in favour with the
court followed suit and the Haymarket became a fashionable resort. The
Prince saw in this an opportunity of annoying his sister, and of showing
disrespect to the King and Queen. He affected not to care about Handel’s
music, and set to work to organise a series of operas at the theatre in
Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Party feeling ran very high just then, and seeing that
the Prince of Wales was so much interested in the opera at Lincoln’s Inn
Fields, many of the Opposition, and all those who had a grudge against the
court, made a point of attending the opera there, and it soon became a
formidable rival to the Haymarket. Instead of ignoring this, the King and
Queen took the matter up, and made it a personal grievance. They
patronised Handel more than ever, and made it a point that their courtiers
should do the same. Thus it came about that all those who appeared at the
Haymarket were regarded as the friends of the King and Queen, and all
those who attended Lincoln’s Inn Fields were looked upon as the Prince’s
friends.
Opposition is always popular, and the Prince managed to gather around
him the younger and livelier spirits among the nobility, and the most

beautiful and fashionable of the ladies of quality. Certainly Lincoln’s Inn
Fields was much more patronised, and the King and Queen and the Princess
Royal would often go to one of Handel’s operas at the Haymarket and find
a half empty house. This gave Lord Chesterfield an opportunity of uttering
one of his witticisms. One night when he came to Lincoln’s Inn Fields he
told the Prince that he had just looked in at the Haymarket, but found
nobody there but the King and Queen, “and as I thought they might be
talking business I came away,” he said; a joke which vastly pleased the
Prince, and greatly incensed the court. Referring to the large attendance of
peers at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the Princess Royal said, with a sneer, that she
“expected in a little while to see half the House of Lords playing in the
orchestra in their robes and coronets”. Conscious of failure she felt
extremely bitter against her brother, and abused him roundly. But the Prince
had won and could afford to laugh at his sister’s invectives. The court was
so deplorably dull, he said, that all those with any pretensions to wit, beauty
or fashion refused to follow its lead, and looked to him, the heir to the
throne, as their natural leader, notwithstanding the way in which he was
treated by the King and Queen.
Certainly the private life of the Court was far from lively. The
clockwork regularity of the King, both in business and in pleasure, and the
limited range of his amusements and interests tended to make his court
appallingly dull—in contrast to the old days at Leicester House. Mrs.
Howard, whose little parties had once been so popular, now withdrew more
and more to herself. She would probably have retired from court altogether
had it not been that by the death of her brother-in-law, her husband became
Earl of Suffolk. As she was now a countess she could no longer hold the
inferior position of bedchamber-woman, and placed her resignation in the
Queen’s hands, who, however, met the case by making her Mistress of the
Robes, and so retaining her about the court. Lady Suffolk had no longer to
perform the duties at the Queen’s toilet which had given her so much
umbrage, and her position became pleasanter in consequence of the change.
We find her writing to Gay a little later: “To prevent all future quarrels and
disputes I shall let you know that I have kissed hands for the place of
Mistress of the Robes. Her Majesty did me the honour to give me the choice
of lady of the bedchamber, or that which I find so much more agreeable to
me that I did not take one moment to consider it. The Duchess of Dorset
resigned it for me; and everything as yet promises more happiness for the

latter part of my life than I have yet had the prospect of. Seven nights’ quiet
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sleep and seven easy days have almost worked a miracle in me.”
Even Lord Hervey complained bitterly at this time of the monotony of
his daily round. He was dissatisfied, and considered that his services to the
Government and the Crown should be repaid by some more considerable
appointment than the one he held, which most people thought equal to his
abilities, and was certainly in excess of his deserts. But Walpole, who knew
how useful Hervey was as go-between, would not remove him from his post
about the Queen, notwithstanding his representations. Chafing under this
refusal Lord Hervey wrote the following letter to his friend Mrs. Clayton,
another courtier and favourite who could sympathise with him in his ennui.
It gives anything but a flattering picture of the royal circle:—
“I will not trouble you with any account of our occupations at Hampton
Court. No mill-horse ever went in a more constant track, or a more
unchanging circle, so that by the assistance of an almanack for the day of
the week, and a watch for the hour of the day, you may inform yourself
fully, without any other intelligence but your memory, of every transaction
within the verge of the Court. Walking, chaises, levées, and audiences fill
the morning; at night the King plays at commerce and backgammon, and
the Queen at quadrille, where poor Lady Charlotte (de Roussie) runs her
usual nightly gauntlet—the Queen pulling her hood, Mr. Schütz sputtering
in her face, and the Princess Royal rapping her knuckles, all at a time. It
was in vain she fled from persecution for her religion: she suffers for her
pride what she escaped for her faith; undergoes in a drawing-room what she
dreaded from the Inquisition, and will die a martyr to a Court, though not to
a Church.
“The Duke of Grafton takes his nightly opiate of lottery, and sleeps as
usual between the Princesses Amelia and Caroline; Lord Grantham strolls
from one room to another (as Dryden says) like some discontented ghost
that oft appears, and is forbid to speak, and stirs himself about, as people
stir a fire, not with any design, but in hopes to make it burn brisker, which
his lordship constantly does, to no purpose, and yet tries as constantly as if
he had ever once succeeded.
“At last the King comes up, the pool finishes, and everybody has their
dismission: their Majesties retire to Lady Charlotte and my Lord Lifford;

the Princesses to Bilderbec and Lony; my Lord Grantham to Lady Frances
and Mr. Clark; some to supper, and some to bed; and thus (to speak in the
95
Scripture phrase) the evening and the morning make the day.”
Lord Hervey may have been prejudiced, but independent testimony
comes from Lady Pomfret, who was then in attendance at court. She writes:
“All things appear to move in the same manner as usual, and all our actions
96
are as mechanical as the clock which directs them.”

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER IX:
92
One stanza of his poem addressed to Sylvia (the Princess of Wales)
ends thus:—

“Peu d’amis, reste d’un naufrage,
Je rassemble autour de moi,
Et me ris d’ l’étalage
Qu’a chez lui toujours un Roi!”

93
The Hon. Peter Wentworth to Lord Strafford, London, 1734.
94
Lady Suffolk to Gay, Hampton Court, 29th June, 1731. Suffolk
Correspondence.
95
Lord Hervey to Mrs. Clayton, Hampton Court, 31st July, 1733.
Sundon Correspondence.
96
The Countess of Pomfret to Mrs. Clayton, Hampton Court. Sundon
Correspondence.

CHAPTER X.

CAROLINE AND THE CHURCH.

In no sphere was Caroline’s influence more marked than in Church affairs;
she held the reins of ecclesiastical patronage in her hands, and during her
ten years’ reign as Queen Consort or Queen-Regent no important
appointment was made in the Church without her consent and approval.
George the Second was a Protestant of the Lutheran type, not so much from
conviction, for he never troubled to inquire into religious matters, as from
education and environment. He had no liking for the Church of England,
but as his office compelled him to conform to it, he did so without
difficulty. The established Church was to him merely a department of the
civil service of which he was the head. He always accepted the Queen’s
recommendations, and was as a rule indifferent about ecclesiastical
appointments.
Walpole was quite as Erastian as the King and even less orthodox. He
had no religious convictions, and did not make pretence to any; provided
the bishops were his political supporters, he cared nothing for their Church
views; they might disbelieve in the Trinity, but they must believe in him;
they might reject the Athanasian Creed (or the Apostles’ Creed too for that
matter), but they must profess the articles of the Whig faith. In those days
the High Church clergy were Tory, and the Low Church were Whig;
therefore Walpole appointed Low Church bishops, but he had as little liking
for the one school of thought as the other. A thorough-going sceptic himself,
he had a contempt for the latitudinarian clergy, regarding them as men who
sought to reconcile the irreconcilable. But he cared nothing about their
views; all he asked was that they should keep their heterodox opinions to
themselves and not write pamphlets or preach sermons which stirred up
strife in the Church, and made trouble for the Government. Early in his
political career the Sacheverel disturbance had given him a wholesome
dread of arousing the odium theologicum, and he determined never to repeat

the mistake he made then, but to let the Church severely alone. In his
ecclesiastical patronage he was guided chiefly by Dr. Gibson, Bishop of
London, and he preferred to appoint safe men, not particularly distinguished
in any way, except when he deferred to the wishes of the Queen, who kept
an eye on all Church appointments.
Caroline might be described as an unorthodox Protestant. Theology
interested her greatly, but her inquiries carried her into the shadowy regions
of universalism, and the refined Arianism of her favourite chaplain, Dr.
Samuel Clarke. She no more believed in an infallible Bible than in an
infallible Pope. The Protestant Dissenters, whom she favoured with her
patronage, would have recoiled in horror from her broad views had they
known them, and would have denounced her with little less fervour than
they denounced popery and prelacy. But Caroline took care that they should
not know her views, and however freely she might express herself to Dr.
Clarke and Mrs. Clayton, and at her metaphysical discussions, she kept a
seal upon her lips in public. By law it was necessary that she should be a
member of the established Church, and she was careful always to
scrupulously conform to its worship. She had prayers read to her every
morning by her chaplains; on Sundays and holy days she regularly attended
the services in one of the Chapels Royal. So particular was she that, one
Sunday when the King and Queen were too ill to go to church and had to
keep their beds, the chaplain came and read the service to them in their
bedroom. The Queen made a point of receiving the Holy Communion on
the great festivals of the Church’s year, such as Easter and Christmas; and
Lady Cowper comments on the devoutness of her behaviour on these
occasions. Paragraphs like the following figured at regular intervals in the
Gazette: “On Christmas Day the King and Queen, the Prince of Wales, the
Princess Royal, the Princesses Amelia and Caroline, with several of the
nobility and other persons of distinction, received the sacrament in the
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Chapel Royal of St. James’s”.
Nor were the lesser festivals of the Church overlooked: “On the Feast
of the Epiphany their Majesties, the King and Queen, the Prince of Wales,
and the three eldest Princesses, went to the Chapel Royal, preceded by the
King’s Heralds and Pursuivants-at-Arms, and heard divine service. His
Grace the Duke of Manchester carried the sword of state to and from chapel
for their Majesties, and his Majesty and the Prince of Wales made their

offerings at the altar, of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, according to annual
custom.” The ending of the day was of a more secular nature. “At night
their Majesties played at hazard with the nobility for the benefit of the
groom porter; and ’twas said the King won six hundred guineas, the Queen
three hundred and sixty, Princess Amelia twenty, Princess Caroline ten, the
Duke of Grafton and the Earl of Portmore several thousand.” Even King
Charles the Martyr, the latest addition to the prayer-book kalendar, was not
forgotten by the family who were keeping his grandson from the throne, for
we read: “Yesterday being the anniversary of the martyrdom of King
Charles the First, their Majesties and the Royal Family attended divine
98
service, and appeared in mourning, as is usual on that day”.
Thus it will be seen that in the matter of outward conformity to the rites
of the established Church the Queen gave no occasion for cavil. She gave
large sums to Church charities, such as £500 at a time to the Corporation of
the Sons of the Clergy; she endowed livings and restored churches, such as
Richmond, Greenwich and Kensington, presenting to Greenwich a fine peal
of bells, and to Kensington a new steeple. She even feigned an interest in
missionary work, and listened patiently to Berkeley when he expounded to
her his scheme for establishing a missionary college in Bermuda in
connection with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. She did little
to forward it, and he somewhat ungratefully declared that his visits to her
had been so much waste of time, and called her discussions “useless
debates”. Yet, though the Queen did little to convert his heathens, she
remembered Berkeley later, and obtained for him the deanery of Down.
But, with all her outward conformity, Caroline never understood the
peculiar position of the Church of England, nor did she trouble to
understand it. Once, soon after she came to England, Dr. Robinson, then
Bishop of London, who was opposed to Dr. Samuel Clarke’s views, waited
upon her to endeavour to explain the Church’s teaching, but he met with a
repulse. Lady Cowper says: “This day the Bishop of London waited on my
mistress, and desired Mrs. Howard to go into the Princess and say that he
thought it was his duty to wait upon her, as he was Dean of the Chapel, to
satisfy her on any doubts and scruples she might have in regard to our
religion, and explain anything to her which she did not comprehend. She
was a little nettled when Mrs. Howard delivered this message, and said:
‘Send him away civilly; though he is very impertinent to suppose that I,

who refused to be Empress for the sake of the Protestant religion, do not
understand it fully’.” Caroline’s words show how little she realised, or
sympathised with, the position of the Church of England; it was to her a
Protestant sect—that and nothing more. The Church of Laud, Juxon,
Andrewes, Sancroft and Ken, the via media between Roman Catholicism
and Protestantism, did not appeal to her; in fact she viewed it with dislike.
She made no pretence to impartiality in her patronage, or to holding the
balance even between the different parties in the Church; all her bishops
were more or less of her way of thinking. She would have made Dr. Samuel
Clarke Archbishop of Canterbury when Archbishop Wake died, had it not
been for Bishop Gibson’s temperate remonstrance. He told her that though
Clarke was “the most learned and honest man in her dominions, yet he had
one difficulty—he was not a Christian”. To do Clarke justice, he never
desired a bishopric, and he had doubts about the propriety of accepting one.
Moreover, he preferred his unique position at the court, where he was,
unofficially, the keeper of the Queen’s conscience.
It must be admitted that the Queen in her distribution of ecclesiastical
patronage always recognised the claims of scholarship and learning, and she
took infinite pains to discover the most deserving men. Among the divines
to whom she gave high preferment, besides Berkeley, were the learned
Butler and the judicious Secker, many years later Archbishop of Canterbury.
Secker, when he was Queen’s chaplain, mentioned to Caroline one day the
name of Butler, the famous author of The Analogy between Natural and
Revealed Religion. The Queen said she had thought that he was dead;
Secker said: “No, madam, not dead but buried”. The Queen took the hint,
and soon after appointed Butler Clerk of the Closet. He was thus brought
into contact with her, and she delighted exceedingly in his psychological
bent, and would command him to come to her, on her free evenings, from
seven to nine, to talk philosophy and metaphysics. She caused his name to
be put down for the next vacant bishopric, and on her death-bed she
commended Butler particularly to the King, who carried out his wife’s
wishes and made him Bishop of Durham.
Dr. Thomas Sherlock, a man eminent for his talents and learning, was
much liked by the Queen. She appointed him to the see of Bangor, and later
translated him to Salisbury in succession to his rival Hoadley. For some
time Sherlock filled much the same position with the Queen that Gibson,

Bishop of London, did with Walpole. He was the Queen’s favourite bishop,
and she intended to translate him to London when Archbishop Wake should
die, and Gibson, whom Whiston used to call “the heir apparent to
Canterbury,” should be advanced to the primacy by Walpole. Between these
two eminent prelates, Sherlock and Gibson, there existed a most unchristian
spirit of jealousy, and Gibson besought Walpole not to allow Sherlock to
succeed him in the bishopric of London. Alas! for the mutability of
temporal things: when at last Wake died, it was not Gibson, but a
comparatively unknown bishop, Potter of Oxford, who succeeded him in
the primacy. Before that time arrived Gibson fell out of favour with
Walpole, and Sherlock with the Queen, for the part they played in securing
the rejection of the Quakers’ Relief Bill. Walpole had yielded to the clamour
of the Church party so far as to refuse to repeal the Test and Corporation
Acts, but by way of compensation to the dissenters he wished to carry a bill
for the relief of Quakers. It was a point of conscience with the Quakers to
refuse to pay tithes unless compelled to do so by legal force. This force was
always applied, and they paid. All they asked for now was that the legal
proceedings against them should be made less costly. Walpole was willing
to give them this relief and the Queen supported him, but the bishops,
headed by Gibson and seconded by Sherlock, elated by their recent victory
over the Nonconformists, rose against it to a man, and though the Bill was
carried in the Commons it was rejected by the Lords. The King was highly
indignant and denounced the whole bench of bishops as “a parcel of black,
canting, hypocritical rascals”. Walpole’s resentment was especially levelled
against Gibson, and the Queen’s against Sherlock. The Queen sent for the
latter bishop and trounced him in terms which recall those which Queen
Elizabeth was said to address to her recalcitrant prelates: “How is it
possible,” said Caroline to Sherlock, “you could be so blind and so silly as
to be running a race of popularity with the Bishop of London among the
clergy, and hope you would rise upon the Bishop of London’s ruins (whom
you hate and wish ruined) when you were going hand in hand with him in
these very paths which you hoped would ruin him?... Are you not ashamed
not to have seen this, and to have been at once in this whole matter, the
Bishop of London’s assistant and enemy—tool and dupe?” She told the
crestfallen prelate that in the present temper of the King and Prime Minister
he could hope for neither London nor Canterbury, and advised him to go to
his diocese and try to live it down. As their dioceses were the last places

