The Project Gutenberg eBook of A forgotten Prince of Wales, by Henry Curties

Title: A forgotten Prince of Wales

Author: Henry Curties

Release Date: May 19, 2023 [eBook #70795]

Language: English

Produced by: MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

[Pg v]

A FORGOTTEN PRINCE OF WALES.

[Pg viii]

CHAPTER I.
Which Seizes upon the Prince as he comes into the World.

On the fourth day of cold February in that cold town of Hanover, in the year 1707, of a brilliant and beautiful young mother, in the great palace on the little river Leine, was born—perhaps it would be more correct to say crept into the world, for there was so little noise about it—a Prince of whom in after years his father remarked: “My dear first-born is the greatest ass and the greatest liar and the greatest canaille and the greatest beast in the whole world, and I heartily wish he was out of it.”[1] If this worthy parent—who by-the-bye was no less a personage than King George the Second of England at the time of speaking—had any reason or truth in this most fatherly comment with its charitable tail-piece by way of benediction, then[Pg 2] must this little German potentate—by accident King of England—have been gifted in addition to his other fine and gentlemanly qualities of perception, with the power of divining the future, for his dislike, nay, his inveterate hatred, of this little vaunted first-born son commenced at his earliest years. Why, the good God alone knows, for certainly none of His creatures have ever up to the present time succeeded in discovering the cause.

The beautiful young mother then, Caroline, a Princess of Brandenburg-Ansbach, commonly called “Caroline of Ansbach,” married but a year to her George Augustus—only the Electoral Prince[2] at that time—lay happy in her bed in the palace, with her baby beside her, whilst the cold river ran without and the winter winds blew among the dear orange trees in the gardens she was so fond of two miles away at Herrenhausen, and very few people in Hanover and still fewer in England knew that a possible future Prince of Wales had been born into the world, for perhaps after all, very few people very much cared. Anne of England was still on the throne.

So quiet had this matter been kept and so great a surprise was the event that Howe, the English Envoy, wrote home in the following strain:—

“This Court having for some time past almost despaired of the Princess Electoral being brought[Pg 3] to bed, and most people apprehensive that her bigness, which has continued for so long, was rather an effect of a distemper than that she was with child, her Highness was taken ill last Friday at dinner, and last night, about seven o’clock, the Countess d’Eke, her lady of the bedchamber, sent me word that the Princess was delivered of a son.”[3]

On the 25th February Howe writes again complaining bitterly like a wicked fairy in a children’s tale, that he has not been invited to the christening which had taken place a few days after the birth in the young mother’s bedroom, when the child had received the names of Frederick Louis. Furthermore, he had not been allowed to see the baby—and presumably to kiss it—until ten days later! This visit, however, appears to have mollified him, for he bursts forth into description: “I found the women,” he says, “all admiring the largeness and strength of the child.”

One can see them doing it, and the dry old Envoy—it is presumed he was a bachelor as he makes no mention of his wife—looking on, and as much at sea with regard to the “points” of a fine baby as a midwife would be at a horse show.

But this unusual secrecy about the birth—which was attributed to the child’s grandfather the Elector, afterwards George the First of England, who was not on the best of terms with Anne our reigning[Pg 4] Queen—had another aspect. It was an age of suspicion, suspicion especially of substituted heirs, and the foolishness of not inviting the English Envoy to the birth according to custom, revolting as it would have been to a young modest wife, might have seriously prejudiced the child’s future had he not been born with, and had to struggle against, so many of those distinctive bad qualities so carefully nurtured and indulged by his father and grandfather. On a later occasion his father remarked to his mother a propos of these: “Mais vous voyez mes passions ma chère Caroline. Vous connaissez mes foiblesses.” Yes, that affectionate and long-suffering lady did know his “foiblesses” before she had been his wife very long. Thoroughly to appreciate the nest into which this unfortunate little Prince was born and christened, it is necessary to turn for a moment to the habits and customs of his father and grandfather.

Taking the latter first, the Elector and future King of England was in the habit of retaining without any concealment whatever a minimum of three mistresses. These ladies, this considerate old father-in-law expected his son’s wife to receive and treat with civility, and strange to say Caroline the Princess Electoral did it. Poor soul! She had much more than that to wink at on her own account before long owing to the before-mentioned “foiblesses” of her little husband.

The chief of her father-in-law the Elector’s little[Pg 5] harem was a lady of the name of Schulemburg, of an ancient but poor family, who had occupied her exalted position almost from a very plain girlhood, and whose name became subsequently very well known in England.

The first George never distinguished himself as a seeker after beauty. The Schulemburg is described as a tall, thin person, quite bald, wearing a very ugly red wig, and with an uncomely face much marked with the smallpox. This disfigurement she endeavoured to cover with paint with shocking results.

The lady occupying the second position in the seraglio who bore the euphonic name of Kielmansegge, and was the separated wife of a Hamburg merchant, was of exactly opposite dimensions, bulking large with great unwieldiness, she, however, had no need to redden her cheeks, being gifted by Nature with a plenteous colour which she vainly endeavoured to assuage with layers of white powder.

The advent of this Ruler in public with either or both of these fascinating ladies under his immediate protection must have added considerably to his Electoral dignity.

The third of this honourable trio was, strange to say, a beautiful young woman, the Countess Platen, married to a man whose family seems to have provided courtesans for princes for generations, but it was so far to the Count Platen’s credit that when his wife openly became the Elector’s mistress he[Pg 6] separated from her. This lady seems to have simply thrust herself into the old Elector’s arms, and appears for a time, at least, to have absorbed most of his superfluous elderly affection.