where Queen Caroline’s bishops were generally to be found, this was
equivalent to a sentence of banishment. Many years later Sherlock
succeeded Gibson as Bishop of London.
The Queen’s chief adviser in Church matters was her favourite, Mrs.
Clayton. Mrs. Clayton had no pretence to learning, and was ignorant of the
rudiments of theology—though, like many women of her type, she loved to
pose as an authority on theological questions. She had imbibed the Arian
principles then fashionable at court, and could repeat parrot-wise the
shibboleth of her party. As she held much the same views as the Queen
(though without her saving graces of learning and common sense), they
often settled between them who should succeed to the vacant deaneries and
bishoprics. Walpole came often in conflict with Mrs. Clayton over Church
appointments, for she was always urging the Queen to prefer extreme men
of heterodox views who gave much trouble to the Government by their
indiscreet utterances. At last, after several experiences of the vagaries of
these bellicose divines, Walpole remonstrated so strongly that Mrs.
Clayton’s recommendations were chiefly confined to the Irish Church. Here
for years she appointed practically whom she would. The influence of the
Queen’s woman of the bedchamber was well known to aspiring divines, and
she was overwhelmed with letters from parsons and prelates pining for
preferment. Many of these letters (preserved in the Sundon correspondence)
are couched in the most cringing tone, and are full of the grossest flattery.
The deans and bishops in esse or in posse generally followed up their letters
by making her little presents; for instance, we find the Bishop of Cork
sending her a dozen bottles of “green usquebaugh, sealed with the figure of
St. Patrick on black wax,” and another prelate a suit of fine Irish linen.
Among Mrs. Clayton’s Irish protégés was Dr. Clayton, a kinsman of
her husband, for whom she procured, despite the protest of the Primate of
Ireland, the bishopric of Clogher. Bishop Clayton made several attacks on
the doctrine of the Trinity, and once proposed in the Irish House of Lords to
abolish from the prayer-book the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, in a
speech of which one of his colleagues remarked, “it made his ears tingle”.
Dr. Clayton was not much of a scholar, and less of a theologian, and he
adapted his views to meet the approval of his patroness. The letters of this
spiritual pastor to Queen Caroline’s woman of the bedchamber are models
of subserviency. Once Mrs. Clayton rebuked him for a sermon he had

preached on the death of Charles the First, which seemed to her to praise
the King overmuch. He at once wrote to express his regret, and said he
would tone it down by adding “bred up with notions of despotic
government under the pernicious influence of his father”. He placed his
patronage, like his opinions, at her disposal, and kept her informed of
everything that went on in Ireland—acting, in fact, as a sort of spy in the
court interest. His complaisance was rewarded by his patroness, who caused
him to be successively advanced to the wealthier sees of Killala and Cork.
Most effusive was his gratitude: “Mrs. Clayton cannot command what I will
not perform,” he writes, and again: “Could you but form to yourself the
image of another person endued with the same steadiness of friendship,
liveliness of conversation, soundness of judgment, and a desire of making
everybody happy that is about her, which all the world can see in you, but
yourself, you would then pardon my forwardness in desiring to keep up a
correspondence.... If I am free from any vice, I think it is that of
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ingratitude.”
Bishop Clayton’s view of the rules that should govern ecclesiastical
preferment are worth quoting. The particular candidate he was
recommending was a son of the Earl of Abercorn, who had taken holy
orders. “What occurs to me at present,” he writes to Mrs. Clayton, “is the
consideration of ecclesiastical preferments in a political view. It has not
been customary for persons either of birth or fortune, to breed up their
children to the Church, by which means, when preferment in the Church is
given by their Majesties, there is seldom any one obliged but the very
person to whom it is given, having no relatives either in the House of Lords
or Commons that are gratified or are kept in dependence thereby. The only
way to remedy which is by giving extraordinary encouragements to persons
of birth and interest whenever they seek for ecclesiastical preferment, which
will encourage others of the same quality to come into the Church, and may
thereby render ecclesiastical preferments of the same use to their Majesties
100
as civil employments.” Of the higher interests of the Church or of
religion, it will be noted, this servile prelate makes no mention; but the fear
of the world and the bedchamber woman was always before his eyes.
Mrs. Clayton had a large number of poor and obscure relatives, many
of whom benefited at the expense of the Church. One of her nieces,
Dorothy Dyves, whom she had made a maid of honour to the Princess

Royal, fell in love with the Princess’s young chaplain, the Reverend Charles
Chevenix, who was not unmindful of the avenues to preferment thus
opened to him. Mrs. Clayton at first refused her consent: she did not
consider a poor chaplain good enough for her niece, but Chevenix made the
following appeal to her:—
“My salary as chaplain to her Royal Highness will, I hope, be thought a
reasonable earnest of some future preferment, and, could I ever be happy
enough to obtain your protection, I might flatter myself that I should one
day owe to your goodness what I can never expect from my own merit—
such a competency of fortune as may make Miss Dyves’s choice a little less
unequal. My birth, I may venture to add, is that of a gentleman. My father
long served, and at last was killed, in a post where he was very well known
—a post that is oftener an annual subsistence than a large provision for a
family, and that small provision was unfortunately lost in the year ’20. One
of my brothers is now in the army, a profession not thought below people of
the first rank; another, indeed, keeps a shop, but I hope that circumstance
101
rather deserves compassion than contempt.”
Mrs. Clayton was touched by the frankness of this appeal, but the shop
remained an obstacle for some time. At last she gave her consent. Chevenix
married Dorothy Dyves, and then it was only a question of a little time for
the chaplain to blossom into a bishop. He was in due course advanced to the
see of Killaloe, and afterwards to the richer one of Waterford. Truly Mrs.
Clayton was, as her niece describes her, one of the most “worthy and
generous of aunts”. No one could be more mindful of family claims. Her
patronage was not entirely ecclesiastical, though she made the Church her
speciality; she found for her brother-in-law a comfortable post in the civil
service; she obtained for her nephews good military and civil appointments,
and her nieces were all made maids of honour. Lord Pembroke sent her a
valuable present—a marble table—and obtained something for a poor
relative. Lord Pomfret gave her a pair of diamond ear-rings, worth £1,400; a
very good investment, for he got in return the lucrative appointment of
Master of the Horse. Mrs. Clayton, or Lady Sundon as she had then
become, was very proud of these diamond ear-rings, and appeared with
them at one of the Queen’s drawing-rooms. This roused the ire of old Sarah,
Duchess of Marlborough, who had once filled a similar position with Queen
Anne. “How can that woman,” said Duchess Sarah in a loud voice, so that

all around might hear, “how can that woman have the impudence to go
about with that bribe in her ear?” “Madam,” replied Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, who was standing by, “how can people know where there is wine
to be sold, unless there is a sign hung out?”
It can well be imagined that a system of ecclesiastical patronage
conducted on these lines did not result in advantage to the Church. Walpole
appointed bishops for purely political reasons, Mrs. Clayton for monetary
and family consideration, the Queen because their views coincided with her
own. Yet the Queen, though sometimes misled by her favourites, who
traded on her ignorance of the English Church, honestly tried to appoint the
best men according to her lights. The learning and ability of her bishops
were undeniable; their only drawback was that they did not believe in the
doctrines of the Church of which they were appointed the chief pastors.
Without entering into theological controversy, it may be safely laid down
that those who direct an institution ought to believe in the institution itself.
This is precisely what most of Caroline’s bishops did not do; their energies
were directed into other channels, and their enthusiasms reserved for other
pursuits. Some of her bishops, notably those who were appointed to sees in
Ireland and Wales, never went near their dioceses at all, while others treated
the cardinal doctrines of Christianity with tacit contempt, if not open
unbelief. The indifference of the bishops filtered down through the lower
ranks of the clergy, and gradually influenced the whole tone of the
established Church; if the bishops would not do their duty they could hardly
blame their clergy for failing in theirs. Moreover, the policy of the Whig
Government, in packing the Episcopal Bench solely with its own partisans,
resulted in the bishops being out of touch with their clergy, for the majority
of the parsons, especially in the country districts, were Tory, and clung to
their political faith as firmly as to their religious convictions.

BENJAMIN HOADLEY, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER.
From a Painting by Mrs. Hoadly in the National Portrait Gallery.

At no period of her history has the Church of England been in greater
danger than she was from her own bishops and clergy in the reign of
George the Second. On the one hand was a party embittered by defeat, shut
out from all hope of preferment, and inflamed by a spirit of intolerance in
things political and ecclesiastical; on the other was a party just as intolerant
in reality, but hiding its intolerance under the cloak of broad and liberal
views, and with leaders using the intellect and learning they undoubtedly

possessed, to subvert, or at least to set aside, the doctrines of the Church
they had sworn to believe. Indifference in practice quickly succeeded
indifference in belief, and herefrom may be traced most of the ills which
afflicted the Church of England during the eighteenth century. It was no
wonder, when the established Church was spiritually dead, that earnest-
minded men, disgusted at this condition of things, and hopeless of
remedying it, set up religious bodies of their own. The growth of
Methodism in the eighteenth century was directly due to the shortcomings
of the Church, which had lost its hold on the masses of the people. The year
after Queen Caroline’s death, in 1738, John Wesley returned from Georgia,
and, aided by his brother Charles, began the mission which was attended
with such marvellous results. True, the Wesleys, in words at least, never
wavered in their adherence to the Church of England, but the
discouragement they met with from the bishops and the often ill-directed
zeal of their followers led in time to the inevitable separation, which was
followed later by schisms among the Methodists themselves.
One of the most typical of the Georgian bishops was Hoadley, who
became successively Bishop of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury and
Winchester, “cringing from bishopric to bishopric”. Hoadley’s career was a
striking illustration of the superiority of mind over body. When he was an
undergraduate at Cambridge he had an illness which crippled him for life;
he was obliged to walk with a crutch, and had to preach in a kneeling
posture. His appearance was exceedingly unprepossessing, but he
completely overcame these natural disadvantages by the sheer force of his
will. He had taken up the Church as a profession, and from the professional
point of view he certainly succeeded in it; but he does not seem to have
believed in the teaching of the Church whose principles he had nominally
accepted. He was a conformist simply because it paid him to conform. Even
a favourable biographer writes: “So far indeed was Hoadley from adhering
strictly to the doctrines of the Church that it is a little to be wondered at on
what principles he continued throughout life to profess conformity”.
Hoadley early threw in his lot with the Whig party, and in Queen
Anne’s reign was looked upon as the leader of the Low Church divines, and
a staunch upholder of Whig principles. He did not obtain any considerable
preferment until George the First came to the throne, when he was made a
royal chaplain, and soon after advanced to the bishopric of Bangor. He did

not once visit his bishopric during the whole of his six years tenure of the
see, but remained in London, as the leader of the extreme latitudinarian
party, which, since the Princess of Wales’s patronage, had become the
fashionable one, and offered the best prospects of promotion. He therefore
broke with the orthodox section of the Low Church party, who came to
regard him with little less dislike than High Churchmen. Hoadley’s love of
polemics soon brought him into conflict with Convocation, and led to what
was known as the “Bangorian controversy”. The bishop had preached a
sermon before King George the First on “The nature of the Kingdom or
Church of Christ,” in which he denied that there was any such thing as a
visible Church of Christ, or Church authority. Convocation censured the
sermon, and would have proceeded to further measures against the
recalcitrant bishop had not the Government, by an arbitrary exercise of
power, suspended it altogether. Convocation thus prorogued was not
summoned again until the middle of the reign of Queen Victoria. It would
weary and not edify to enter into the details of this dreary Bangorian
controversy; the tracts and pamphlets written upon it numbered nearly two
hundred, and the heat and bitterness were such as only a religious dispute
could engender.
Hoadley did not heed his ecclesiastical enemies, for he had staunch
friends at court; he enjoyed not only the favour of the King and the Princess
of Wales, but had the ear of Mrs. Clayton, soon to become a dispenser of
patronage. His letters to her are some of the most fulsome preserved in her
correspondence. “I compare you in my thoughts,” he writes, “with others of
the same kind, and I see with pleasure, so great a superiority to the many,
that I think I can hardly express my sense of it strongly enough. Compared
with them therefore, I may justly speak of you as one of the superior
species, and you will supply the comparison if I do not always express it,
and not think me capable of offering incense, which I know you are not
102
capable of receiving.”
In 1721 Hoadley was translated from Bangor to the richer see of
Hereford, and two years later to Salisbury, which was wealthier still. At
Salisbury he so far remembered his episcopal duties as to deliver a primary
charge to his clergy, a poor composition. He was not content with Salisbury,
and cast envious eyes upon the rich see of Durham, which then maintained

a prince-bishop. Walpole, who disliked him as being a protégé of Mrs.
Clayton’s, passed him over in favour of Dr. Talbot, Bishop of Oxford.
Hoadley owed much of his influence with the Whig party to the fact
that he had always shown himself very friendly to Dissenters, and was in
favour of abolishing the iniquitous Test and Corporation Acts and other
disabilities under which they laboured; the animosity of his enemies arose
quite as much from this fact as from their dislike of his opinions. The
Protestant Nonconformists were the backbone of the Whig party, and the
staunchest supporters of the House of Hanover; they therefore, not
unnaturally, expected, in return for their great political services, that the
disabilities which pressed upon them should be removed. From time to time
they gained certain points, and the Acts were rendered practically innocuous
by annual indemnities; but still they disfigured the Statute Book, and to this
the Dissenters rightly objected. In 1730 a determined attempt was made by
the Dissenters throughout England to secure the repeal of the Corporation
and Test Acts, and they resolved to present a monster petition to Parliament
praying that the matter should be proceeded with forthwith. This action put
the Government into a position of considerable difficulty, and it was
entirely opposed to Walpole’s policy of letting sleeping dogs lie. Though
both he and the Queen (we will leave the King out of the question, as he
does not count) had the fullest sympathy with the aspirations of Dissenters;
yet they saw that to raise this question at the present time would be to fan
the smouldering embers of religious controversy, and would put new heart
and strength into the Opposition. The clergy of the established Church,
almost to a man, would be against them, and, with a general election
impending, that would mean that the Government would have an active
enemy in every parish and hamlet in the kingdom. Such a reform, though
just and reasonable in itself, would have the effect of alienating a number of
the Government’s lukewarm supporters, and would give an opportunity for
the Roman Catholics to assert themselves and claim relief also, for they
were far more cruelly oppressed than the Protestant Dissenters.
Walpole knew that Hoadley had influence with the Dissenters, and he
and the Queen talked it over, and resolved to ask Hoadley to see the heads
of the dissenting party and endeavour to persuade them not to bring forward
their petition. As Walpole had given offence to Hoadley by refusing him
Durham, the Queen undertook this delicate mission. She sent for the bishop,

and used all her eloquence to bring him round to her way of thinking. She
dwelt on her admiration of his principles and writings; she said it was in his
power to be of great use to the Government, and to place her, the Queen,
under a personal debt of gratitude, which she would be slow to forget. She
pointed out the danger that would arise from the religious question being
raised at the present time, and she therefore desired him to ask the
Dissenters to postpone their request. Hoadley demurred a good deal,
possibly because the hint of promotion was not definite enough, and
pointed out that as he had always urged the repeal of the offending Acts, he
could hardly turn round now and eat his words. But he said he would feel
the popular pulse, and if it appeared that the present was an inopportune
moment for raising the question, he would endeavour to persuade the
Dissenters to postpone it to a more convenient season.
Soon after this interview a report was promulgated by Walpole to the
effect that “the Queen had sent for the Bishop of Salisbury and convinced
him that this request of the Dissenters was so unreasonable that he had
promised her not to support it”. This report had the very opposite effect to
what was intended. It caused the Dissenters to be suspicious of their friend,
and consequently tended to nullify any advice he might give them. The
bishop went to Walpole in a rage and said he could be of no service in the
matter whatever, and that so far from persuading the Dissenters from
bringing forward their petition, he should now encourage them to do so.
Walpole tried to soothe Hoadley by fair words, but finding him not
amenable to them, he gave him a strong hint that if he persisted in his
intention, he would ruin any chances of promotion he might have from the
Government or the Queen. This brought the bishop to his bearings; he had
more conferences with the Queen on the subject, and was ultimately bought
over to complaisance by the promise of the next reversion of the see of
Winchester. The Dissenters fell into a trap. From all over England they sent
delegates to London, who on their part entrusted the negotiations with the
Government to a committee of London Nonconformists. As this committee
was composed of tradesmen in the City, or lawyers eager for promotion,
Walpole was able to buy them over singly and collectively, and so, betrayed
by the bishop and their delegates, the Dissenters went to the wall.
Hoadley had the misfortune to please neither the Government nor the
Dissenters, for neither trusted him; but he probably did not mind, as he

received what he worked for—the see of Winchester. Soon after his
translation to Winchester he proceeded, after the approved fashion of Mrs.
Clayton’s favourites, to show his independence and disburden his soul, by
publishing a pamphlet called A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the
Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. This set the clergy by the ears, and they
promptly started a heresy hunt, to the great discomfiture of the Government
responsible for Hoadley’s promotion.
An answer was written to the pamphlet by Dr. Brett, in which Hoadley
was attacked with violence and bitterness. The King, who objected to
Hoadley, asked the Queen what she thought of Brett’s answer, which he had
much enjoyed reading, not because of the nature of the controversy, for
which he cared little, but because of the personal abuse of a prelate whom
he disliked. The Queen, who was very much annoyed at Hoadley’s
indiscretion, however much she might agree with his opinions, began to
explain her views on the subject of the controversy. But the King cut her
short testily, and told her, “She always loved talking of such nonsense and
things she knew nothing of;” adding, that “if it were not for such foolish
persons loving to talk of those things when they were written, the fools who
wrote upon them would never think of publishing their nonsense, and
disturbing the Government with impertinent disputes that nobody of any
sense ever troubled himself about.” Walpole had evidently entered his
protest too, aimed not only at Hoadley but at Mrs. Clayton. The Queen, who
made it a rule never to oppose her liege in anything, bowed assent and said:
“Sir, I only did it to let Lord Hervey know that his friend’s book had not
met with that general approbation he had pretended”.
“A pretty fellow for a friend,” said the King, turning to Hervey, who
was standing by. “Pray, what is it that charms you in him? His pretty
limping gait?” (and then he acted the bishop’s lameness) “or his nasty,
stinking breath?—phaugh!—or his silly laugh, when he grins in your face
for nothing, and shows his nasty rotten teeth? Or is it his great honesty that
charms your lordship—his asking a thing of me for one man, and, when he
came to have it in his own power to bestow, refusing the Queen to give it to
the very man for whom he had asked it? Or do you admire his conscience
that makes him now put out a book that, till he was Bishop of Winchester,
for fear his conscience might hurt his preferment, he kept locked up in his
chest? Is his conscience so much improved beyond what it was when he

was Bishop of Bangor, or Hereford, or Salisbury (for this book, I hear, was
written so long ago)? Or was it that he would risk losing a shilling a-year
more whilst there was nothing better to be got than what he had? My lord, I
am very sorry you choose your friends so ill; but I cannot help saying, if the
Bishop of Winchester is your friend, you have a great puppy and a very dull
fellow, and a great rascal for your friend. It is a very pretty thing for such
scoundrels, when they are raised by favour so much above their desert, to
be talking and writing their stuff, to give trouble to the Government that has
shown them that favour; and very modest, and a canting hypocritical knave
to be crying, ‘The Kingdom of Christ is not of this world,’ at the same time
that he, as Christ’s ambassador receives £6,000 or £7,000 a year. But he is
just the same thing in the Church that he is in the Government, and as ready
to receive the best pay for preaching the Bible, though he does not believe a
word of it, as he is to take favours from the Crown, though, by his
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republican spirit and doctrine, he would be glad to abolish its power.”
Having delivered himself of this lengthy exordium, the King stopped
and looked at the Queen, as much as to say who dare gainsay him. She had
not been able to get a word in edgeways, but by smiling and nodding she
tried to signify her approval of everything her lord and master said.
This is the only instance on record we have of the King’s direct interest
in ecclesiastical affairs, for, during the Queen’s lifetime, Church patronage
remained in her hands, and even after her death her expressed wishes were
carried out. But when all these were fulfilled, many aspiring divines, since
the Queen and Lady Sundon were no longer available, paid their court to
the King’s mistress, Madame de Walmoden, afterwards Countess of
Yarmouth, and, for the rest of George the Second’s reign, the royal road to
bishoprics ran through the apartments of the mistress.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER X:
97
London Gazette, 27th December, 1729.

98
Daily Courant, 31st January, 1733.
99
Sundon Correspondence. The Bishop of Killala to Mrs. Clayton,
Dublin, 17th April, 1731.
100
Ibid., 19th March, 1730.
101
Sundon Correspondence. The Rev. Charles Chevenix to Lady
Sundon, London, 24th November, 1734.
102
Sundon Correspondence. Bishop Hoadley to Mrs. Clayton [undated].
103
Hervey’s Memoirs.

CHAPTER XI.

THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS
ROYAL.

1733–1734.

Soon after the withdrawal of the excise scheme the King sent a message to
Parliament with the news that his eldest daughter, the Princess Royal, was
betrothed to the Prince of Orange. The match was not a brilliant one, for the
Prince was deformed, not of royal rank, and miserably poor. But the “Prince
of Orange” was still a name to be conjured with among the Whigs and the
Protestant supporters of the dynasty generally, and the announcement was
popular, as a further guarantee of the Protestant succession. The
Government regained some of the credit they had lost over the excise
scheme and Parliament willingly voted the Princess a dower of £80,000,
which was double the sum ever given before to a princess of the blood
royal.
The Princess Royal had no affection for her betrothed, whom she had
never even seen, but she was exceedingly anxious to be married. It was said
at court that the King of France had once entertained the idea of asking her
hand in marriage for the Dauphin, but her grandfather, George the First,
would not listen to it on account of the difference of religion. There was no
evidence to support this story, and it was certain that since George the
Second had ascended the throne no suitor of any importance had come
forward; so that, despite his drawbacks, the Prince of Orange was the best
husband that could be got. Indeed, it seemed as though it were a choice
between him and no husband at all. The Prince of Wales was exceedingly
indignant with his sister for getting married before him, and so obtaining a
separate establishment, a thing for which he had hitherto asked in vain. He

need not have envied her, for she was making a match that would satisfy
neither her love nor her ambition.
The Queen showed no enthusiasm for the marriage, and the
negotiations were unduly prolonged. Months passed before everything was
settled, and it was November before the Prince of Orange set out for
England and his intended bride. A royal yacht was sent to escort him to
English shores, and, according to a journal: “The person who brought the
first news of the Prince of Orange being seen off Margate was one who kept
a public house there; who, upon seeing the yacht, immediately mounted his
horse and rode to Canterbury, where he took post horses and came to St.
James’s at eleven o’clock on Monday night. Her Majesty ordered him
twenty guineas and Sir Robert Walpole five. Twenty he hath since laid out
104
on a silver tankard, on which his Majesty’s arms are engraved.”
Probably this messenger was the only person who had reason to rejoice
at the arrival of the Prince of Orange. The Prince was lodged in Somerset
House, and many of the nobility went to wait upon him there, hoping by
paying him their court to please the King. They little knew that the King
and Queen were in their hearts opposed to the match, and had only yielded
to it from political exigencies, and the impossibility of finding any other
suitable suitor for their daughter. The Queen sent Lord Hervey to Somerset
House with orders to come back and tell her “without disguise what sort of
hideous animal she was to prepare herself to see”. The Prince was not
nearly so bad as he had been painted, for though he was deformed, he had a
pleasant and engaging manner. The Queen seemed more interested in the
appearance of the future bridegroom than the bride herself, for the Princess
Royal, when she heard of the arrival of her lover, continued playing the
harpsichord with some of the opera people as though nothing had happened.
“For my part,” said the Queen, “I never said the least word to encourage her
in this marriage or to dissuade her from it.” The King, too, left the Princess
at liberty, but as she was determined to marry some one, and as the Prince,
though not a crowned King, was the head of a petty state, she said that she
105
was willing to marry him. The King then remembered his duty as a
father, and not too nicely warned his daughter of the Prince’s physical
unattractiveness, but she said she was resolved, if he were a baboon, to
marry him. “Well, then, marry him,” retorted the King in a huff, “and you’ll
have baboon enough I warrant you.”

The wedding was arranged to take place immediately after the arrival
of the bridegroom elect, but as ill-luck would have it the Prince fell sick of
a fever, and for some months lay dangerously ill. During the whole time of
his sickness none of the Royal Family went to visit him, or took any notice
of him, by command of the King, who wished to inculcate the doctrine that
before his marriage to the Princess the Prince of Orange was nobody, and
could only become somebody through alliance with the Royal Family. The
Prince, though he must have felt this neglect, behaved with great good
sense, and as soon as he was able to go out, he went to St. James’s Palace to
pay his respects as if nothing had happened. He had an interview with his
future bride, and stayed to dinner with the princesses informally. When the
King heard of it he was very angry, and forbade them to receive him any
more without his permission. The occasion did not arise, for a few days
later the Prince of Orange went to Bath for a cure, and did not return to
London until a fortnight before his wedding.
The marriage took place on March 14th, 1734. The Princess Royal,
who had maintained an impassive front throughout her engagement, neither
evincing pleasure at the Prince’s arrival, nor sorrow at his illness, showed
the same impassive demeanour at her wedding. The ceremony took place at
night in the Chapel Royal, St. James’s. A covered gallery of wood was built
outside, through which the procession had to pass. This gallery gave great
offence to old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who could see it from her
windows of Marlborough House. It had been erected when the wedding was
first settled to take place, four months before, and she was indignant at its
being left standing so long. “I wonder,” she said, “when neighbour George
will remove his orange chest.” On the night of the wedding, the “orange
chest” was illuminated from end to end, and accommodated four thousand
people who were favoured with tickets to see the processions pass. At seven
o’clock in the evening the bridegroom with his attendants was waiting in
the great council chamber of St. James’s, the bride with her ladies was
ready in the great drawing-room, and the King and Queen, with the rest of
the Royal Family were assembled in the smaller drawing-room. Three
processions were then marshalled, that of the bridegroom, that of the bride,
and that of the King and Queen. The Chapel Royal was upholstered for the
occasion more like a theatre than a place of worship, being hung with
velvet, gold and silver tissue, fringes, tassels, gilt lustres, and so forth. The
Prince of Orange was magnificently clad in gold and silver, and as he wore

a long wig that flowed down his back and concealed his figure, he made a
more presentable appearance than was expected. The Princess Royal was
also gorgeously attired; she wore a robe of silver tissue, and her ornaments
included a necklace of twenty-two immense diamonds; her train, which was
six yards long, was supported by ten bridesmaids, the daughters of dukes
and earls, who were also clad in silver tissue. The Queen and her younger
daughters were visibly affected during the ceremony, and could not restrain
their tears at the sacrifice they considered the Princess was making. The
King, who had shown himself very restive before the wedding, behaved
very well on the day, but the Prince of Wales, though he was tolerably civil
to the bridegroom, could not bring himself to be cordial to the bride.
At twelve o’clock, the Prince and Princess of Orange supped in public
with the Royal Family, and after the banquet, which lasted two hours, came
the most curious part of the ceremony. The English Court had borrowed a
custom from Versailles, and a most trying one it must have been for the
bride and bridegroom. As soon as the Prince and Princess of Orange had
retired, the whole court were admitted to see them sitting up in bed—that is
to say, the courtiers passed through the room and made obeisance. The
bridegroom, now that he had doffed his fine clothes and peruke, did not
look his best, but the bride maintained her self-possession, even under this
ordeal. Referring next morning to the sight of the princely pair in bed, the
Queen exclaimed: “Ah! mon Dieu! quand je voiois entrer ce monstre pour
coucher avec ma fille, j’ai pensé m’évanouir; je chancelois auparavant,
mais ce coup là m’a assommée.”
The Princesses bewailed the fate of their sister quite as much as their
mother. Princess Amelia declared that nothing on earth would have induced
her to marry such a monster. Their lamentations were wasted. The Princess
of Orange, to her credit be it said, determined to make the best of her
husband, and she behaved towards him in a most dutiful manner, and made
his interests her own.
The Prince and Princess of Orange stayed in England for six weeks
after their marriage, and the Prince bade fair to become a popular hero. For
the time, he quite outshone the Prince of Wales as the idol of the hour. This
was very noticeable at the theatre; when the Prince of Wales came into the
house he was received with but moderate applause, but the instant the
Prince of Orange appeared the whole theatre rang with shouts and cheers.

The King, too, noticed these signs of popular feeling and became jealous,
and anxious to send his son-in-law back to Holland as soon as possible. The
King was exceedingly unpopular, and the “Prince of Orange” was an
ominous name in England to a royal father-in-law. The City of London, the
University of Oxford, and many towns presented addresses on the occasion
of the marriage of the Princess Royal, which, though couched in
complimentary language, yet contained many covert sarcasms. They dwelt
so much on the services rendered to England by a Prince who bore the
name of Orange, and expressed so fervently the hope that this Prince might
follow his great namesake’s example, that it almost seemed as if they
wished him to depose his father-in-law, as William of Orange had deposed
King James. The address of the City of London, for example, was thus
paraphrased:—

Most gracious sire behold before you
Your prostrate subjects that adore you—
The Mayor and citizens of London,
By loss of trade and taxes undone,
Who come with gratulations hearty
Altho’ they’re of the Country Party,
To wish your Majesty much cheer
On Anna’s marriage with Mynheer.
Our hearts presage, from this alliance,
The fairest hopes, the brightest triumphs;
For if one Revolution glorious
Has made us wealthy and victorious.
Another, by just consequence,
Must double both our power and pence:
We therefore hope that young Nassau,
Whom you have chose your son-in-law,
Will show himself of William’s stock,
And prove a chip of the same block.

ANNE, PRINCESS ROYAL, AND THE PRINCE OF ORANGE.
The King was exceedingly restive under these historical parallels, and
became more and more anxious to speed the parting guest. Therefore, at the
end of April the Prince and Princess of Orange embarked at Greenwich for
Holland. The parting of the Princess with her family was most affecting—
except with her brother the Prince of Wales, who did not trouble to take
leave of her at all. Her mother and sisters wept bitterly over her, the King
“gave her a thousand kisses and a shower of tears, but not one guinea”. Yet,
such is human nature, after a few weeks the Princess was as much forgotten
at the English Court as though she had never existed.
Another familiar figure disappeared from the Court a few months later
(in November, 1734), namely, Lady Suffolk, better known as Mrs. Howard.
She had often wished to resign her office, but her circumstances for one
reason did not admit of her doing so, and for another the Queen always

persuaded her to remain, lest a younger and less amenable lady might take
her place. The King, who had long since tired of her, resented this action on
the part of the Queen. “I do not know,” he said, “why you will not let me
part with a deaf old woman of whom I am weary?” Mrs. Howard was weary
too, and had come to loathe her bonds. But what brought matters to a crisis
cannot be certainly stated, it was probably a combination of events.
The year before, shortly after he succeeded to the earldom, Lord
Suffolk died, and Lady Suffolk was left a widow, for which no doubt she
was devoutly thankful. She was now free to marry again; and if she did not
she possessed a moderate competency, which would enable her to live in a
position befitting her rank. Lady Suffolk was friendly with many members
of the Opposition, including Bolingbroke, who was of all persons most
disliked at court. It was said by her enemies that she had a political intrigue
with him, and had met him at Bath. Coxe tells a story which seems to show
that the Queen was at the bottom of Lady Suffolk’s retirement. “Lord
Chesterfield,” he says, “had requested the Queen to speak to the King for
some trifling favour; the Queen promised, but forgot it. A few days
afterwards, recollecting her promise, she expressed regret at her
forgetfulness, and added she would certainly mention it that very day.
Chesterfield replied that her Majesty need not give herself that trouble, for
Lady Suffolk had spoken to the King. The Queen made no reply, but on
seeing the King told him she had long promised to mention a trifling
request to his Majesty, but it was now needless, because Lord Chesterfield
had just informed her that she had been anticipated by Lady Suffolk. The
King, who always preserved great decorum with the Queen, and was very
unwilling to have it supposed that the favourite interfered, was extremely
displeased both with Lord Chesterfield and his mistress. The consequence
was that in a short time Lady Suffolk went to Bath for her health, and
returned no more to Court.”
It is possible that some such incident occurred, but it could not have
been the immediate cause of Lady Suffolk’s retirement, as she held office
for more than a year after Lord Chesterfield was dismissed in consequence
of voting against the excise. It is true she went to Bath, and probably met
Bolingbroke there too, but it is unlikely that she had a political intrigue with
him. On her return to court, the King seems first to have ignored her, and
then to have insulted her publicly. This was the last straw, and Mrs. Howard

determined to resign at once. The Duke of Newcastle wrote to Walpole:
“You will see by the newspapers that Lady Suffolk has left the Court. The
particulars that I had from the Queen are, that last week she acquainted the
Queen with her design, putting it upon the King’s unkind usage of her. The
Queen ordered her to stay a week, which she did, but last Monday had
another audience, complained again of her unkind treatment from the King,
was very civil to the Queen, and went that night to her brother’s house in St.
106
James’s Square.”
The Duke of Newcastle’s statement is borne out by a curious
manuscript, entitled “Memorandum of the conversation between Queen
Caroline and Lady Suffolk, upon Lady Suffolk’s retiring from her Majesty’s
107
service, 1734”. This memorandum was probably jotted down by Lady
Suffolk soon after her interview with the Queen, and runs as follows:—
Lady Suffolk: “Madam, I believe your Majesty will think that I have
more assurance than ever anybody had to stay so long in your family, after
the public manner his Majesty has given me of his displeasure. But I hope,
when I tell you that it occasioned my not waiting sooner upon your Majesty,
you will not think it was owing to assurance. I have always had, and I hope
I have always shown, the greatest duty and attention for everything that
relates to your Majesty, and I could not think it was proper, whilst you were
so indisposed, to trouble you with anything relating to me, but I come now,
Madam, to beg your leave to retire.”
The Queen: “You surprise me. What do you mean? I do not believe the
King is angry. When has he shown his displeasure? Did I receive you as if
you were under mine?”
Lady Suffolk: “No, madam. If your Majesty had treated me in the same
manner as his Majesty did, I never could have had the assurance to appear
again in your presence.”
The Queen: “Child, you dream. I saw the King speak to you; I
remember now.”
Lady Suffolk: “Yes, madam, and his words marked more strongly his
displeasure than his silence, before and since.”