But about the time that little Prince Frederick Louis, the subject of these Memoirs, was about two years old, a little sister—Anne, named apparently after the Queen of England—having joined him in the nursery, a certain couple of adventurers—for they were nothing better—Henry Howard, third son of the Earl of Suffolk, with his pretty but unscrupulous wife Henrietta, made their appearance at the Court of Hanover. They had come, like many others from England, to throw in their lot with the Elector and his chances of becoming King of England, which at that time were none too sure, but still a good sporting chance.

Henry Howard and his wife had come like the others to better their fortunes, which apparently in their case had arrived at that stage when they could not well be much worse.

It is reported that so short of money were they on their arrival that Mrs. Howard had to cut off her beautiful hair and sell it—her glory!—to provide a conciliatory banquet for some powerful Hanoverian acquaintances. One can almost add a tear to those she surely shed over the shorn locks in private. But the loss of her hair does not appear to have handicapped her in any way from the point of view of fascination. She quickly ingratiated[Pg 7] herself with the Elector’s aged mother, Sophia, granddaughter of James the First of England, and Protestant heiress of England by Act of Parliament, talked English with her, and became one of her intimate friends. From this, it was but a step to the favour of Caroline, the wife of the Elector’s son, and Mrs. Hettie Howard was by no means the kind of lady to let grass grow under her feet. She was said to be a great adept at flattery, knowing just how much to tickle the ears of Royalty with Electoral Royalty. She tickled to such effect that she soon became one of the Princess’s ladies-in-waiting, and as such no doubt had the privilege of dandling our Prince Frederick as an infant in her arms.

But apparently she had not as yet hit her mark; it was at the heart of the little Prince’s father that her darts were aimed, and certainly never was a target more ready to receive them. George Augustus had ever posed as a lady’s man, yet this incident was possibly the first which opened the eyes of his young wife to his subsequently deplored “foiblesses.” The Electoral Prince followed in the exemplary footsteps of his father, the Elector; he started the nucleus of a harem, and Mrs. Hettie Howard obligingly became the nucleus! One more good example to set before the little Prince when his eyes—and ears—should open to understand the wicked things of this world!

The comment of George Augustus’s aged grandmother[Pg 8] the Electress on this arrangement—with which, by-the-bye, she was rather pleased—was quite German and appropriate. “Ah!” she remarked, “it will improve his English.”

Though the position of the House of Hanover at this time with regard to the throne of England was considered to be good, yet it was by no means sure. The two following letters will, perhaps, throw some light on the period.

The first is from Leibnitz, a savant attached to the Court of Hanover, but at that time in Vienna, and is addressed to Caroline, the Electoral Princess, whom he had known as a brilliant girl under the wing of her aunt Sophia Charlotte, sister of George, at the Court of Berlin.

The Princess Caroline’s reply.

Poor young Princess Caroline, “the Pure, the Great, the Illustrious,” as Mr. Wilkins calls her. She must, but for her children, have found it none too cheerful in that dreary old Leine Schloss by the river, about which clung the then unsolved mystery of the disappearance of Königsmarck, the lover of the Princess Sophie Dorothea—her husband’s mother—as he left that lady’s chamber and was seen no more. A mystery which remained a mystery until years after when, the floor of an adjoining room being taken up, his body was found beneath.

But apart from this it must have been a dreary life for a young girl, a life of looking on at much over-eating, and over-drinking perhaps, too. A life of low sordid immorality going on under her very nose in which her husband and his father played leading parts; a life in which the higher side of her[Pg 11] nature was never called upon, except for the almost habitual display of charity and forbearance to others.

LEINE PALACE, HANOVER.
Birthplace of Frederick, Prince of Wales.

Yet the higher nature was there despite her faults which were many; she possessed the pure gold of a good heart, which saw her through many trials and temptations, and left her, but for her conduct to her eldest son—and some of her correspondence—a clean name in history.

But other more stirring thoughts soon filled the young mother’s head than the frailties of her husband’s family, for when the sum of her nursery reached four and the little Prince Frederick was in his eighth year, the fruit of her hopes ripened, Queen Anne of England died, and a lucky turn of politics in favour of the Whigs, laid open to her the road to a throne.

On the 18th of June, 1714, the Heiress of England, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, the aged mother of that Prince Elector, who afterwards became George the First of England, and granddaughter of James the First having dined in public with her son, that is to say having taken her big German mid-day meal in the presence of the Court, went forth on the arm of her granddaughter-in-law, the Electoral Princess Caroline, to take the summer air in the beautiful gardens of the Palace of Herrenhausen.

Much had occurred during the previous twenty-four hours to upset the “Heiress of Britain” as she was proud to be called, far too much worry for an old lady in her eighty-fourth year. Even at that advanced age the glamour of the English crown fascinated her. Perhaps it was the long drawn out hope of many years, the hope that possibly had been ever before her eyes since the flight of James the Second.

She had received a letter on the previous day written by the hand of Queen Anne herself in which[Pg 13] that royal lady had distinctly told her in the most peremptory manner in answer to a supplication to that effect, that she objected to have any member of the Electoral family in her dominions during her lifetime.

This had been a crushing blow. The old Electress had schemed, and schemed as she imagined successfully, to establish her grandson George Augustus, the Electoral Prince, with his wife in England. This would have been a masterly stroke worthy of the universal reputation for policy of so grand an old lady, and would have been as it were the planting of one foot on the land she looked upon as her rightful heritage, but fate and Queen Anne decided differently. The latter had left no room for doubt about her intentions. Writing to her confidant Leibnitz, on the 17th June, the Electoral Princess Caroline said on the subject of this letter and others:

“We were in a state of uncertainty here until yesterday, when a courier arrived from the Queen with letters for the Electress, the Elector, and the Electoral Prince, of which I can only say that they are of a violence worthy of my Lord Bolingbroke.”[6]

It is perfectly certain that Queen Anne had made herself exceedingly objectionable as even a Queen can at times, and had not possibly stayed to choose her words. Be that as it may, she had succeeded[Pg 14] in entirely upsetting the equanimity of her “good cousin” the Electress.