The Queen: “Tell me, has the King really never been down with you
since your return?”
Lady Suffolk: “No, madam. Will your Majesty give me leave to tell
108
what has passed?...”
The Queen: “Upon my word I did not know it.”
Lady Suffolk: “I hope you take nothing ill of me....”
The Queen: “Come, my dear Lady Suffolk, you are very warm, but
believe me I am your friend, your best friend. You do not know a court. It is
not proper of me to say this, but indeed you do not know a court.”
Lady Suffolk: “I am very sensible that I do not, and feel I do not; I have
had a most convincing proof that I am ignorant. But I am afraid, madam, if
I have not got knowledge in twenty years I never shall now.”
The Queen: “Why don’t you talk to your friends? I always do so.
Indeed you cannot judge this for yourself.”
Lady Suffolk: “Madam, if twenty years’ service has not been able to
prevent me from falling a sacrifice to my enemies, would your Majesty
have me, by calling in my friends, make them answerable for the measure I
shall take, and involve them in my ruin?”
The Queen: “Child, your enemies want to get you out, and they will be
the first to drop you. Oh! my dear Lady Suffolk, you do not know, when
you are out, how different people will behave.”
Lady Suffolk: “Madam, the first part of what your Majesty says I am
very sure of, but really, madam, I do not understand the second part, and if
some people may show me it was the courtier and not me that was liked, I
cannot say that to keep such acquaintances will be any argument to me to
stay at Court. Madam, such are better lost than kept.”
The Queen: “You are very warm.”
Lady Suffolk: “Madam, I beg if, in talking to your Majesty, I say one
word that does not mark the respect both to his and your Majesties, you will
be pleased to tell me; for, madam, I come fully determined to take my leave,
with the same respect, submission and duty, as I have behaved for twenty
years. Your Majesty has often told me that I have never failed in anything

for your service in any of those places that you have honoured me with.
Madam, I do not know how far your Majesty may think it respectful to
make this declaration, but I beg that I may for a moment speak of the King
only as a man that was my friend. He has been dearer to me than my own
brother, so, madam, as a friend I feel resentment at being ill-treated, and
sorry to have lost his friendship; but as my King and my master I have the
greatest submission to his pleasure, and wish I knew what I was accused of,
for I know my innocence. But, madam, I know it must be some horrid
crime.”
The Queen: “Oh! fie! you commit a crime! Do not talk so.”
Lady Suffolk: “Madam, as I know his Majesty’s goodness, his justice,
his warmth of friendship, I know he could not for anything else punish me
so severely.”
The Queen: “I daresay that if you have a little patience the King will
treat you as he does the other ladies. I suppose that would satisfy you.”
Lady Suffolk: “No, madam. Why, did you never see him show what you
call ‘respect’ to the Duchess of R—— and to Lady A——? Madam, I
believe and I hope they are ladies of more merit than I, and possibly in
every respect of greater consequence than I am; but in this case is very
different. They have not lived twenty years conversing every day with his
Majesty, nor had the same reason to think themselves honoured with his
friendship as I have had till now; nor has it been in his power to give the
public so remarkable an instance of his displeasure of them. Consider,
madam, I have been absent seven weeks, and returned sooner than was
proper for my health to do my duty in my place to your Majesty, and to
show my respect to his Majesty on his birthday.”
The Queen: “I heard that you were at the Bath, and that you did not
design to come back; but I did not mind such reports.”
Lady Suffolk: “I heard, too, madam, that I was not to come back, and
that my business was done at Court. I knew, madam, that I had a mistress
who had often told me that she was perfectly satisfied with my services. I
felt I had a king, and master, and a friend, (whom I could not, nor ever will,
suspect of injustice) who would not punish me without I was guilty, and I
knew, madam, I had done nothing. But still these reports must now make

me think his Majesty’s public neglect could not escape any bystanders, and
I know it was remarked, for my brother came on Thursday morning and
asked if it were true that the King took no notice of me since I came from
the Bath.”
The Queen: “Well, child, you know that the King leaves it to me. I will
answer for it that all will be as well with you as with any of the ladies, and I
am sure you can’t leave my service then.”
Lady Suffolk: “Really, madam, I do not see how it is possible for me to
continue in it. I have lost what is dearer to me than anything in the world. I
am to be put upon the footing of the Duchess of R—— or Lady A——, and
so by the public thought to be forgiven of some very grave offence because
I have been your servant twenty years. No, madam, I never will be forgiven
an offence that I have not committed.”
The Queen: “You won’t be forgotten. This is indeed the G.L. (sic) why
I am forgiven.”
Lady Suffolk: “Madam, your Majesty and I cannot be named together. It
is a play of words for your Majesty, but it is a serious thing for me.”
The Queen: “Why, child, I am the King’s subject as well as you.”
Lady Suffolk: “Madam, what I mean is what I cannot make your
Majesty understand unless you are pleased to lay aside the Queen and put
yourself in my place for some moments. After twenty years to be ill-treated
without knowing your crime, and then stay upon the foot of the Duchess of
A——!”
The Queen: “Upon my word, Lady Suffolk, you do not consider what
the world will say. For God’s sake, consider your character. You leave me
because the King will not be more particular to you than to others.”
Lady Suffolk: “Madam, as for my character, the world must have settled
that long ago, whether just or unjust, but, madam, I think I have never been
thought to betray his Majesty, or to have done any dishonest thing by any
person whatever, and I defy my greatest enemies (your Majesty owns I have
such) to prove anything against me, and I cannot and will not submit to
anything that may make that believed of me.”

The Queen: “Oh! fie! Lady Suffolk, upon my word that is a very fine
notion out of Celia, or some other romance.”
Lady Suffolk: “This may not be a very great principle, but I think it is a
just one, and a proper one for me to have.”
The Queen: “I will send you down one. Come, you love figures. Let me
persuade you two-thirds. Go down and think of this. There are people who
want to get you out of Court; they will be the first to drop you.”
Lady Suffolk: “Madam, I consult nobody in this; there is no occasion.”
The Queen: “You cannot judge for yourself. Let me prevail. Put
yourself in somebody’s hands and let them act for you. Indeed you are so
warm you are not fit to act for yourself.” (Repeated the same as I said
before.) “Nor indeed very respectful. But you will repent it. I cannot give
you leave to go.”
Lady Suffolk: “If anybody could feel as I feel, and could be so entirely
innocent as to let me be the only sufferer for the advice they give, I might
follow the method your Majesty proposes, but as that is impossible, I must
beg leave to act for myself. I wish I might know what I am accused of. In
my absence I have been ruined in his Majesty’s favour. At the Bath I have a
thousand witnesses of my behaviour. I know my own innocence. Nobody
dare tell me that to my knowledge I have ever failed in my duty in any
manner.”
The Queen: “You are very G. L. (sic). Not dare to tell you you have
been guilty!”
Lady Suffolk: “No, madam, for the Princess and the duke could justify
my behaviour, Lord —— and many more; what I meant was as regards to
myself. But I cannot think that any wretch is so abandoned to all shame as
to stand having the —— (pardon the word) before such a number as was
there.”
The Queen: “Pray how did you live at the Bath?”
(Here I told all. Who B. denied, and what happened to Lord B. No
parties distinguishable to me.)
The Queen: “Lady Suffolk, pray consider, be calm.”

Lady Suffolk: “Madam, I beg your Majesty will give me permission to
retire. Indeed I have not slept since I came back to your house, and believe I
never shall under this suspicion of guilt. Madam, will you give me leave to
speak?”
The Queen: “Do.”
Lady Suffolk: “I am here by your Majesty’s command. Your Majesty
should look upon me when I assert my innocence. Your Majesty knows
what I am accused of.”
The Queen: “Oh! oh! Lady Suffolk, you want to get it out of me.”
Lady Suffolk: “Madam, I do want to face the accusation; I am not
afraid; I know it would be to the confusion of my accusers.”
The Queen: “I will not give you leave to go, I tell you plainly. If you go
to-day you go without my consent.”
Lady Suffolk: “Madam, I beg you to think of my unhappy situation. I
own after what passed, that the next time I saw his Majesty, I should have
dropped down if I had not gone out.”
The Queen: “Well, Lady Suffolk, will you refuse me this? Stay a week
longer, won’t you; stay this week at my request.”
Lady Suffolk: “Yes, madam, I will obey you, but as I am under his
Majesty’s displeasure, your Majesty will not expect my attendance, or that I
come again to receive your commands.”
The Queen: “Yes, I do, and I will see you again, because you will come
again.”
Lady Suffolk: “I will obey your Majesty.”
The Queen: “Harkee, Lady Suffolk, you will come up as you used to
do.”
Lady Suffolk stayed her week and then, despite the arguments of the
Queen, she resigned her appointment, and left the court for ever. She was
forty-eight years of age, and had fairly earned her retirement. She was not
of a nature to live long alone, and the following year she married George
Berkeley, fourth son of Charles, second Earl of Berkeley, a man not
distinguished for fortune or good looks, but who, nevertheless, made her a

very good husband. The King was in Hanover when he heard of Lady
Suffolk’s marriage, and had already given her a successor. He received the
news very philosophically, and wrote to the Queen:—
“J’étois extrêmement surpris de la disposition que vous m’avez mandé
que ma vieille maîtresse a fait de son corps en mariage à ce vieux goutteux
George Berkeley, et je m’en réjouis fort. Je ne voudrois pas faire de tels
présens à mes amis; et quand mes ennemis me volent, plut à Dieu que ce
soit toujours de cette façon.”
The King probably called Berkeley his enemy because he was a
member of the Opposition. Berkeley died a few years after his marriage
with Lady Suffolk, but she survived him for more than twenty years. She
lived, in dignified retirement, at her villa at Marble Hill, and retained, until
the end of her life, the charm of manner and amiability, which had won her
many friends. Horace Walpole used to visit her in her old age, and gleaned
from her much material for his famous Memoirs. She died in 1767, in her
eightieth year, having survived George the Second seven years.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER XI:
104
Daily Journal, 8th November, 1733.
105
The Prince of Orange was hereditary Stadtholder of Friesland, and
Stadtholder by election of Gröningen and Guelderland.
106
The Duke of Newcastle to Sir Robert Walpole, 13th November, 1734.
107
This manuscript is preserved in the manuscript department of the
British Museum.
108
A gap here.

CHAPTER XII.

THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF
WALES.

1734–1735.

The Court and the Government acquired some little popularity over the
marriage of the Princess Royal, but it soon vanished before the fierce
assaults of the Opposition (or Patriots, as they called themselves) in
Parliament. The first session of 1734 was the last session under the
Septennial Act, and the Patriots strained every nerve to discredit the
Government with the country. A determined effort was made to repeal the
Septennial Act and revive triennial parliaments. This had always been a
favourite scheme of Wyndham and the Tories, though Pulteney, the leader
of the Patriots, had in 1716 voted for the Septennial Act. But Bolingbroke’s
influence compelled Pulteney to eat his words though he sacrificed his
political consistency in doing so. The debate in the House of Commons on
the repeal of the Septennial Act was almost as exciting as the debates on the
excise, and, if possible, a higher level of eloquence was maintained.
Pulteney’s speech, as was natural under the circumstances, was brief and
embarrassed, but Wyndham surpassed himself and would have carried off
the honours of the debate had it not been for Walpole’s great speech in
reply. Walpole, stung out of his usual indifference by the taunts levelled at
him in the Craftsman, and knowing whose hand had penned those scathing
words and whose master mind had organised this attack, launched against
Bolingbroke, under the name of an “anti-minister,” a tremendous philippic.
After sketching the “anti-minister” in no covert terms he continued:—
“Suppose this fine gentleman lucky enough to have gained over to his
party some persons of really fine parts, of ancient families and of great

fortunes; and others of desperate views, arising from disappointed and
malicious hearts; all these gentlemen, with respect to their political
behaviour, moved by him, and by him solely, all they say, in public or in
private, being only a repetition of the words he has put into their mouths
and a spitting out of that venom he has infused in them; and yet we may
suppose this leader not really liked by any, even of those who so blindly
follow him, and hated by all the rest of mankind. We will suppose this anti-
minister to be in a country where he really ought not to be, and where he
could not have been but by the effect of too much goodness and mercy, yet
endeavouring with all his might, and all his art, to destroy the fountain
whence that mercy flowed.... Let us further suppose this anti-minister to
have travelled, and at every Court where he was, thinking himself the
greatest minister, and making it his trade to reveal the secrets of every Court
he had before been at, void of all faith and honour, and betraying every
master he ever served.”
Walpole’s outburst was undoubtedly provoked by Bolingbroke, but it
was none the less cowardly thus to attack a man who could not answer him.
It was Walpole who had prevented Bolingbroke from fighting openly, who
had shut him out from the Senate, and thus forced him to employ any
weapons that came to his hand. Yet even now he feared his power. A large
minority supported the repeal of the Septennial Act, and in the general
election that followed, though Walpole employed every means to corrupt
the constituencies and spent no less than £60,000 of his own private fortune
besides, the Government majority was largely reduced. Still Walpole won
and it is difficult to see how he could have done otherwise considering the
resources at his command. The Queen took the keenest interest in the
struggle, and her joy at the result showed how keen had been her
apprehensions. “On the whole,” wrote Newcastle soon after the general
election, “our Parliament is, I think, a good one, but by no means such a one
109
as the Queen and Sir Robert imagine.”
But the Patriots, who had indulged in high hopes over the result of this
appeal to the country, were frankly disappointed. They were further
discouraged by the resolution of Bolingbroke to leave England for a time—
a resolution which was ascribed to different causes. Some said that money
matters had to do with it, others that it was due to differences between
Bolingbroke and Pulteney, or to the retirement of Lady Suffolk from court,

or, most unlikely reason of all, to Walpole’s denunciation of him in the
House of Commons. The probable reason was that Bolingbroke owned
himself beaten, and threw up the cards. He had led his hosts within sight of
victory with consummate skill, but victory was denied him. Walpole had a
new lease of power for seven years, and who could tell what seven years
would bring? There was nothing more to be done. So Bolingbroke retired to
his beautiful château of Chanteloup in Touraine for a while, and devoted
himself to literature. “My part is over,” he wrote to Wyndham, “and he who
110
remains on the stage after his part is over deserves to be hissed off.”
The King and Queen, no less than the Government, rejoiced over
Bolingbroke’s departure, but their rejoicings were premature, for he had left
his sting behind him. The Prince of Wales was deeply grieved at the loss of
his political mentor. Before leaving Bolingbroke had given him a piece of
advice—to bring his grievances formally before the House of Commons,
and ask that the £100,000 a year voted for him should be settled on him by
Parliament. Bolingbroke could not have advised anything more calculated
to embarrass the court and the Government, as he knew full well. If the
Prince carried out his advice he would make the Government unpopular, by
forcing them to appear opposed to a popular demand; he would compel
those politicians who hitherto had sat on the fence to declare themselves
definitely in favour of either father or son, and he would drag the
differences of the Royal Family into the light of day, and do grievous harm
to the dynasty. The Prince was ready to act upon Bolingbroke’s advice, but
his more cautious friends, like Doddington, dissuaded him, and he did not
know how to proceed alone. But he threatened to do so, and the mere threat
sufficed to throw the King and Queen into an extraordinary state of
agitation. The Queen still retained some little influence over her son, the
relations between them had not yet been strained to breaking point; her
influence over her husband was boundless, and she was able, by preaching
at the one and pleading with the other, to avert the threatened crisis. She
assured the Prince that if he carried matters to extremities he would gain
nothing, and she besought the King not to drive the Prince to extreme
measures. The King, therefore, on the principle of buying off his Danes,
reluctantly made over a certain sum, which sufficed for the Prince’s
immediate necessities, and the crisis was for the moment averted. But it was
only for the moment.

This year (1735) the King paid his triennial visit to Hanover. He
appointed the Queen to act as Regent as before, a step which gave great
umbrage to the Prince of Wales, who on this occasion did not trouble to
disguise his feelings, and for the first time showed open disrespect to his
mother’s authority.
On this visit of the King to Hanover he began his liaison with Amelia
Sophia de Walmoden, the wife of Baron de Walmoden, a Hanoverian. This
lady’s youthful charms soon made him forget the retirement of Lady
Suffolk, and her influence over him quickly became greater than Lady
Suffolk’s had ever been. The new mistress had a good deal of beauty, and
considerable powers of fascination; she flattered the King to the top of his
bent, and made him believe he was the only man she had ever loved, or ever
could love, in spite of the fact that she had one, if not two, other intrigues
going on at the same time. She was cautious, and avoided making enemies
by not trespassing in matters outside her province.
The Queen in England was soon made aware that there was some
disturbing influence at work. The King’s letters to her became shorter, and
he usurped at Hanover some of the prerogatives which belonged to her as
Regent, such as signing commissions, and so forth. He also, through his
minister in attendance, Lord Harrington, cavilled at many of the acts of the
Queen-Regent, a thing he had never done before. In this perhaps
Harrington’s jealousy of Walpole had some share. Harrington knew that, by
embarrassing the Queen, he also embarrassed her chief adviser. Therefore,
between the jealousy of her son at home and the irritability of her husband
abroad, Caroline’s third Regency was anything but a pleasant one. But she
suffered no word of complaint to escape her lips, and pursued her usual
policy of trying to increase the popularity of the Crown and strengthen the
hands of Walpole and the Government. She was afraid to keep up much
state, lest the King in his present mood should be jealous, so she removed
the court to Kensington, where she lived very quietly, holding only such
drawing-rooms as were absolutely necessary. These she held rather from
policy than from pleasure, her object being to conciliate the powerful Whig
peers who were still dissatisfied with the Government.
The Queen found interest and relaxation in improving her house and
gardens at Richmond. In addition to a dairy and menagerie, which she had
established in the park, she erected several buildings, more or less

ornamental, in the gardens, of which the most peculiar was the one known
as “Merlin’s Cave”. This extraordinary edifice was approached through a
maze of close alleys and clipped hedges. The Craftsman ridiculed it, and
declared that it looked like “an old haystack thatched over”. A gloomy
passage led to a large circular room, decorated with several allegorical
figures, of which we glean the following account:—
“The figures her Majesty has ordered for Merlin’s Cave are placed
therein, namely: (1) Merlin at a table with conjuring books and
mathematical instruments, taken from the face of Mr. Ernest, page to the
Prince of Wales; (2) King Henry the Seventh’s Queen, and (3) Queen
Elizabeth, who came to Merlin for knowledge; the former from the face of
Mrs. Margaret Purcell, the latter from Miss Paget’s; (4) Minerva, from Mrs.
Poyntz’s; (5) Merlin’s secretary, from Mr. Kemp’s, one of his Royal
Highness the Duke’s grenadiers; and (6) a witch, from a tradesman’s wife at
Richmond. Her Majesty has ordered also a choice collection of English
111
books to be placed therein.”
The people were much interested in Merlin’s Cave, and as soon as it
was finished the Queen threw it open to the public on certain days, and
crowds applied for admission. Similar imitations of this pleasure house
sprang up all over the country, despite its doubtful taste. So pleased was the
Queen with the cave that she erected another house hard by, and called it
“The Hermitage”. It was built to resemble a rude building overgrown with
moss, and was entered, incongruously, by an enormous gilt gateway.
Merlin’s Cave, the Hermitage, and the improvements in the house and
gardens at Richmond were expensive luxuries, so expensive that the Queen
was unable to pay for them out of her income. But Walpole humoured her in
these hobbies, and made her several little grants from the Treasury, of
which no one was the wiser.
In October the time arrived for the King to tear himself away from
Hanover and his Walmoden. It was necessary for him to be back in London
by October 30th to keep his birthday. He delayed until he could delay no
longer, and, when he had at last to tear himself away, he promised his
mistress that under any circumstances he would be with her next year by
May 29th. The Walmoden, between smiles and tears, publicly pledged her
royal lover a happy return on May 29th, at a farewell banquet the night

before his departure. It was a rash promise for the King to make, for he had
hitherto only visited Hanover once in three years; and even so, not without
protest from his English advisers.
George the Second set out from Hanover on Wednesday, October 22nd,
and arrived at Kensington the following Sunday. The Queen, who had long
been expecting him, received the news just after she returned from morning
chapel. She at once summoned her court, and went on foot to meet him at
the great gate. When the King stepped out of his coach she stooped and
kissed his hand, and he gave her his arm and led her into the palace. It was
only on the occasion of a return from Hanover that the King offered the
Queen his arm; he probably did so in consideration of her holding the office
of Regent, which she had not yet resigned into his hands. The King held a
small reception immediately after his arrival, but the Queen, who saw that
he was ill, soon dismissed the company. The King had in fact tired himself
by travelling too fast, and for the next few days he was exceedingly unwell;
he was also exceedingly irritable, and every one who came near him, from
the Queen downwards, incurred his wrath. He loudly lamented his beloved
Hanover and abused England. “No English or even French cook could dress
a dinner; no English confectioner set out a dessert; no English player could
act; no English coachman could drive or English jockey ride, nor were any
English horses fit to be drove or fit to be ridden; no Englishman knew how
112
to come into a room, nor any English woman how to dress herself.” All
this and much more from the King of England!
The Queen had to bear the brunt of his ill-humour, and, what was
worse, had to endure the fear that her influence over him was on the wane.
His manner towards her had completely changed; nothing she could say, or
do, was right, in little things or great. Among other trifles he noticed that the
Queen had taken some bad pictures out of one of the rooms at Kensington,
and replaced them by good ones. The King, who knew nothing of art, and
cared less, for the mere sake of finding fault, made this a pretext for
thwarting his wife. He peremptorily ordered Lord Hervey to have the new
pictures taken away and the old ones replaced. This was impossible, for
some of the pictures had been destroyed and others sent to Windsor. But
Lord Hervey did not dare tell the King so; he demurred a little and asked
the King if he would allow two Vandykes at least to remain, to which
George answered: “I suppose you assisted the Queen with your fine advice

when she was pulling my house to pieces and spoiling all my furniture:
thank God, at least she has left the walls standing! As for the Vandykes, I do
not care whether they are changed or no, but for the picture with the dirty
frame over the door, and the three nasty little children, I will have them
taken away and the old ones restored; I will have it done too to-morrow
morning before I go to London, or else I know it will not be done at all.”
“Would your Majesty,” said Lord Hervey, “have the gigantic fat Venus
restored too?” “Yes, my lord; I am not so nice as your lordship. I like my fat
Venus much better than anything you have given me instead of her.”
Lord Hervey says that he thought that “if his Majesty had liked his fat
Venus as well as he used to do, there would have been none of these
disputations”. He told the Queen next morning what had passed. She
pretended to laugh but was evidently annoyed, and began to wonder how
she could obey the King’s commands. “Whilst they were speaking the King
came in, but by good luck, said not one word of the pictures: his Majesty
stayed about five minutes in the gallery; snubbed the Queen, who was
drinking chocolate, for being always stuffing; the Princess Emily for not
hearing him; Princess Caroline for being grown fat; the Duke [of
Cumberland] for standing awkwardly; Lord Hervey for not knowing what
relation the Prince of Sultzbach was to the Elector Palatine: and then carried
the Queen to walk, and be resnubbed, in the garden.”
The Queen was very much perturbed by the King’s altered behaviour
towards her, and she took Sir Robert Walpole into her confidence, and
asked him what was to be done. Walpole spoke to her with a frankness
positively brutal. He told her that since the King had tasted “better things,”
presumably the Walmoden, it could not be other than it was; he reminded
the Queen that she was no longer young, and said that “she should no
longer depend upon her person, but her head, for her influence, as the one
would now be of little use to her, and the other could never fail her.” No
woman likes to be told that her personal charms are gone, and Walpole
made this advice the more unpalatable by recommending the Queen to send
for Lady Tankerville, a good looking but stupid woman, to fill the place left
vacant by Lady Suffolk. He told the Queen that it was absolutely necessary
that the King should have some one to amuse him, “as he could not spend
his evenings with his own daughters after having tasted the sweets of
passing them with other people’s”; therefore, it would be much better that

he should have some one chosen by the Queen than by himself. Lady
Deloraine, who was the other likely candidate for the royal favour, and
whom the King had often noticed when she was governess to the young
Princesses, Walpole regarded as a dangerous woman, and therefore
preferred Lady Tankerville.
The Queen resented this advice in her heart, and was deeply hurt; but
on the surface she took it well enough, laughing the matter off as was her
wont. She was not above making some bitter jokes upon the situation in
which she found herself. When she was dressed for the King’s birthday
drawing-room, she pointed to her head-dress and said: “I think I am
extremely fine too, though un peu à la mode; I think they have given me
horns.” Whereupon Walpole burst into a coarse laugh, and said he thought
the tire-woman must be a wag. The Queen laughed too, but flushed angrily.
At this same birthday drawing-room the King noticed that it was poorly
attended, and those who came were indifferently dressed, a sure sign of his
unpopularity. The King, unpopular before, had disgusted his English
subjects by his long stay in Hanover, and by the new ties he had formed
there, for the people had had enough of German mistresses under George
the First. Many of the great noblemen, even the officers of state, showed
their resentment in a diplomatic manner by absenting themselves from court
and retiring into the country. This made the King angrier than ever, and his
manner towards the Queen, who was the only person upon whom it was
safe for him to vent his displeasure, became harsher than before. She bore it
uncomplainingly, until one morning when he was unreasonable beyond
endurance she said half in jest, though with tears in her eyes, that she would
get Walpole to put in a word in her favour, as nothing she now did was
right. The King flew into a passion, and asked her what she meant by such
complaints. “Do you think,” he said, “I should not feel and show some
uneasiness for having left a place where I was pleased and happy all day
long, and being come to one where I am as incessantly crossed and
plagued?” This was a little too much for the Queen, who for once lost her
self-control and turned upon her tormentor. “I see no reason,” she said, “that
made your coming to England necessary; you might have continued there,
without coming to torment yourself and us: since your pleasure did not call
you, I am sure your business did not, for we could have done that just as
well without you, as you could have pleased yourself without us.”

Thereupon the King, who was as much astonished as Balaam was when his
ass spake, went out of the room, and banged the door.
The King endeavoured to propitiate the Queen by making her a present
of some horses from Hanover. This was a poor sort of gift, as by it he
charged the expense of the horses on her establishment, and used them
himself; most of his presents were of this nature. As she did not accept the
gift with becoming gratitude, he fell foul of Merlin’s Cave, which had just
been completed. The Queen told him that she heard the Craftsman had
abused her hobby. “I am very glad of it,” said the King, “you deserve to be
abused for such childish silly stuff, and it is the first time I ever knew the
scoundrel in the right.” This conversation took place in the evening, when
the King was always peculiarly irascible. He formerly spent two or three
hours of an evening in Lady Suffolk’s apartments, snubbing and worrying
her, but since that lady had retired, and no one as yet was found to take her
place, he had perforce to spend it with his wife and daughters, and vent his
ill-humour on them. The same evening that he abused Merlin’s Cave, he
found fault with the Queen for giving away money to servants when she
went to visit the nobility in London. The Queen defended herself by saying
that it was the custom, and appealed to Lord Hervey, who said it was true
that such largess was expected of her Majesty. The King retorted: “Then she
may stay at home as I do. You do not see me running into every puppy’s
house, to see his new chairs and stools. Nor is it for you,” said he, turning to
the Queen, “to be running your nose everywhere, and trotting about the
town to every fellow that will give you some bread and butter, like an old
girl that loves to go abroad, no matter whether it be proper or no.” The
Queen, who was knotting, flushed, and tears came into her eyes, but she
answered nothing. Lord Hervey somewhat officiously said that the Queen
had a love of pictures, whereat the King turned to the Queen and poured
forth a flood of abuse in German. She made no reply, but knotted faster than
ever until she tangled her thread and snuffed out one of the candles in her
agitation, whereupon the King, falling back into English, began to lecture
her on her awkwardness. This may be taken as a specimen of the way the
Royal Family spent their evenings for some weeks after the King’s return
from Hanover.
From a hundred little things, the Queen feared that her day was over.
The King always used to stay with her till eleven o’clock in the morning,

before beginning the business of the day; but now he hurried off soon after
nine o’clock, in order that he might write love letters to Madame de
Walmoden. He was a great letter-writer, especially of love letters, an art in
which he excelled, and probably inherited from his mother, Sophie
Dorothea.

AUGUSTA, PRINCESS OF WALES, AT THE TIME OF
HER MARRIAGE.

The only matter in which the King seemed to be at one with his
consort, at this time, was in blaming the Prince of Wales, who took the
occasion of his father’s return to renew his demands. He had for a long time
absented himself from the King’s levées, but he was prevailed upon by
Doddington to appear at one. His appearance, as the King suspected,
foreshadowed a definite demand, which was not long in coming. The Prince
requested that he should have his full income of £100,000 a year, a separate
establishment, and be married. It was no use ignoring Frederick, he only
became more troublesome, so the King determined to yield the point, which
would cost him least money, and get him married at once. He sent his son a
formal message, by five of the Cabinet Council, to say that, if the Prince
liked, he would ask for him the hand of the Princess Augusta of Saxe-
Gotha. She was the daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, and the King had
met her, as if by accident, on his last visit to Hanover, with a view to seeing
if she would be a suitable wife for his son. It was not a gracious way of
meeting the Prince’s wishes, but Frederick answered with great propriety,
that whoever his Majesty thought a proper match for his son would be
agreeable to him. One of the most irritating features of the Prince’s conduct
was that he was always polite and circumspect to the King and Queen in
public, and disrespectful and disobedient in private. He followed up his
answer by asking how much money he was to get. When the King,
reluctantly, promised to disgorge £50,000 a year, the Prince expressed great
dissatisfaction, but, on the principle of half a loaf being better than no
bread, he determined to accept the sum as an instalment, and let the
marriage go forward.
Lord Delaware was therefore despatched to Saxe-Gotha to complete
the negotiations which had been already set on foot, and bring the bride
over to England. These negotiations took some little time, and the young
Princess naturally wished to pay her farewells before setting forth to an
unknown husband and an unknown land; but the King was so impatient to
return to his Walmoden that after a week or two he sent word to Delaware
to say that if the Princess could not come by the end of April the marriage
must either be put off till the next winter, or solemnised without him, as to
Hanover he would go. This message had the effect of hastening matters.
The Princess Augusta landed at Greenwich on Sunday, April 25th, 1735,
and stayed the night at the palace there. She had the promise of beauty and
the charm that always goes with youth. At this time she looked, as she was,

an overgrown girl, tall and slender, and somewhat awkward in her
movements, but her pleasant expression and engaging manner soon won her
popularity. The poets in their odes of welcome endowed the youthful pair
with all the graces, as for example:—

That pair in Eden ne’er reposed
Where groves more lovely grew;
Those groves in Eden ne’er enclosed
A lovelier pair than you.

The Prince of Wales went down to Greenwich to meet his bride-elect,
and was much pleased with her. The next day she showed herself to the
people on the balcony of the palace, and was warmly received. The young
Princess was only seventeen years of age; she was quite alone,
unaccompanied by any relative, and could not speak a word of English. Yet
she was allowed to remain at Greenwich forty-eight hours after her landing
in England without any one of the Royal Family going near her except the
Prince. She was treated with the same neglect as the Prince of Orange had
been treated. The excuse put forward on behalf of the King and Queen was
that until she was Princess of Wales there was no rule of precedence to
guide them as to how she should be received. They were no doubt jealous
of the pretensions which the Prince of Wales put forward; but in any case,
even if they could not have gone themselves to welcome her, they might
have sent one of the Princesses to befriend the young and inexperienced girl
in what must necessarily have been a difficult and delicate position. The
Prince endeavoured to make amends for this neglect by paying his
betrothed great attention. He came to Greenwich again the next day and
dined with his future bride. “He afterwards,” we are told, “gave her
Highness the diversion of passing on the water as far as the Tower and back
in his barge, finely adorned, preceded by a concert of music. Their
113
Highnesses afterwards supped in public.”
The next morning the Princess was escorted from Greenwich in one of
the royal coaches to Lambeth, and thence she proceeded down the river to
Whitehall in a barge. At Whitehall she landed, and was carried through St.
James’s Park in a sedan chair to the garden entrance of St. James’s Palace,

where the Prince of Wales, who had preceded her, was waiting. The Prince
led his betrothed up to the great drawing-room, where the King and Queen
and all the court were ready to receive her, and curious to see what she was
like. The King had been waiting more than an hour, for the Princess was
late, and he was consequently impatient, and not in the best of tempers, but
the young girl by her tact overcame any awkwardness that might have
attended her reception. She prostrated herself at the King’s feet, and made a
similar obeisance to the Queen. Her behaviour throughout this trying
ceremony was marked by such propriety and discretion, that she
immediately created a favourable impression, and did away with any
prejudice against her.
The Princess was not allowed much time to rest after her journey, for
the marriage was arranged to take place that night, at nine o’clock in the
Chapel Royal, St. James’s. Before the ceremony the King and Queen, to
avoid vexed questions of precedence, dined in private, but the Duke of
Cumberland and the Princesses were commanded to dine with the Prince
and his betrothed. Unfortunately the harmony of this family party was
marred by quarrels over minute questions of ceremony. The King, with a
view to overcoming any difficulties, had ordered the Duke and the
Princesses to go “undressed,” that is, informally, and in other clothes than
those they were to wear later at the wedding. The Prince resented this as a
slight upon himself and his bride, and in return began disputing as to where,
and how, his brother and sisters should sit at dinner. He demanded that they
should be seated upon stools without any backs, whilst he and his bride
occupied armchairs at the head of the table; also that he and his bride
should be served on bended knee, while the others should be waited upon in
the ordinary manner. The King and Queen had anticipated some of those
difficulties, and had coached the Princesses beforehand in what they were to
do. So they flatly refused to go into the room where dinner was served until
the stools had been carried away and chairs put in their places, but they so
far yielded the other point as to order their personal servants to wait upon
them in the usual manner. Thus the wedding dinner passed off, if not
exactly harmoniously, without any more childish disputes, though the
Princesses went without their coffee as it was offered to them by a servant
of the bride. The dinner, and the altercations in connection with it, occupied
the best part of the afternoon, and the bride had scarcely time to dress for
the wedding.