The old lady issuing from the Palace, where possibly she had dined more amply than was judicious—for she was a great eater—leant on the arm of her beloved Catherine and harped as ladies of her age will do on the string of her treatment by her kinswoman Anne. It is said that she became greatly excited and walked very fast, as she spoke of her imagined wrongs. They bent their steps towards the celebrated orangery, where the Princess and the attendants with them noticed the Electress turn very white; then the next moment she fell forward in a swoon.

The cries of the attendants quickly brought to her aid her son the Elector who was not far off, and he placed some poudre d’or—evidently a restorative—in her mouth. But she was beyond the power of earthly restoratives; she was carried into the Palace and in the barbarous custom of the time bled, but very little blood came[7]; she was dead! as the doctors said, from apoplexy.

Thus did this great Princess, to whom our own late Queen, Victoria, her descendant, has been so often likened, miss by a little over six weeks the great goal of all her long years of ambition, the throne of England, for Queen Anne died on the 1st of August following.

It is extraordinary that after the lapse of six[Pg 15] generations a descendant so like her should fill that throne after which she had striven so long and so wisely for her family.

Her son George was now the “Heir of Britain” in her place; an heirship which was to very soon resolve itself into possession, for within a few weeks began that celebrated crisis in England between Oxford and Bolingbroke which from the virulence of the discussions at the Councils absolutely broke down Queen Anne’s health and killed her.

She departed this life on the 1st of August, 1714, almost her last intelligible words being of her brother, the Pretender: “My brother! Oh! my poor brother. What will become of you?”

On July 31st, Craggs, a creature of the Whig Government, had been despatched to Hanover to convey the news that the Queen of England was dying.

Craggs reached Hanover on August 5th—a journey then apparently of six days—but his performance, though accomplished, one can imagine, with all haste, was entirely eclipsed by that of one Godike, secretary to Bothmar, the Hanoverian Envoy to England, who, despatched by his master on August 1st, the day of the Queen’s death, arrived at Hanover on the 5th, the same day as Craggs, and proceeding direct to the Palace of Herrenhausen, conveyed the news to the Elector before any of the other messengers from England arrived.

[Pg 16]

It was this enterprising Bothmar who really decided George in accepting the British Crown, for had not his reports from London been satisfactory as to the feeling of the people, or at any rate as to the absence of hostility to the Elector on their part, it is very unlikely that George would have left his beloved Herrenhausen at all, and England might to-day have been ruled by a Stuart King.

“The late King,” wrote Dean Lockier after the death of George the First, “would never have stirred a step if there had been any strong opposition.”[8]

But there was no disturbance, the people of London at any rate were quiet, probably in a state of expectancy, and the preparations of the Elector and his family for a move to England commenced forthwith.

Nevertheless, the new King of England did not hurry himself to take possession of his dominions; he had been there thirty-four years before on a matrimonial venture, of which the late Queen Anne, then Princess of York, was the object, and he apparently cherished no pleasant recollections of the visit, which had proved a dismal failure.

However, he started a month after the death of Queen Anne for the Hague, there to embark for England, and he took with him a numerous following of Hanoverians in which was Bernstorff, his Prime Minister, and two-thirds of his seraglio, i.e., the[Pg 17] Ladies Schulemburg and Kielmansegge. It is not surprising that with his Eastern proclivities he took also a couple of Turks by name Mustapha and Mahomet, but whether these two last were eunuchs, in attendance on the two ladies of the harem or not is not mentioned in history.

To his son, the Electoral Prince, George gave the command to travel with him, the Princess Caroline was to follow in a month with all her children except one. Little Prince Frederick Louis, the subject of these Memoirs, by his grandfather’s command, was to remain behind in Hanover, a child of seven, alone and separated from the rest of his kindred.

The new King, George the First of England, having departed with his train, and a month after the Princess Caroline—soon to become Princess of Wales—following with all the other children, little Frederick Louis, then in his eighth year, was left alone at Herrenhausen under the guardianship of his great-uncle Ernest Augustus and controlled by various governors and tutors.

One can imagine the little lonely boy wandering through the deserted corridors of the Palace of Herrenhausen and picturing the figures of those dearest to him, those who had left him and whose faces he was not to see again for many a long year. In the early days of that separation one can picture the child in the orange walks of the beautiful grounds in the warm autumn time and looking and longing for his mother—she was a good and affectionate mother to him then—whose face he was not to see again for nearly fourteen years. During the next two years while the excitement of the Pretender’s invasion was passing in England, the little Prince lived the ordinary life of a child, but with the difference from ordinary children that[Pg 19] he must have been an exceedingly lonely child. That he was without companions of his own age is quite certain from what followed. From his great-uncle it is unlikely that he received much sympathy, if that Prince partook of the nature of his brother the King-Elector George. But there was one left behind there who possibly showed him some kindness—although there is not a vestige of evidence to show that she did—and that was the beautiful Countess Platen, the mistress of the King who was left behind on account of the religion she professed, and because Bernstorff, the Hanoverian Prime Minister, was jealous of her influence over the King.

So for two years the little Prince lived his child’s life and nothing was recorded of him. Then we hear of him from two sources: from Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu, who visited Hanover in 1716, like many other English in the train of the King, and from his governor who reported upon his conduct to his mother about this time.

The former of these who could be trusted—for Lady Mary was no Court sycophant and lied to no one—writes as follows of Frederick:—

“Our young Prince, the Duke of Gloucester”—he had just received that title from his grandfather, but the patent never passed the Seal—“has all the accomplishments which it is possible to have at his age, with an air of sprightliness and understanding, and something so very engaging and easy in his[Pg 20] 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.”