The wedding procession was formed at eight o’clock, and it took some
time to marshal. The peers and peeresses, and other personages invited to
the wedding, met in the great drawing-room of St. James’s, and then walked
in order of precedence to the chapel. The Bishop of London performed the
marriage ceremony, and the joining of hands was made known to the public
by the firing of guns in St. James’s Park. The following extract from a
contemporary print gives the best account of the ceremony:—
“Her Highness was in her hair, wearing a crown with one bar, as
Princess of Wales, set all over with diamonds; her robe likewise, as Princess
of Wales, being of crimson velvet, turned back with several rows of ermine,
and having her train supported by four ladies, all of whom were in virgin
habits of silver, like the Princess, and adorned with diamonds not less in
value than from twenty to thirty thousand pounds each. Her Highness was
led by his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, and conducted by His
Grace the Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain of the Household, and the
Lord Hervey, Vice-Chamberlain, and attended by the Countess of
Effingham, and the other ladies of her household. The marriage service was
read by the Lord Bishop of London, Dean of the Chapel; and, after the same
was over, a fine anthem was performed by a great number of voices and
instruments. When the procession returned, his Royal Highness led his
bride; and coming into the drawing-room, their Royal Highnesses kneeled
down and received their Majesties’ blessing. At half-an-hour after ten their
Majesties sat down to supper in ambigu, the Prince and the Duke being on
the King’s right hand, and the Princess of Wales and the four Princesses on
the Queen’s left. Their Majesties retiring to the apartments of the Prince of
Wales, the bride was conducted to her bedchamber, the bridegroom to his
dressing-room, where the Duke undressed him, and his Majesty did his
Royal Highness the honour to put on his shirt. The bride was undressed by
the Princesses, and, being in bed in a rich undress, his Majesty came into
the room, the Prince following soon after in a night-gown of silver stuff,
and cap of the finest lace. The Quality were admitted to see the bride and
114
bridegroom sitting up in bed surrounded by all the Royal Family.”
The King had grumbled because there were few new clothes at his
birthday drawing-room, but no such complaint could be made on this
occasion, for the splendour and richness of the costumes had never been

excelled. The Georgian beau was a gorgeous being; the men seemed to
outshine the ladies. We read:—
“His Majesty was dressed in a gold brocade, turned up with silk,
embroidered with large flowers in silver and colours, as was the waistcoat;
the buttons and stars were diamonds. Her Majesty was in plain yellow silk,
robed and faced with pearls, diamonds, and other jewels of immense value.
The Dukes of Grafton, Newcastle, and St. Albans, the Earl of Albemarle,
Lord Hervey, Colonel Pelham and many other noblemen, were in gold
brocades of from three to five hundred pounds a suit. The Duke of
Marlborough was in a white velvet and gold brocade, upon which was an
exceedingly rich point d’Espagne. The Earl of Euston and many others
were in clothes flowered or sprigged with gold; the Duke of Montagu in a
gold brocaded tissue. The waistcoats were universally brocades, with large
flowers. ’Twas observed most of the rich clothes were the manufacture of
England, and in honour of our own artists. The few which were French did
not come up to these in richness, goodness, or fancy, as was seen by the
clothes worn by the Royal Family, which were all of the British
manufacture. The cuffs of the sleeves were universally deep and open, the
waists long, and the plaits more sticking out than ever. The ladies were
principally in brocades of gold and silver, and wore their sleeves much
115
lower than hath been done for some time.”
After her marriage the Princess of Wales maintained the favourable
impression she created at first, a notable feat considering that she had been
brought up in the seclusion of her mother’s country house in Saxe-Gotha,
and had come to a Court far more splendid than any she could have ever
dreamed of. Walpole, who noted how she had won the King’s approval and
gained the Prince’s esteem, declared that these “were circumstances that
spoke strongly in favour of brains which had but seventeen years to ripen”.
Lord Waldegrave testified that the Princess distinguished herself “by a most
decent and prudent behaviour, and the King, notwithstanding his aversion to
his son, behaved to her not only with great politeness, but with the
appearance of cordiality and affection”. Even old Sarah, Duchess of
Marlborough, who hated Queen Caroline, and generally had a bad word to
say for every one, relented in favour of the Princess, declaring that she
“always appeared good-natured and civil to everybody”. The Princess’s

subsequent conduct justified these praises, and she showed herself as the
years went by to be a clever woman, with considerable force of character.
At first her position was exceedingly difficult in consequence of the
strained relations between the Prince and his parents. She necessarily saw
more of the Queen than of the King, and though the Queen’s kindness to her
never wavered, there was always a barrier of reserve between them, for the
Prince had now come to dislike his mother even more than his father. Just
before his marriage the Queen had had a difference with her son over the
question whether Lady Archibald Hamilton was, or was not, to be one of
the ladies in waiting to the Princess; the Prince wishing her to be appointed,
and the Queen declaring that it was not proper that the Prince’s mistress
should be one of his wife’s household. She was undoubtedly right, but the
Prince might have retorted, and he probably did, that he was only following
precedent, since Lady Suffolk had filled a similar position in the household
of his parents. The matter was compromised by only three ladies in waiting
being appointed by the Queen, and the Princess was left free to nominate
one other when she arrived. The Prince gained such an ascendency over his
wife that the first thing she did was to appoint Lady Archibald Hamilton,
who soon became her constant companion. Lady Archibald was not a wise
adviser to the young Princess even in minor matters, or perhaps she
deliberately set about to make her look ridiculous. The Princess was quite
ignorant of the customs of the English Court, and was imbued by her
husband with a strong sense of what was due to her as Princess of Wales.
Either at his bidding or Lady Archibald’s suggestion, she took to walking in
Kensington Gardens with two gentlemen-ushers going before her, a
chamberlain leading her by the hand, a page holding up her long train, and
her maids of honour and ladies in waiting following behind. The Queen met
this grotesque procession one morning when she was out on her walks, and
burst into peals of laughter. The poor Princess of Wales, who was not
conscious of having done anything wrong, begged to know the reason of
her Majesty’s merriment, whereupon the gentle Princess Caroline so far
forgot her gentleness as to tell her sister-in-law, tartly, that it was ridiculous
for her to walk out like a tragedy queen, when she was merely taking the air
privately in the gardens.
If the King and Queen had thought to pacify their eldest son by
yielding to his wish to be married, they quickly found themselves mistaken.

The Prince accepted this concession only as an instalment, and immediately
began to ask for more. He did not consider his demand for a separate
establishment met by his being given apartments in the royal palaces, and
he refused to be contented with anything less than the full sum voted for
him by Parliament. The King stoutly refused to yield more and expressed
himself very forcibly on, what he called, his son’s ungrateful conduct. Thus
baffled, the Prince began to raise money right and left by giving bills and
bonds payable on the death of his father and his own accession to the
throne, and the money-lenders were willing to advance him money on these
conditions at an extortionate rate of interest. When the King heard of this he
became greatly frightened lest the rapacity of the usurers should cause them
to hasten his death by assassination. The Queen feared for the King’s safety
too, and had long talks with Walpole and Lord Hervey on the subject. Lord
Hervey, who hated the Prince, offered to bring forward a bill in the House
of Lords making it a capital offence for any man to lend money on the
consideration of the King’s death, but Walpole wisely pooh-poohed the
idea. He strongly objected to bringing the disputes of the Royal Family
before the public, and told the Queen he could see no way of keeping the
Prince in order except through the good influence of the Princess of Wales.
The Queen then tried to discuss matters with the Princess, but, coached by
her husband, she would not listen. She was very sorry she said, but her
Majesty must excuse her, she must decline to take any part in the
controversy. Whatever her husband did was right in her eyes and it was her
duty to obey him, whom she had sworn to obey. This drew from the Queen
the expression: “Poor creature, if she were to spit in my face I should only
pity her for being under such a fool’s direction, and wipe it off”. She pitied
the Princess rather than blamed her, and allowed this little incident to make
no difference to her behaviour towards her. The Princess no doubt had done
wisely and the Prince showed his appreciation by treating his wife with
courtesy and kindness, and the marriage, which had begun inauspiciously,
turned out better than any one expected.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER XII:

109
Duke of Newcastle to Horace Walpole, 24th May, 1734.
110
Bolingbroke to Wyndham, 29th November, 1735.
111
Gentleman’s Magazine, 21st August, 1735.
112
Hervey’s Memoirs.
113
Gentleman’s Magazine, April, 1736.
114
Gentleman’s Magazine, April, 1736.
115
Gentleman’s Magazine, April, 1736.

CHAPTER XIII.

CAROLINE’S LAST REGENCY.

1736.

The Prince of Wales’s marriage over, the King became very impatient to
return to Hanover. The pledge he had given to Madame Walmoden last year,
that he would be with her on May 29th, had become known to Walpole,
who swore to the Queen that the King should not go if he could prevent it.
The Quakers’ Bill was just then before Parliament and the bishops were
giving a great deal of trouble to the Government in the House of Lords; the
King’s departure for Hanover again so soon would be another source of
embarrassment. But neither Walpole’s protests nor the Queen’s more
diplomatic representations were of any avail with the King. “I am sick to
death of all this foolish stuff,” said the Defender of the Faith to the Queen
one day when she was speaking to him about the bishops’ action in the
House of Lords, “and wish with all my heart that the devil may take all your
bishops and the devil take your minister, and the devil take the parliament,
and the devil take the whole island, provided I can get out of it and go to
Hanover.”
After this there was clearly nothing more to be said, and in the middle
of May the King set out for Hanover, this time taking Horace Walpole with
him as minister in attendance instead of Harrington, whom the Queen and
Walpole determined should never go with the King to Hanover again. He
again appointed the Queen Regent, and sent a message to the Prince of
Wales telling him that wherever the Queen-Regent resided, there would be
apartments provided for himself and the Princess. The Prince resented this
message, which forced him, he said, to move his household at the Queen’s
pleasure, and made him practically a prisoner in her palace. That was
perhaps an exaggeration, but the order was evidently designed to prevent

the Prince and Princess setting up a court of their own in the King’s
absence. The Prince considered that his marriage gave him an additional
claim to be appointed Regent instead of the Queen. He therefore tried in
many small ways to set her authority as Regent at defiance, and he trumped
up the excuse of the Princess’s indisposition to hinder him from occupying
the same house as the Queen according to the King’s command. The Queen,
who suspected that this was only an evasion, came up from Richmond,
where she had removed after the King left, to London to find out if the
Princess of Wales were really ill. But her intention was baffled, for when
she arrived she was told that the Princess was in bed and could not receive
her, and when the Queen insisted on being shown to her daughter-in-law’s
chamber, she found the room so dark that she could scarcely see her, and
had to return to Richmond no better informed than when she set out.
Shortly afterwards the Queen removed to Hampton Court, and with some
little delay the Prince and Princess followed, and had their suite of
apartments allotted them there.
The Prince of Wales did not attend the Council when the Queen broke
the seals of the King’s commission making her Regent; he pretended that he
had mistaken the hour. He tried by every possible means to discredit the
Queen-Regent’s authority, and to cultivate popularity at the expense of his
parents. It was fairly easy for him to pit himself against his father, for the
King’s conduct in going to Hanover two years running, his affaire with the
Walmoden, and the fact that he had left unfilled several commissions in the
army because, people said, he wished to pocket the pay himself, had made
him more unpopular than ever. Some measure of this unpopularity reflected
itself upon the Queen, though she, poor woman, was the greatest sufferer by
the King’s intrigue with the Walmoden. The Princess of Wales also
suddenly discovered that she had scruples about receiving the Sacrament
according to the rites of the Church of England, and declared that she was a
Protestant and a Lutheran. This move, which was probably made by
command of the Prince in order to gain the goodwill of the Dissenters, gave
a great deal of annoyance to the Queen, for the bishops and clergy were up
in arms about it, talked loudly of the Act of Succession, and declared that if
the Princess would not conform to the rites of the Church of England she
would have to be sent back again to Saxe-Gotha. The Queen spoke to the
Prince on the subject, but he declared that he could do nothing, for when he
reasoned to his wife she only wept and talked of her conscience. However,

the threat of being sent back to Saxe-Gotha effectually abolished the
Princess’s scruples; she dried her tears and attended the services at the
chapel at Hampton Court like the rest of the Royal Family. Yet even when
they came to church the Prince and Princess of Wales managed to show
disrespect to the Queen’s office as Regent. They arranged always to come
late, so that the Princess had to push past the Queen in the royal pew, an
uncomfortable proceeding so far as the Queen was concerned, for she was
stout and the pew was narrow. Moreover, the arrival of the Prince and
Princess and a numerous suite half-way through the service was
exceedingly disturbing, so, after bearing with it two or three Sundays, the
Queen sent word that if the Princess came late she must make her entry by
another door. The Princess, however, persisting, the Queen ordered a
servant to stand at the main entrance of the chapel after she had gone in and
not permit any one to pass until the service was over, which would have the
effect of sending the Princess round to another door, or of keeping her out
of the chapel altogether. The Prince, however, was equal even to this, for he
told the Princess that if she was not ready to go into chapel with the Queen
she was not to go at all, and so neatly avoided yielding the point.
The Queen, notwithstanding all these studied slights and petty insults,
was determined not to quarrel with her son, and regularly asked the Prince
and Princess to dine with her once or twice a week, and sometimes invited
them to music and cards in the gallery at Hampton Court in the evening.
The Princess came now and then to these latter functions, the Prince never,
though they both were obliged to come to dinner when the Queen asked
them. These dinners could not have been pleasant to either side; they
certainly were not to the Queen, who, after they were over, used to declare
that the dulness of her daughter-in-law and the silly jokes of her son gave
her the vapours, and she felt more tired than “if she had carried them round
the garden on her back”.
Meanwhile the King at Hanover was enjoying himself with his
enchantress, who had presented him with a fine boy, which it suited her
116
purpose to declare was his son. The King, who was now fifty-three years
of age, firmly believed her, and his affections became riveted to Madame
Walmoden more firmly than ever. Yet he might well have doubted, for the
lady had many friends to console her in his absence, and a suspicious
incident occurred this summer even while George was at Hanover. The

King was staying, according to his custom, at Herrenhausen, and Madame
Walmoden was living in the apartments set apart for her by the King in the
Leine Schloss. She spent most of her time with the King at Herrenhausen,
returning to the Leine Schloss at night, where she was sometimes visited by
the King. The Leine Schloss was very different then to what it is now, for it
was fronted by extensive gardens on both banks of the Leine, the gardens
through which poor Sophie Dorothea used to steal, disguised, to
Königsmarck’s lodgings. The Walmoden’s bedchamber was on the garden
side of the palace, and one night a gardener chancing to walk round the
palace in the small hours found a ladder placed immediately under Madame
Walmoden’s window. The man thought this must be the attempt of a
burglar, who had come to steal the lady’s jewels, and made a careful search
round the garden. He presently discovered a man hiding behind a bush,
whom he immediately seized, and, shouting for the guard, had him placed
under arrest. To every one’s astonishment, the prisoner proved to be no
thief, but an officer in the Austrian service, named Schulemburg, a relative
of the Duchess of Kendal’s, who was on a visit to Hanover in connection
with some diplomatic mission. Schulemburg protested against the indignity
put upon him, which he said would be resented not only by himself, but by
his master, the Emperor, and made such a fuss that the captain of the guard
released him at once.
Before the morning the story was all over the palace, and Madame
Walmoden, who had been aroused in the night, was in a great state of
agitation. But her woman’s wit came to her aid. As early as six o’clock the
next morning she ordered her coach and drove off to Herrenhausen to give
her version of the affair to the King before any one else could tell him.
George was still a-bed when the lady arrived, but being a privileged
personage she passed the guards and made her way to his bedside. She
threw herself upon her knees, and besought the King, between her tears and
sobs, to protect her from gross insult, or allow her to retire from his court
for ever; she declared that she loved him not as a king but as a man, and for
his own sake alone, but wicked envious people, who were jealous of the
favour he had shown her, were plotting to ruin her. The King, astonished at
this early visit, rubbed his eyes, and asked what it all meant. She then told
him about the ladder, and declared that it must have been placed there by
design of a certain Madame d’Elitz with intent to ruin her with the King.
This Madame d’Elitz was also a Schulemburg, a niece of the old Duchess of

Kendal. She was credited with having had intrigues with three generations
of the Hanoverian family, the old King, George the First, the present King,
George the Second, and Frederick, Prince of Wales, before he came over to
England. This was probably an exaggeration, but it is certain that she was
the mistress of George the Second before he deserted her for the superior
charms of the Walmoden. So the story had at least the element of
plausibility. At any rate the King accepted it, and ordered the captain of the
guard to be put under arrest for having released Schulemburg, and sent
word that he should again be apprehended. But Horace Walpole, the English
Minister in attendance, fearing that this might involve the King in a quarrel
with the Emperor, sent Schulemburg word privately to make speed out of
Hanover, which he did forthwith.
All sorts of versions were given of this ladder incident, which quickly
became known in London, and was much discussed by Queen Caroline and
her court. The King wrote long letters to the Queen in England, telling her
all about the affair, and asking her to judge it impartially for him, as he was
so fond of the Walmoden that he could not judge it otherwise than partially,
and if she were in doubt he asked her to consult le gros homme, Sir Robert
Walpole, “who,” he said, “is much more experienced, my dear Caroline, in
these affairs than you, and less prejudiced than myself in it”. But whatever
was the Queen’s opinion the King remained devoted to his Walmoden, and
refused to believe any evil of her. Whether Caroline really consulted
Walpole or not it is impossible to say; but though she laughed about the
incident in public she wept many bitter tears in private, and her patience
was well-nigh exhausted.
Caroline had no easy part to play in this, her fourth and most eventful,
regency. Her health had been failing for some time, and now was an ever-
present trouble. The knowledge of the King’s infatuation, and the fear that
her influence over him was waning, preyed upon her mind, and she was
further harassed by the covert rebellion against her authority carried on by
the Prince of Wales. All these were troubles from within, but those from
without were also serious. The King was never so unpopular as now, and
his unpopularity reflected itself upon the Government. There were
discontents and disorders in different parts of the country; a riot broke out
in the west of England because of the exportation of corn, and so violent
were the farmers that in many districts the military had to be called out to

quell the tumult. Another disturbance took place at Spitalfields among the
weavers, who objected to Irishmen working there because they were willing
to accept lower wages and could accustom themselves to a lower standard
of living than Englishmen. A riot broke out and many Irish were killed and
others wounded. Huge mobs assembled, and again the Queen-Regent had to
command that soldiers should be called out, which had the effect of
diverting the rage of the weavers from the Irish to the court. They now
began to curse the Germans even more loudly than they execrated the Irish,
and from cursing the Germans they proceeded to cursing the King and
Queen, and shouting for James the Third. Eventually the soldiers quelled
the riots, but not without bloodshed, and the discontent was all the more
active for being driven below the surface.
Another source of dissatisfaction with the people was the Gin Act,
which had been passed with the object of abating the vice of drunkenness,
and especially the drinking of gin by the lower classes. Gin drinking at that
time was the popular habit, and was carried to such a degree that the
drunkenness of the mob and the depraved and debased condition of public
morals became a crying scandal. The sale of gin was carried to such an
extent in the taverns that a newspaper of the time informs us: “We hear that
a strong-water shop was lately opened in Southwark with this inscription on
the sign:—

Drunk for one penny,
Dead drunk for two pence,
117
Clean straw for nothing.”

The Gin Act was passed with a view to putting a stop to this sale, but
without success, and the truth that people cannot be made sober by Act of
Parliament was proved up to the hilt. The only result was to encourage a
gang of informers who became the pest of the country. The Act came into
force on September 29th, 1736, and as the date approached ballads and
lamentations of “Mother Gin” were sung about the streets, the signs of the
liquor shops were everywhere put into mourning, and mock ceremonies on
the funeral of “Madam Gin” were carried out by the mob. To quote from the
journals: “Last Wednesday, September 29th, several people made

themselves very merry with the death of ‘Madam Gin,’ and some of both
sexes got soundly drunk at her funeral, of which the mob made a formal
118
procession with torches.”
All over the country it was the same, and the Act was practically
abortive. The selling of gin was carried on just the same, sometimes
publicly in the shops, more often by hawkers who sold it about the streets in
flasks and bottles under fictitious names. Some of these names were odd
enough, such as “Cuckold’s Comfort,” “Make-Shift,” “The Ladies’
Delight,” “Colic and Gripe water,” and so forth. Sometimes the gin was
coloured with a drop or two of pink fluid, and sold in bottles, labelled:
“Take two or three spoonfuls of this four or five times a day, or as often as
the fit takes you”. The Act was repealed seven years later; but the whole of
its unpopularity now fell upon Walpole and the Queen-Regent, especially
on the latter, who certainly had urged its passing, as she wished to abate the
crying scandal of drunkenness. The Prince of Wales, in his quest for
popularity, sided with the people, and was said to have been seen drinking
gin publicly in one of the taverns the very day the Act came into force.
The most serious riot of all took place, not in London or the provinces,
but in Edinburgh. Scotland, though quelled for a time after the abortive
rising of 1715, was still restless under Hanoverian rule, and it needed but a
spark to set the discontent in a blaze. Scotland had never been reconciled to
the Act of Union, and the jealousy of any interference from England was
strongly resented, even by many of those who refused to acknowledge
James as their King. The Porteous Riots served to bring matters to a climax.
These riots had their origin in a small matter. Two smugglers, named
Robertson and Wilson, were arrested by the officers of the Crown for
robbing a collector of customs, and lay in the Tolbooth, or city gaol of
Edinburgh, under sentence of death. Hanging was the punishment for
smuggling in those days, but practically the severity of the sentence
rendered the Act inoperative, and smuggling was winked at by many honest
Scots who regarded these imposts as an unjust aggression upon their ancient
liberties. But in this case the Government determined to make an example.
Great sympathy was felt for the prisoners by the people, and files were
secretly conveyed to them from outside to aid their escape. The prisoners
freed themselves from their manacles, and cut through a bar of the window.
Wilson insisted on going first, but as he was a stout man he got fixed in the

opening, and there remained, unable to move backwards or forwards. In this
plight he was found in the morning, and the escape of the prisoners was
defeated. Wilson was seized with self-reproach at the thought that, if it had
not been for his wilfulness, Robertson, who was a younger and slimmer
man, would have been saved, and he determined to do something to help
him.
It was the custom in those days for condemned prisoners to be taken to
the Tolbooth church the Sunday before their execution, and be preached at.
Robertson and Wilson went as was customary, escorted by guards, but as
they were coming out Wilson attacked the guards unexpectedly, and cried to
Robertson to escape. In the confusion the latter managed to do so; he
jumped over the pews, and was aided by the sympathetic congregation. The
generous conduct of Wilson excited great popular sympathy, but Captain
John Porteous, who was in command of the city guard, a rough and brutal
man, especially resented the saving of one prisoner by the other, and
determined that Wilson’s execution should take place the next day. In this
decision he was hastened by a rumour that Wilson would be rescued from
the gallows by the mob. He ordered a double guard around the scaffold, and
was said to have forced the unfortunate victim to wear handcuffs much too
small for him as he went to the place of execution, though the latter showed
him his bruised and bleeding wrists, and protested against this barbarity. “It
signifies little,” said Porteous brutally, “your pain will soon be at an end.”
Wilson answered him in words that were afterwards remembered: “You
know not how soon you yourself may have occasion to ask the mercy which
you are now refusing to a fellow-creature. May God forgive you!”

THE OLD TOLBOOTH, EDINBURGH, TEMP. 1736.
From an old Print

Wilson was hanged by the neck on the gibbet erected in the
Grassmarket, and the execution passed off quietly enough, though an
enormous and threatening crowd had assembled. But when the body had
hung on the gibbet for some time, some of the mob began to throw stones at
the guards and a rush was made for the scaffold to cut down the body, either
to give it decent burial or to see if it could be resuscitated. Porteous, who
was a violent-tempered man and was said to be half-drunk, ordered the
soldiers to fire upon the crowd and even stimulated them by snatching a
musket from a soldier and firing it himself. Several persons were wounded,
and six or seven killed on the spot. The firing was the signal for a general
tumult; Porteous and his soldiers withdrew with difficulty to the guard-
house, pursued by execrations and volleys of stones. Local feeling was
wholly against Porteous; he was arrested for ordering the soldiers to fire
upon the citizens, several of whom had taken no part in the tumult. His trial
took place before the High Court of Justice in Edinburgh, and he was found

guilty and condemned to death. He was to be hanged on September 8th,
1736, and meanwhile lay in the Tolbooth. He appealed to London, and the
Queen-Regent in Council, taking into consideration the provocation which
Porteous had received, ordered his reprieve.
When this reprieve arrived at Edinburgh from the Secretary of State’s
Office, under the hand of the Duke of Newcastle, the agitation that arose
was almost beyond belief. The people, who had been thirsting for the death
of Porteous, were like tigers baulked of their prey, and determined to take
the law into their own hands. There is little doubt that the Lord Provost and
city authorities were aware of what was going to take place, and also the
General in command of the troops at the Castle. They did nothing to prevent
it, for their sympathies were with the people. The night after the Queen’s
reprieve arrived in Edinburgh, a fierce mob arose as if by magic, armed
with pikes, bayonets, Lochaber axes, and any arms they could find, and
headed by a man dressed in woman’s clothes. The rioters made themselves
masters of the gates of the city, disarmed the guard, and marched to the
Tolbooth, with shouts of “Porteous! Porteous!” The unhappy man within,
who was entertaining a party of boon companions on the cheerful news of
his reprieve, saw the glare of the torches, heard the cries, and recognised in
them the shout of his doom. His friends made off as fast as they could, the
turnkeys were seized with panic and ran away, and many prisoners escaped.
Porteous concealed himself in the chimney of his cell. For some time the
old door of the Tolbooth, which was of stout oak, heavily clamped with
iron, resisted the onslaughts of the rioters, but at last they burned it down,
and leaping over the embers rushed into the prison in search of their prey.
The miserable man was soon discovered, dragged from the chimney, carried
outside and hanged in the sight of the mob from an improvised gibbet made
of a barber’s pole. The crowd then dispersed as suddenly and mysteriously
as it had assembled; the method and precision with which the ringleaders
carried out their work, and the celerity with which they dispersed, showed
there was method in this rough justice, and that it was rather the result of a
conspiracy than an ordinary riot. The next morning not a sign remained of
the night’s dread work except the body of Porteous hanging from the pole.
When the news reached London the Queen was furious at the insult
which she conceived had been especially aimed at her authority as Regent,
and gave vent to language which for vigour would have done credit to her

exemplar, Queen Elizabeth. For the only time on record Caroline
thoroughly lost her temper. She hastily summoned a council and proposed
the wildest measures. The charter of Edinburgh, she said, must be
withdrawn, the Provost must be incapacitated from ever holding office
again, the commander of the garrison must be cashiered, and fines and
imprisonment were to be the order of the day. The Duke of Argyll
endeavoured to put in a moderating word on behalf of his countrymen. The
Queen turned on him with fury, and said that sooner than brook such an
insult she would make Scotland a hunting ground. “In that case, madam,”
said the duke with a bow, “I will take leave of your Majesty, and go down to
my own country to get my hounds ready.” Caroline recognised the covert
threat in the duke’s words, and adjourned the council. Fortunately her anger
was not of a kind to last long, and wiser counsels prevailed. The Scottish
peers defended their countrymen in the House of Lords, and in the end a
compromise was arrived at, by which the City of Edinburgh had to pay a
nominal fine of £2,000, and the Provost was disgraced.
It was on the Porteous Riots that Sir Walter Scott wrote his celebrated
novel, The Heart of Midlothian. He introduces Queen Caroline in
connection with Jeannie Deans, who walked all the way from Edinburgh to
London to plead the cause of her sister, Effie Deans, who was sentenced to
death according to Scottish law for concealing the birth of her illegitimate
child. The father of this child, according to Scott’s romance, was Robertson,
the prisoner who had escaped, and who was supposed to have headed the
mob against Porteous. Of course, in a novel a good deal of fiction is reared
on a slender basis of fact, and Scott makes some little mistakes. For
example, in the Queen’s interview with Jeannie Deans he makes Lady
Suffolk be in attendance, instead of Lady Sundon (Mrs. Clayton), whereas
Lady Suffolk had left the court two years before; he also places the Queen’s
palace at Richmond, where the interview took place, in Richmond Park,
whereas it was in Richmond Gardens. But this much at least is true, and
may be quoted as one of the many instances of the Queen’s kindness of
heart. A certain Scottish peasant woman named Helen Walker actually did
walk from Edinburgh to London, to plead with the Queen-Regent on behalf
of her sister, then lying under sentence of death in the Tolbooth in
Edinburgh. The sister, who was called Isabella, or Tibbie Walker, had
secretly given birth to an illegitimate child, which shortly afterwards died,
and by the Scottish law of those days she was adjudged, by wilfully

concealing her condition, to have been guilty of its death. At the trial of this
wretched girl, her sister Helen, a rigid Presbyterian, was unwillingly the
principal witness against her sister. When she was asked whether Tibbie,
whom she dearly loved, had ever made known to her the fact of her
condition, she refused to perjure herself by saying that she had, saying: “It
is impossible for me to swear a falsehood”; and thus gave away her sister’s
sole chance of release. According to the Scottish law, six weeks had to
elapse between the sentence and the execution, and in that time Helen
Walker got up a petition praying the Queen for her sister’s reprieve, signed
by some of the principal residents in Edinburgh, and armed with this she
made her way to London on foot. Arrived there she presented herself, clad
in tartan plaid and country attire, before John, the great Duke of Argyll, who
was regarded in Scotland as a protector of the poor. To him she made
appeal. The Duke of Argyll told the whole story to the Queen, who was so
much touched at the girl’s honesty in refusing to perjure herself, and her
sisterly devotion in making this long pilgrimage, that she granted the
pardon at once, and Helen Walker returned with it to Edinburgh in time to
save her sister. She had trusted “in the Almighty’s strength,” she said.
Whether the Queen gave audience to Helen Walker or not is uncertain (it
would have been characteristic of her if she had done so), but the other facts
of the case are well authenticated.
These exciting public events kept the Queen-Regent busy throughout
the summer and early autumn, and gave her less time to think about her
private troubles. But when the time drew near for the King to return to
England, and he still lingered at Hanover, she became anxious; and when he
wrote to say that he could not be back in England for his birthday, October
30th, as he had always done before, her tolerance and endurance began to
give way. She took his absence on his birthday as a personal slight to
herself, a sign to all the world that her influence over him had waned,
owing to his passion for another. Her letters to the King, which were usually
of great length, giving him full details of everything which took place, now
became fewer and shorter, and no doubt abated proportionately in warmth.
Walpole and the Queen had hitherto affected to treat the King’s affair
with Madame Walmoden as a joke, but now they recognised that it was
beyond a joke and might become a public danger as it already was a public
scandal. They therefore put affectation aside and looked the matter in the

face. Walpole repeated, with even greater frankness, the views he had
expressed on the subject some time before, and he told the Queen that she
could no longer keep the King to her side by the arts and charms she had
employed when she was a younger woman. He therefore recommended that
she should maintain her influence by accepting the situation and making the
best of it. Since the King would not live anywhere long without his
Walmoden, the Queen must go so far as to ask him to bring her to England.
The Queen wept bitterly when the Prime Minister gave her this advice, but
at last declared that she would do as he suggested. Walpole, profligate and
cynical though he was, had his doubts at first whether the Queen, as a wife
and a woman, would carry her complaisance thus far. Two or three days
after, when he met her walking in the gardens at Richmond, she taxed him
with not believing that she would keep her promise. Walpole replied:
“Madam, your Majesty in asking if I disbelieved you, would put a word into
my mouth so coarse that I could not give it place even in my thoughts, but if
you oblige me to answer this question I confess I feared”. “Well,” replied
the Queen, “I understand what ‘I feared’ means on this occasion. To show
you that your fears were ill-founded I have considered what you said to me,
and am determined this very day to write to the King just as you would
have me, and on Monday when we meet at Kensington you shall see the
letter.” Accordingly Caroline wrote the letter and despatched it to her
faithless husband, assuring him that she had nothing but his happiness at
heart, and urging him to bring the Walmoden to England if such a step
would conduce to it. Heaven knows what mortification and anguish the
Queen suffered before she brought herself to write that letter. She has been
greatly blamed by the moralists for writing it, but the great excuse that can
be urged for her is that her action was strongly dictated by political
expediency, for the King’s prolonged absence at Hanover was bringing his
throne into peril.
The Queen went further in her abasement, and even considered the
possibility of taking Madame Walmoden into her personal service in the
same position that Lady Suffolk had occupied, and so throwing an air of
respectability over the arrangement. But from this Walpole dissuaded her,
pointing out that it would deceive no one, and defeat its object, for the
world would be scandalised if the Queen made the King’s mistress one of
her servants, which he said was a different thing from the King’s making
one of the Queen’s servants his mistress, as had been done in the case of