So much for little Prince Frederick at the age of nine. It may be here explained that his mother Caroline, Princess of Wales, had beautiful fair hair and a lovely skin; she was said also to possess the finest bust in Europe.

But from the very favourable account of Lady Mary we have to turn to the other, that of his governor, and that is far from flattering. Indeed, in this record we shall be continually turning from good report to evil report, and from evil report back again to the good. It will be necessary later to draw a line and divide the makers of these reports into two distinct parties, the prejudiced and interested, the unprejudiced, those who had nothing to gain by vilifying him.

But on the occasion we refer to, the governor of the young Prince had a good deal to say; he spoke with feeling, as one who had suffered, and most probably he had: he reveals a very pitiable state of affairs.

[Pg 21]

His complaints were embodied in a letter to Prince Frederick’s mother, and were as follows; he was a precocious youth—it must be remembered he was only nine years old—he already gambled and drank.

The Princess of Wales, however, made light of the matter.

“Ah,” she answered, “I perceive that these are the tricks of a page.”

To which his irate governor responded:

“Plût à Dieu, madame,” he virtuously answered, “these are not the tricks of a page; these are the tricks of a lacquey and a rascal!”

It is pretty certain that young as the boy was his life was developing on the same lines as his father and grandfather, for which their bad example and the lonely state in which he lived was undoubtedly accountable.

George the First, however, when he visited Hanover in 1716 found no fault with his grandson. He appears to have been one of the few friends the boy had. He evidently approved of him in every way whether he knew of the child’s growing bad habits or not. He was especially pleased that he held courts and levees at Herrenhausen in his absence and as a mark of his general approval created the boy Duke of Gloucester, but as it has been already stated the patent never passed the Seal, probably because the title chosen had proved a very unlucky one in former cases.

[Pg 22]

A propos of this visit of King George to Hanover—the first since his accession to the English throne two years before—Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu writes:—

“This town is neither large nor handsome, but the palace capable of holding a greater Court than that of St. James’s. The King has had the kindness to appoint us a lodging in one part, without which we should be very ill-accommodated, for the vast number of English crowds the town so much it is very good luck to get one sorry room in a miserable tavern.... The King’s company of French comedians play here every night; they are very well dressed, and some of them not ill actors. His Majesty dines and sups constantly in public. The Court is very numerous, and its affability and goodness make it one of the most agreeable places in the world.”[9]

Lady Mary writes again to another friend:

“I have now got into the region of beauty. All the women have literally rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and bosoms; jet eyebrows and scarlet lips, to which they generally add coal black hair. These perfections never leave them until the hour of their deaths, and have a very fine effect by candlelight. But I could wish them handsome with a little more variety. They resemble one of the beauties of Mrs. Salmon’s Court of Great Britain,[10] and are in[Pg 23] as much danger of melting away by approaching too close to the fire, which they for that reason, carefully avoid, though it is now such excessive cold weather that I believe they suffer extremely by that piece of self-denial.”

This bit of satire apparently was directed at the Hanoverian ladies’ excessive fat.

But Lady Mary was charmed with Herrenhausen.

“I was very sorry,” she writes, “that the ill weather did not permit me to see Herrenhausen in all its beauty, but in spite of the snow I think the gardens very fine. I was particularly surprised at the vast number of orange trees, much larger than any I have ever seen in England, though this climate is certainly colder.”[11]

It appears from the account in Mr. Wilkins’ “Caroline the Illustrious,” that King George enjoyed himself immensely during this 1716 visit to Hanover, and that he found much pleasure in the society of the beautiful but unscrupulous Countess Platen, from whom he had been separated for two years. Lady Mary Montagu herself, too, was not without favour in His Majesty’s eyes. The King-Elector, however, had also brought with him the remainder of the harem, viz., Schulemburg and Kielmansegge, with the two Turks presumably to look after them.

Yet with all this trouble around him King[Pg 24] George found life pleasurable. In the above account Lord Peterborough, who was in his suite, is represented as remarking of him that “he believed he had forgotten the accident which happened to him and his family on the 1st August, 1714.”

But time passed on, and the King returned once more to England, leaving his little nine-year-old grandson to the tender care, officially, of his brother Ernest Augustus and his governors, but unofficially to the society of such grooms and hangers-on of the palace who could throw themselves, to the boy’s ruin, in his way.

George the First died on the 10th of June, 1727, while in a travelling carriage ascending a hill near Ippenburen on the road to Hanover, of a fit brought on by a too-free indulgence in melons. These he unfortunately ate on the previous night while supping at the house of a local nobleman, the Count de Twittel.

He was succeeded by his son George, Prince of Wales, who was born at Hanover the 30th October, 1683, of Sophia, Princess of Luneberg Zell, his father’s uncrowned Queen. Thus Caroline, the mother of our Prince Frederick, exchanged her position of Princess of Wales for that of Queen of England.

The Princess of Wales had been a success in England from the very first; a success which was not to be wondered at if the following description of her is correct:—

“She still retained her beauty. She was more than common tall, of majestic presence, she had an exquisitely-modelled neck and bust, and her hand was the delight of the sculptor. Her smile was distinguished by its sweetness and her voice[Pg 26] was rich and low. Her lofty brow, and clear, thoughtful gaze showed that she was a woman of no ordinary mould. She had the royal memory, and, what must have been a very useful attribute to her, the power of self-command; she was an adept in the art of concealing her feelings, of suiting herself to her company, and of occasionally appearing to be what she was not. Her love of art, letters and science, her lively spirits, quick apprehension of character, and affability were all points in her favour. She had, too, a love of state, and appeared magnificently arrayed at Court ceremonials, evidently delighting in her exalted position and fully alive to its dignity.”[12]

To the Princess’s attractions were added those of her maids of honour: all “Well-born, witty and beautiful, and not out of their teens.”