Lady Suffolk—a nice distinction. The King was delighted with his Queen’s
complaisance, and soon sent her an answer many pages long, in which he
praised her to the skies. He said that he wished to be everything that she
would have him to be, but she knew his nature, and must make allowances
for it. “Mais vous voyez mes passions ma chère Caroline! Vous connaissez
mes foiblesses, il n’y a rien de caché dans mon cœur pour vous, et plût à
Dieu que vous pourriez me corriger avec la même facilité que vous
m’approfondissez! Plût à Dieu que je pourrais vous imiter autant que je
sais vous admirer, et que je pourrais apprendre de vous toutes les vertus
que vous me faites voir, sentir, et aimer!” The King then gave for the
Queen’s delectation a detailed description of the Walmoden’s personal
charms, over which Caroline must have made a wry face. He desired that
Lady Suffolk’s lodgings should be made ready for her, as she would avail
herself of the Queen’s kind permission to make her home in England. The
Queen showed the King’s letter to Walpole, and said: “Well now, Sir
Robert, I hope you are satisfied. You see this minion is coming to England.”
But Walpole shook his head, and said that he did not believe she would
come, for she was afraid of the Queen. He had probably received advices
from his brother Horace at Hanover telling him that Madame Walmoden
was not such a fool as they thought her. His surmise proved correct, for,
though the Queen made ready the lodgings, the Walmoden thought
discretion the better part of valour, and remembering the fate of Lady
Suffolk, wisely elected to stay at Hanover.
The question whether Madame Walmoden would come or not agitated
the court, especially the Queen’s household. Some declared that it would be
an outrage and do infinite harm; others inclined to the opinion that it would
be better to bring her over, for if she kept the King so long in Hanover, thus
exasperating the English people, he would go there once too often, and the
nation would never let him come back. The scandal gradually filtered down
through the court to the people. They did not understand why the King’s
absence should be so prolonged, and sought a cause. No one wanted him
back for his own sake, but it was said that trade suffered because the King
was not in London, and the disaffected seized upon his predilection for
Hanover as a pretext for their disaffection. Many honest people pitied the
Queen, a virtuous matron, they declared, who should not be used so ill, and
they thought it was ridiculous for the King at his age, close on sixty, with a
wife and family, to be playing the gallant, when he ought to be setting an

example to the nation. The most extraordinary bills and satires were printed
and posted up in different parts of the town; one ran to this effect:—
“It is reported that his Hanoverian Majesty designs to visit his British
dominions for three months in the spring.”
On the gate of St. James’s Palace a more daring bill was posted:—
“Lost or strayed out of this house a man who has left a wife and six
children on the parish; whoever will give any tidings of him to the church-
wardens of St. James’s parish, so that he may be got again, shall receive
four shillings and sixpence reward. N.B.—This reward will not be
increased, nobody judging him to deserve a crown.”
One day in the City an old broken-down horse was turned out with a
ragged saddle on its back, and a woman’s pillion stuck up behind it. On the
horse’s forehead was fastened this inscription: “Let nobody stop me, I am
the King’s Hanoverian equipage going to fetch his Majesty and his w——
to England.”
In the autumn the Queen removed her court from Hampton Court to
Kensington. The King sent her word from Hanover that she could go to St.
James’s if she liked, but as she was afraid of arousing his jealousy by
keeping too much state, or perhaps because she did not care to show herself
much in public under present circumstances, she declined, and only went to
St. James’s to celebrate the King’s birthday. The displeasure at his absence
was very marked at the birthday drawing-room; the attendance was meagre,
and the clothes positively shabby. The Queen affected to notice nothing
unusual, but the Prince of Wales openly expressed his approval of these
signs of dissatisfaction, and deliberately played on his sire’s unpopularity to
make himself more popular. But though the Queen was outwardly calm she
was inwardly much concerned, and she made representations so urgent to
the King that at last he gave the long-deferred orders for the royal yacht to
set out for Holland.
On December 7th (1736), after giving a ball and a farewell supper at
Herrenhausen, the King tore himself away from Hanover and his
Walmoden. He arrived four days later at Helvoetsluys, where the yacht was
awaiting him. His daughter, the Princess of Orange, lay in a very perilous
child-bed at the Hague, and had urgently asked her father to come and see

her on his way home, but the King would not leave his mistress a few hours
sooner so as to give himself time to visit his daughter.
It was soon known in London that the King had set out from Hanover,
and the Queen anxiously awaited his return, she being the only person in
England who really cared whether he came back or not. But a great storm
arose at sea, which lasted for many days, and the King came not, nor any
tidings of him, though a hundred messages a day passed between St.
James’s Palace, where the Queen was, and the Admiralty. No one knew
whether the King had embarked at Helvoetsluys or not; but it was thought
certain that, if he had embarked, his vessel must go down, as no ship could
withstand the tremendous seas then running. As the days went by and no
news came, the suspense at court became great. Wagers were freely laid on
whether the King was drowned or not; many people opined that he was, and
the wish was often father to the thought. The Prince of Wales went about
everywhere, showing himself freely to the people. When the Queen’s
anxiety was at its worst he gave a dinner to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen,
and made them a speech, which was loudly praised. The Queen, who was
greatly incensed that the Prince should give this dinner at such a time, asked
particulars about it the next morning, and when she was told how well it
had passed off, and how popular the Prince was becoming, she exclaimed:
“My God, popularity always makes me sick, but Fritz’s popularity makes
me vomit. I hear that yesterday, on his side of the house, they talked of the
King’s being cast away with the same sang-froid as you would talk of a
coach being overturned, and that my good son strutted about as if he had
been already King.”
Walpole and his friends about the court were much exercised as to what
would happen to the Queen if the King were really drowned, and the Prince
ascended the throne. Walpole declared that “he (the Prince) would tear the
flesh off her bones with hot irons,” so much did he hate his mother. Lord
Hervey, on the other hand, thought that he would probably make use of the
Queen’s great knowledge and experience in the management of affairs, and
her position would not become so intolerable as some imagined. The
Princess Caroline differed from him. “My good lord,” she said, “you must
know very little of him if you believe that, for in the first place, he hates
mamma, in the next, he has so good an opinion of himself that he thinks he
wants no advice, and of all advice, no woman’s.” She said also that the

moment he was King “she would run out of the house, au grand galop”.
But the Queen declared that she would not budge an inch before she was
compelled to go.
This uncertainty continued for more than a week, and one morning the
Prince of Wales, with a satisfaction he could ill conceal, came to the Queen
with the news that he had received a letter from a correspondent near
Harwich saying that the night before guns had been heard at sea, signals of
distress, and part of the fleet that escorted the King’s yacht had been
dispersed. The poor Queen passed a day of the greatest anxiety and
depression, but at night a King’s messenger, who had been three days at sea,
and had landed by a miracle at Yarmouth, arrived at the palace with a letter
from the King, telling the Queen that he had not yet stirred out of
Helvoetsluys. Directly the Queen read the letter she cried out to the whole
court: “The King is safe! the King is safe!” with a joy that showed how
greatly she had feared.
The Queen’s satisfaction did not last long. A few days later, the wind
having calmed, it was understood that the King had embarked. Suddenly the
gales arose fiercer than before, and everybody thought that he was at sea
and in great danger. No word of the King reached the court for ten days
more, and then a vessel that had set out with the King from Helvoetsluys,
and continued with the fleet until the storm arose, brought news that the
royal yacht had been seen to tack about, but whether to return to the harbour
or not it was impossible to say. The tempests continued to rage with
unabated violence, and from accounts that reached the court of guns of
distress and shipwrecks, there seemed little doubt that the King by now was
at the bottom of the sea. The Queen lost all hope and broke down and wept
bitterly. In the Prince’s apartments everything wore a subdued air of
excitement; messengers ran to and fro, and it was said that the Prince
already considered himself King of England. The Queen, hearing this,
roused herself and determined to put a bold face on the matter, and on
Sunday December 26th, she went to the Chapel Royal as usual. She had not
been in chapel more than half an hour when a letter arrived from the King
telling her that it was true he had set out from Helvoetsluys, but owing to
the violence of the tempest he had put back again, with great difficulty, into
port, where he still was detained by contrary winds. It afterwards transpired
that the King had insisted on going forward, and only the good sense of the

admiral in command of the fleet, who flatly refused to obey orders, saved
his life.
The Queen now wrote to the King, telling him all her hopes and fears
and sufferings. She also told him of the Prince’s conduct when it was
thought that he was drowned, and how the different courtiers and Ministers
behaved. The King wrote a letter of great length in answer, full of the most
passionate tenderness. He no longer dilated on the charms of the Walmoden,
but on those of the Queen, expressing his impatience to rejoin her, and
depicting her as “a perfect Venus”. The Queen could not forbear showing
this letter to Walpole, who had told her so frankly that her beauty had gone,
and said: “Do not think because I show you this that I am an old fool and
vain of my person and charms of this time of day”. But it was evident that
she was very much pleased.
There was no popular enthusiasm about the King’s safety, and one of
the topical jests was “How is the wind with the King? Like the nation
against him.” While the King was still away, waiting at Helvoetsluys for the
wind to change, a great fire broke out at the Temple and the Prince of Wales
went at midnight to help extinguish it. He was hailed by the crowd with
shouts of “Crown him! Crown him!!” and the same cry was heard when he
appeared at the theatre. However, any immediate question of crowning him
was put at rest by the return of the King, who arrived at St. James’s on
January 15th, 1737, after a detention at Helvoetsluys of five weeks and an
absence from England of more than eight months. The Queen, accompanied
by all her children, including the Prince of Wales, went down to the
courtyard of the palace to receive him as he alighted from his coach. The
King embraced her with great affection, and then gave her his arm to
conduct her upstairs. A council was held the same day and the Queen
surrendered into the King’s hands her office of Regent.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER XIII:

116
This son, according to some authorities, came over to England with
Madame Walmoden, afterwards Countess of Yarmouth, after the
Queen’s death, and was generally known at court as “Master Louis”.
But according to Lord Hervey the child died within a year of its birth.
117
Old Whig, 26th February, 1736. This inscription was afterwards
introduced by Hogarth in his caricature of Gin Lane.
118
The Daily Gazetteer, 2nd October, 1736.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE PRINCE AND THE PATRIOTS.

1737.

The King’s narrow escape from drowning really seemed to have given him
a lesson, for he behaved much better on his return to England than he had
done before he went to Hanover. He treated the Queen with great affection
and respect, and praised her frequently before all the court. He no longer
abused England and extolled Hanover, and he did not so much as mention
Madame Walmoden. Perhaps the state of his health had something to do
with his change of conduct; he had contracted a chill on his journey home,
which soon after his return developed into a low fever. For some time the
King was very unwell; he kept to his own apartments and saw no one but
the Queen and, when it was absolutely necessary, Walpole. Exaggerated
rumours soon spread abroad concerning his condition, though the King
himself, the Queen and the Princesses made light of it. Still the King grew
no better, and at last the Ministers became anxious, and Walpole taxed the
Queen with concealing the King’s true state of health, an imputation which
she indignantly denied. The Prince of Wales and his friends declared that
the King’s constitution had quite broken up, and, even if he recovered from
this illness, it was unlikely that he would long survive. This was a little too
much for the King, and by way of showing that he was not dead yet, he
roused himself from his lethargy, quitted his chamber and resumed his
levées. It was noticed that he looked pale and thin, and it was generally
thought he would not live long, though, as a matter of fact, he grew better
every day after he quitted his chamber.
The King’s ill-health had the result of bringing the Prince of Wales
more prominently before the public. It was felt by many courtiers and
politicians that his coming to the throne was only a question of a little time,

and they were anxious to stand well with him. The alliance between the
Prince and the Patriots now became closer, and the Prince gave the
Opposition his open support in return for their championing his grievances,
which he was determined to have redressed by fair means or foul. He had
written, or caused to be written, l’Histoire du Prince Titi, in which his
wrongs were set forth in detail, and the King and Queen abused under
transparent pseudonyms. Translations of this work were circulated about
this time, and gave great offence at the court, but they influenced to some
extent popular feeling in his favour. The Prince took the leaders of the
Opposition into his confidence, especially rising men like Pitt and Lyttelton.
Perhaps it was these younger and more fiery spirits who urged him to act
upon the advice of Bolingbroke, and set the King at defiance, though it was
generally supposed that Chesterfield prompted him. Certain it was that the
Prince saw in his father’s illness an opportunity of bringing his claims
before Parliament, and determined to delay no longer. The Prince requested
the leaders of the Opposition to raise the question in the House of
Commons. Some were at first reluctant, but influenced no doubt by the
King’s ill-health, Pulteney at last consented to bring forward the question,
and Wyndham and Barnard agreed to support him.
When the King and Queen heard the news they were thrown into an
extraordinary state of agitation. The King was beside himself with rage; the
Queen declared that all these disputes would kill her. The Government, too,
were in a difficult position. The Prince’s demand that he should have his,
£100,000 a year, and a dowry for the Princess was, on the face of it,
reasonable, and, what was more important, popular; Ministers could not be
sure of their majority, and might suffer defeat. Walpole endeavoured to
effect a compromise, and after great difficulty induced the King to send a
message to the Prince the day before the motion came on in the House,
saying that he was prepared to settle,£50,000 a year on him absolutely, and
to give the Princess a dowry. The Prince declined to consider the message,
saying that the matter was in other hands.
The next day, February 22nd (1737), Pulteney brought forward his
motion in a moderate speech, basing his main argument on precedent, and
the right of the heir-apparent to the Crown to enjoy a sufficient and settled
income. Walpole in his reply laid stress upon the King’s message to the
Prince the previous day, as showing how far the King was anxious to meet

his son’s wishes. He held that Parliamentary interference between father
and son would be highly indecorous. In the end the Prince’s claims were
rejected by a majority of thirty. This small majority would really have been
reduced to a minority if forty-five Tories with Jacobite leanings had not left
the House in a body, unwilling to give any vote in favour of the heir of
Hanover, even though by doing so they would defeat the Government.

THE PRINCESSES MARY AND LOUISA.
(DAUGHTERS OF GEORGE II.)

The King and the Queen were overjoyed at the Prince’s defeat, and, in
the first flush of victory, the King was inclined to follow up his advantage
by turning his son immediately out of St. James’s Palace in the same way as
(he might have remembered, but did not) his father had turned him out.
Walpole dissuaded the King from taking so extreme a step, and then
proceeded to urge him to make good his promise to settle a jointure on the
Princess, and make over, £50,000 a year to his son absolutely. To this the
King now demurred, though Walpole pointed out to him that the victory in
the House of Commons had only been gained on the understanding that the
King would carry out his pledges. The difficulty was complicated by the

Prince continuing impenitent. So far from being downcast by his defeat in
the House of Commons, he called a council of all his friends, and it was
resolved to raise the question anew in the House of Lords, Lord Carteret
undertaking to bring forward the motion, and Chesterfield to support it.
Here, too, he lost, but public sympathy was undoubtedly with him, and to
prevent the scandal from growing, Walpole, Newcastle, and indeed all the
King’s Ministers, urged the necessity of a settlement. One was eventually
made, though not until much later, by the King settling £50,000 a year on
the Prince absolutely, together with £10,000 a year from the Duchy of
Cornwall, and Parliament making up the rest by giving an unusually large
jointure to the Princess of Wales.
The King and Queen were much disgusted at what they considered the
Government’s half-heartedness, and included in their displeasure the Whigs
generally, who had certainly wavered in their devotion to the court when
they heard that the King’s health was so bad. “If the Whigs can be so little
depended upon in the King’s interest,” said the Queen, “we might as well
send for the Tories, who are only too willing to come; the King has only to
beckon to them.” She did not mean what she said, but Walpole became
alarmed. His majority was not so large that he could pose any longer as a
dictator, or afford to dispense with the Queen’s favour and support. He
knew that Lady Sundon was intriguing against him, and that she had had
several interviews with Lord Carteret. Carteret now expressed his great
regret at having championed the Prince’s cause; he said he was driven into
it against his better judgment; he was full of the Queen’s praises, and vowed
that he would do anything to serve her. He declared that he had great
influence over the Opposition leaders, especially Pulteney and Wyndham,
and could bring them to the Queen’s side if she would only make the sign.
All this was duly repeated by Lady Sundon to the Queen, who listened but
did nothing. She never intended to do anything, but she thought it well to
bring Walpole to his bearings, and in this she quickly succeeded. Walpole
came to her, and told her that he had heard of Carteret’s overtures, and
warned her not to trust him. The Whigs he urged were the natural support of
the Hanoverian family, which was certainly true, since they had brought
them over to England, and the Tories were but a broken reed. Caroline
agreed with all he said, but fell back upon the lukewarm support which the
Whigs had given the King. Even Walpole, she said, had regarded the
Prince’s conduct in too favourable a light. Walpole told her that he had only

striven to bring the Prince to reason, but he now owned that he had made a
mistake. The Queen, he said, should never again have cause to complain of
him on that score, he saw that the Prince must be overcome. The Queen said
she only wanted him to assure her on that point, and she dismissed him with
many assurances that she would never cease to support him. The immediate
result of this reconciliation was to strengthen the alliance between the
Prince and the Patriots, who now saw in Frederick their only hope of ever
gaining office.
These events took place quite early in the Session, but when Parliament
rose the King said nothing about going to Hanover as Ministers had feared.
In truth he was afraid to go, for he knew that Frederick would seize upon it
as a pretext for some fresh intrigue, and the country was hardly in a humour
to brook another prolonged absence. So he rarely mentioned the name of
Hanover and never that of Walmoden. Most people about the court thought
that the King had forgotten her for Lady Deloraine, to whom he showed
great attention, paying her visits in her apartments for a long time together,
as he had done to Lady Suffolk in the old days. He also insisted on her
sitting next him at the commerce table, and often walked with her tête-à-
tête in the gardens. Lady Deloraine, who had great beauty but little
discretion, was inclined to boast of her triumphs, for she said to Lord
Hervey: “Do you know the King has been in love with me these two
years?” Lord Hervey, who was afraid to invite dangerous confidences,
merely smiled and said: “Who is not in love with you?” Walpole came
across her one day, standing in the hall at Richmond with a baby in her
arms, and said to her: “That is a very pretty boy, Lady Deloraine; whose is
it?” She replied: “Mr. Windham’s (her husband’s) upon my honour. But,”
she added with a significant laugh, “I will not promise whose the next shall
be.” She moreover told several people that the King had been importunate a
long time, but that she had held out from motives of virtue, which were not
at all appreciated, as her husband, she was sure, did not care.
Whether there was anything between Lady Deloraine and the King or
not, the Queen followed her usual policy of ignoring the intrigue. She knew
what her husband was, and made allowances. Perhaps, too, she was glad
that he should seek distraction from Madame Walmoden, though she knew
that he had not forgotten her. Walpole had told her of an incident which
showed how the King still esteemed his Hanoverian mistress above Lady