First of these, par excellence, was Mary Bellenden, daughter of John second Lord Bellenden. To the fascinating charms of her person which were undeniable was added an exceedingly lively disposition. She is thus referred to in an old ballad dealing with the quarrel between George the First and the Prince of Wales, when the Prince and all his household received notice to quit St. James’s:

[Pg 27]

She did not escape the unwelcome attentions of the Prince of Wales to whom sprightly fresh young English girls were a novelty after the heavy Fraus of Hanover, though his wife Caroline was certainly an exception.

It is stated by Coxe in his “Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole” that he sent his abominable propositions to Mary Bellenden by Mrs. Howard, the before-mentioned “nucleus” of his harem who had accompanied him to England, and that the pure-minded Mary very properly snubbed both him and his messenger—who was nothing more than a procuress if she really carried the message—for their pains.

Coxe then states that the Prince being rejected by Miss Bellenden fell in love with Mrs. Howard, but he could not, of course, have been aware that the liaison between the Prince and this lady began in Hanover.

This seduction or attempted seduction of the maids of honour appears, as will be seen later, to have been quite a recognised pastime at Court, in which the Prince of Wales of the moment took an active part; but all honour be to sweet Mary Bellenden who preserved her good name, became Duchess of Argyle, and handed a pure record down to posterity.

This young lady appears to have possessed a particular charm and fascination, both from her beauty and her sparkling wit and high spirits.[Pg 28] Horace Walpole states that the palm was awarded “above all for universal admiration to Miss Bellenden. Her face and person were charming, lively she was even to étourderie, and so agreeable that she was never afterwards mentioned by her contemporaries but as the most perfect creature they had ever seen.”

Gay, the poet, refers to la belle Bellenden more than once.

It has been said that this young lady was the subject of improper advances from the Prince of Wales, which were rejected. Snubbing, however, seemed to have but little effect on the Heir-Apparent; he pressed his attentions upon her in the following elegant and gentlemanly manner.

Mary Bellenden, like many others who live in the atmosphere of Courts, suffered almost chronically from what is called “Living in Short Street”; she was always hard up.

The refined George being well aware of this, in common, probably, with most of the household, took upon himself one evening to sit beside the beautiful Bellenden, and taking out his purse—one of those long silk net affairs, no doubt—commenced to count out his guineas as a gentle hint that he was prepared[Pg 29] to settle Mary’s outstanding bills—which may have been particularly pressing at the time—a quid pro quo being understood.

MARY BELLENDEN,
4th Duchess of Argyll.
Copied for this book by the kindness of the present Duke from the Gallery at Inveraray.

Miss Bellenden bore the telling of his guineas once, but when he began to count them again she remonstrated.

“Sir,” she cried, “I cannot bear it; if you count your money any more, I will go out of the room.”

The delicate-minded George, fresh from the mercenary and accommodating ladies of Herrenhausen, was not abashed at this rejoinder; he jingled his guineas against Mary’s pretty little ear. The result was exactly what it should have been. Mary rose with sparkling eyes and cheeks aflame, and with one well-directed blow, sent his purse and his guineas flying across the room; then Mary, probably aghast at her act, ran away.

Another way of showing her contempt of her royal admirer was to stand with crossed arms in his presence. Later she wrote on this subject to Mrs. Howard, with whom she appeared to have formed a close intimacy; she was recommending a new maid-of-honour to her care:

“I hope you will put her a little in the way of behaving before the Princess, such as not turning her back; and one thing runs mightily in my head, which is, crossing her arms, as I did to the Prince, and told him I was not cold but liked to stand so.”[13]

[Pg 30]

But Miss Bellenden was in love, which is the greatest safeguard against such persons as the little German Prince of Wales. She loved a certain groom of the bedchamber to the Prince, Colonel John Campbell, some years later Duke of Argyle. But here George showed a little of the noblesse which one expects from a descendant of Edward the Third.

Finding that Mary Bellenden was in love, though he did not know the object of her affections, he showed no ill-feeling, but asked a pledge from her that she would not marry without informing him, and in return he would give her and her future husband his favour. But Mary had lived much at Court, and mistrusted princes.

A year or two later she secretly married Colonel Campbell, and was no doubt very happy, but certainly impecunious in that long interval before she became a Duchess. In 1720 she writes to her friend Mrs. Howard, from Bath, and good and pure woman and loving wife though she was, her letter is a fair sample of the free and easy, not to say broad, style of even virtuous ladies of the period.

“Oh! God,” she writes, “I am so sick of bills; for my part I believe I shall never be able to hear them mentioned without casting up my accounts—bills are accounts you know. I do not know how your bills go in London, but I am sure mine are not dropped, for I paid one this morning as long as my arm and as broad as my....

[Pg 31]

“I intend to send you a letter of attorney, to enable you to dispose of my goods before I may leave this place—such is my condition.”

But there were other maids-of-honour only a little less charming. There was Margaret Bellenden, of whom Gay wrote.[14] Mary’s sister or cousin, almost as beautiful, and Mary Lepel who was raved about by such excellent critics as Gay, Pope and Voltaire, not to mention the courtiers Chesterfield and Bath.

She appears to have been of a more stately style of beauty than Mary Bellenden, and of a more staid disposition.

Then there was Bridget Carteret, niece of Lord Carteret, who was fair and petite. The oldest of them all was “prim, pale Margaret Meadows,” who seems to have done her best to keep them all in order, but had terrible difficulty with giddy Sophia Howe, who was the daughter of John Howe by Ruperta, a natural daughter of Prince Rupert, brother of the old Electress Sophia, which fact was probably the reason of her appointment as maid-of-honour to the Princess of Wales. She was up to all sorts of mischief, and among other enormities was given to laughing in church, which is not to be wondered at when we consider that the King and the other Royalties were accustomed to talk all the time.

Sophia Howe was, however, reproached for her laughing by the Duchess of St. Albans, who told her “she could not do a worse thing.” To this she pertly[Pg 32] answered—and one can almost hear her saying it—“I beg your Grace’s pardon, I can do a great many worse things.”

This conduct of the maids-of-honour—accompanied by much ogling and smiling at gallants, however, at last aroused the ire of Bishop Burnet, who complained to the Princess of Wales, and requested that their pew should be boarded up so that they could not see over. This from the Bishops importunity being at last done, provoked the following verses in retaliation from one of the young ladies’ admirers, supposed to be Lord Peterborough:

[Pg 33]

It is not surprising to find that during the reign of George the First his mistresses Schulemburg and Kielmansegge were much in evidence. They were particularly hated by the populace, also the Turks Mustapha and Mahomet, possibly on account of their association with them; but these latter infidels also appear to have had the honour of dressing and undressing their master the King.

The Court of George the First had not by any means been a refined one; the old King greatly loved the society of ladies who were not over particular in their conversation.

The following, taken from Mr. Wilkins’ “Caroline,” will illustrate this. Lady Cowper, who was extremely proper, writes of an entertainment at Court:

“Though I was greatly diverted and there was a good deal of music, yet I could not avoid being uneasy at the repetition of some words in French which the Duchess of Bolton said by mistake, which convinced me that the two foreign ladies” (presumably Schulemburg and Kielmansegge) “were no better than they should be.”

It appears that the Court of this King was graced or disgraced by the presence of many such ladies. One night three mistresses of former Kings met there: the Duchess of Portsmouth, the particular lady of Charles the Second; Lady Orkney, who occupied a similar position with regard to William the Third; and old Lady Dorchester, the[Pg 34] favourite of James the Second. The latter was evidently a lady to her finger tips.

“Who!” she exclaimed, “would have thought that we three w...s should have met here?”

Of the Duchess of Bolton, who was a lady also rather free of speech, the following anecdote is related.

She was very fond of the play, and recommending anything especially good to the old King. On this occasion she was telling him of Colley Cibber’s “Love’s Last Shift,” the title of which conveyed nothing to His Majesty. He asked her to put it into French. The Duchess, who was fond of a joke, replied gravely: “La dernière chemise de l’ amour,” whereat the King laughed heartily.

The lovely Duchess of Shrewsbury was another of the King’s favourite companions, of whom the prim Lady Cowper—herself much admired by His Majesty, who did not always express his admiration in the most refined terms—said as follows:

“Though she had a wonderful art of entertaining and diverting people, would sometimes exceed the bounds of decency.”

But as it has been before stated, the favourites of the King who excited the most resentment of the populace—who were very free in expressing their opinion—were Schulemburg and Kielmansegge.

On one occasion Schulemburg was so beset by the crowd that she ventured to argue with them, and thrust her red wig and painted face out of her[Pg 35] coach to address them in the best English she had.

“Goot pipple,” she exclaimed, “what for you abuse us, we come for all your goots?”

“Yes, d..n ye,” added a man in the mob, “and for all our chattels, too.”

When the Duke of Somerset, in 1715, resigned the Mastership of the Horse as a protest against the arrest of his son-in-law, Sir William Wyndham, Schulemburg, who was nothing if not a daughter of the horse-leech, suggested that the office should be left vacant and the salary, £7,500 per annum, paid to her. To the disgust of the nation the King complied with her wish.

It does not say much for the dignity of the Court in those days that some of the leading Whig nobility and even their wives and daughters filled the rooms of these two old harridans at St James’s, which apartments were placed respectively at opposite ends of the Palace, with those of the King conveniently between them to keep peace, for they hated each other as much as their friend the Devil detests holy water.

The lives of the Prince and Princess of Wales had been exceedingly gay, especially during the absence of George the First in Hanover.

They extended a liberal hospitality, keeping almost open house, with the object no doubt of securing popularity against the time when they should be King and Queen.

Hampton Court appears to have been a very[Pg 36] favourite summer residence of theirs, the river offering a convenient mode of progression. In the summer of 1716 they proceeded to Hampton Court in state barges hung with crimson and gold, and preceded by a band of music.

Here at this riverside Palace they collected a brilliant throng of the wittiest, the most learned, and most important of all from the point of view of a Court, the most beautiful.

At the death of George the First the kingdom was ruled by his minister, Sir Robert Walpole, son of a Norfolk squire, Walpole of Houghton, to which estate they had in comparatively recent years removed from Walpole in the Marshland of Norfolk, from which latter place they evidently had originally derived their name.

George the First being able to speak little or no English, and Sir Robert Walpole being innocent of French, Latin proved to be the only tongue in which they could converse, so that Walpole was in the habit of remarking that he governed the kingdom by means of bad Latin, the bad Latin possibly of his Eton days, though he certainly completed his education at King’s College, Cambridge.

At about the age of twenty-five Walpole had married a beautiful girl, Catherine, daughter of John Shorter, Esquire, of Bybrook, Kent, and very soon after succeeding his father, old hard-drinking Squire Walpole, in the family estate he entered[Pg 37] Parliament for the rotten borough of Castle Rising, which used to return two members to Parliament to half-a-dozen electors.

He soon made a name in the House of Commons, and from that time forward it was indelibly stamped upon the politics of England.

Unfortunately, Walpole was much given to wine and women, despite his beautiful wife; in fact, she was not far behind him on her part in receiving the attentions of the opposite sex. She is said to have had liaisons with Lord Hervey, and also with the little Prince of Wales, adding one more to his long list of “foiblesses.” It is almost incredible to believe, as it has been stated, that Robert Walpole lent himself to this intrigue of his wife’s to curry favour with the Prince.

Be this as it may, it stood him in poor stead on the death of George the First, for when he presented himself to the new King, who was at the time at the Palace of Richmond, and having broken the news of the old King’s death and kissed hands, asked who should draw up the declaration to the Privy Council, he was abruptly told by the new monarch to go to Sir Spencer Compton, who was his treasurer as Prince of Wales.

It was not until after some days of very painful suspense that Walpole, through the good offices of the new Queen, Caroline, who had a great belief in his talents as a financier, was sent for and reappointed First Lord Commissioner of the Treasury[Pg 38] and Chancellor of the Exchequer. As a matter of fact of course they could not do without him.

But in all the years that passed from the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty in 1714 to the death of George the First, in 1727, it is almost incredible to believe that Caroline could have forgotten her first-born son in Hanover, whom at this time she had not seen for thirteen years.

Whatever the origin of the dislike—nay hatred—was which unnaturally grew up between this son and his parents, it must have begun at an early period. Its nature will now be never known in all probability, but it must have been a most extraordinary revulsion of feeling which caused such a woman as Caroline, kind-hearted, intellectual, in every other respect a perfect mother, to turn against the first child she had held to her bosom.

Some say that Caroline’s affection had been absorbed by her younger son William, Duke of Cumberland, who was born in England, and who extraordinarily resembled her, and this theory takes colour when considering the fact that the Prince and Princess up to the time of his birth had continually urged George the First to allow Prince Frederick to come to England, but after the arrival of the new Prince no further requests were made in this direction, but all their hopes and ambitions for the future seemed centred in Prince William, for whom it is said they would gladly have secured the[Pg 39] throne of England if they had been able, leaving the Electorate of Hanover for Frederick.

It was very unnatural, but such freaks do occur, though they do not reflect any honour upon those by whom they are affected, but even this answer would be no solution to the question of the reason for the deep-seated hatred for their eldest son which took possession of King George the Second and his Queen at a later period. It will ever remain a mystery.

Lord Hervey, with a great deal of parade, affected to be in possession of the secret, and left certain directions to those who came after him about its disclosure in his papers, but it is very difficult to believe that this nobleman was cognizant of the reason which caused a father and mother—the latter certainly of an affectionate nature—to turn against a child of nine.

The reason probably lies far deeper.

But if Prince Frederick was forgotten by his father and mother, he was certainly not overlooked by the English people.

“Clamours,” it was said soon after the accession of George the Second, “were justly raised in England that the Heir-Apparent had received a foreign education and was detained abroad as if to keep alive an attachment to Hanover in preference to Great Britain.

“The Ministers at length ventured to remonstrate with the King on the subject, and the Privy Council[Pg 40] formally represented the propriety of his residence in England.”[15]

George the Second, however, and his Queen—who with Walpole really ruled the kingdom—stuck out as long as they possibly could against bringing Prince Frederick over, and in the King’s case there was an additional reason for obstinacy. He had been a most undutiful son himself, and realised what an exceedingly sharp thorn in his side Frederick might become if he took that same line also.

But while the King and Queen were trying to make up their minds to send for their first-born, certain events occurred in Hanover which materially hastened their decision.

National Portrait Gallery.Spooner & Co.
GEORGE II.

In the reign of George the First there had commenced an important negotiation between that King and Frederick William, King of Prussia, having for its object the union of the two royal houses by a double marriage, Prince Frederick Louis, King George’s grandson, was to wed with Wilhelmina, the Princess Royal of Prussia; the Prince Royal of Prussia was to marry the Princess Amelia, sister of Prince Frederick, afterwards Frederick the Great.

This arrangement had been most eagerly fostered by Sophia Dorothy, daughter of George the First, who had espoused the King of Prussia; the negotiations had reached such a successful stage that King George had promised that the nuptials of his grandson with the Princess Wilhelmina should be celebrated at his next visit to Hanover, but his death had prevented the fulfilment of his promise.

There had also been another reason which had tended to delay the marriage, and this had been the sudden secession of King Frederick William of Prussia from the Treaty of Hanover, and this had[Pg 42] greatly offended his father-in-law, King George of England.

Other obstacles cropped up, too, at the accession of George the Second, who had, from his earliest years, conceived an intense dislike for his cousin, the Prussian King. This was the subject of a most intense regret on Queen Sophia Dorothy’s part, who had schemed for the union of her daughter Wilhelmina with Prince Frederick for years.

As for Prince Frederick himself, there is little doubt that although he had never seen her, yet he had in a romantic way fallen in love with his cousin Wilhelmina. This was quite a natural phase of his sanguine, artistic character. One can quite understand that his aunt, the Queen of Prussia, had not neglected any of those little manœuvres by which the hearts of young men are moved. She was simply a match-making mother, and was quite cognizant of the fact that Frederick would, if he lived, inherit the Crown of England.

In addition, there was another very strong reason why she should use every endeavour to get her two children settled and away, and that was the extreme brutality of their father, the Prussian King, towards them, who even did not scruple to beat them severely.

If, however, Prince Frederick had fallen in love with the Princess Wilhelmina’s miniature—no doubt the Prussian Queen saw that he had a good one—the Princess, if her Memoirs are to be believed, had[Pg 43] conceived no passion for him, but against this she certainly showed feeling when the dénouement came, as women will when they lose a lover.

Her mother had argued with her as to the advantages of the match, as no doubt royal mothers will:

“He is a good-natured Prince,” she urged, “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.”

This art of “tolerating mistresses” seems to be an accomplishment which has been much sought after both by ancient and modern Queens. But this was hardly the kind of argument to foster a romantic passion; yet, on the other hand, Frederick had not exactly constituted himself by reputation the perfect lover.

Left alone in Hanover, almost in regal state, as it was understood there, for he held all the Levees and Courts in the absence of his grandfather, he had run very wild, which was no more than could have been expected under the circumstances.

But for the periodical visits of his grandfather from England, Frederick seems to have been left very much to himself, and with such brilliant examples before him as his father and grandfather, it is not at all to be wondered at that he had mistresses and made a fool of himself generally.

He appears, however, to have been very good friends with his grandfather, King George, and to[Pg 44] have taken his part against his father and mother in the quarrels which arose between them and which formed one of the principal scandals of the Court of St. James’s. This conduct on his part did not tend to endear him to his parents, but no doubt he felt himself aggrieved at being left so long neglected in Hanover, and, in addition, he only heard his grandfather’s version of the quarrels.

Prince Frederick then being turned twenty-one, and imagining himself to be passionately in love with his cousin Wilhelmina, could ill brook the diplomatic delays of his father and grandfather.

It must have been a heavy blow to his hopes when the latter died on his way to Hanover, and his promise to have the nuptials of Frederick and Wilhelmina celebrated on his arrival of course fell to the ground. Neither did his successor, George the Second, seem at all in a hurry to have the marriage solemnized, and the delay to a young man of Frederick’s temperament must have been very galling.

It is not at all surprising, therefore, that after waiting more than a year after the death of George the First, he took the matter into his own hands. He determined to get married to his cousin without consulting anyone. For this purpose he contrived an elaborate scheme, and eventually despatched to Berlin a certain trusty Hanoverian officer named La Motte or La Mothe.

This man was charged with a mission to a certain[Pg 45] Sastot, a chamberlain of the Queen of Prussia, and probably one who had acted as an agent for her in this matter before. The story cannot be better given than in the very words of the young lady herself, Princess Wilhelmina, as recorded in her diary. La Motte made his appearance at the house of Sastot, and communicated to him the following intelligence:

“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 La Motte, “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.”

Surely this was a most romantic proposal for the good Sastot to listen to!

“He has entrusted me,” proceeded La Motte, “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[Pg 46] this marriage. If she is capable of keeping a secret, and has no suspicious people about her, will you undertake to speak to the Queen on the subject?”

That very night the Chamberlain Sastot went to the Queen and confided the weighty secret to her as he had promised La Motte.

To the Queen, who had been scheming for years for this very object, Sastot could not well have brought better news.

“I shall at length see you happy and my wishes realized at the same time; how much joy at once.”

Such are the words which the Princess Wilhelmina records of her mother when breaking the news to her.

But the Princess, according to her own account, was by no means overjoyed at the intelligence:

“I kissed her hands,” says Wilhelmina, “which I covered with tears!”

“You are crying!” my mother exclaimed, “what is the matter?”

Here Wilhelmina becomes a little double-faced.

“I would not disturb her happiness,” she writes, “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 continues, “she left me in a terrible[Pg 47] 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 ways.” Very pious of the Princess indeed!

The Queen, however, went on her way rejoicing, knowing, perhaps, rather more of her daughter’s disposition and therefore troubling less about her tears.

She was evidently brimming over with high spirits at the Reception which she held that very evening, a most unlucky Reception for her schemes as it turned out. This excellent match-making aunt of Prince Frederick was fated to suffer a terrible disappointment that evening. In a burst of almost incredible confidence she told Bourguait, the English Envoy, the whole plan of Prince Frederick!

The Envoy was astounded at the communication, and asked if it were true.

“Certainly,” replied the Queen, “and to show you how true it is, he has sent La Motte 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 Bourguait.

“Why?” asked the dismayed Queen.

“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[Pg 48] to England this very evening. Would to God I had known nothing of all this!”

He was as good as his word, and the messenger went off that night despite the Queen’s tears.

A good strong man this Bourguait; one not to be moved from his duty by even a Queen, for she no doubt left no stone unturned to divert him from a purpose which would render abortive her years of scheming.

The effects of the message to England were startling.

King George the Second and his Queen Caroline, who had kept their eldest son away from England for fourteen years, and had resisted every persuasion of their Ministers to bring him over, hesitated no longer; a Colonel Lorne was despatched at once to Herrenhausen to bring the Prince to London. He lost no time on the journey, and appeared at Herrenhausen while a ball given by Prince Frederick was in progress. This function, however, interfered in no way with Colonel Lorne’s commands; he induced the Prince to leave Herrenhausen that very night with but one attendant, and Frederick turned his back upon a home which had sheltered him for many years, although it was in a sense no home at all, and in this life saw it no more.

But when the news of the King of England’s coup and the departure of the Prince reached Berlin, the Royal Palace became no fit place for Christians to live in.

[Pg 49]

The Queen took to her bed, and the Princess Wilhelmina, like other young ladies when they lose their lovers, fainted away, only to come to, apparently and write in her diary “the whole thing was a plot of George the Second,” which sounds very much like the remark of an angry and disappointed young lady, instead of one who wished us to believe that she was inspired with repugnance for Prince Frederick.

Her father, the King, however, who was in a towering rage at the course events had taken, was evidently not in the habit of wasting a good fit of temper on mere fuming. He appeared on the scene and soundly thrashed both Wilhelmina and her brother Frederick, Mr. Wilkins says, “in a shocking manner.”

And the double marriage scheme ended thus ignominiously!

Prince Frederick, accompanied by Colonel Lorne and a single servant, traversed Germany and Holland as a private gentleman, and embarked at Helvetsluis for England in the first days of December, 1728.

Never has a tamer arrival of an Heir-apparent been chronicled in history than this coming of the Prince to London. Here is the brief notice of it in the Daily Post of the 8th December, 1728:

“Yesterday 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 backstairs, and was there conducted to Her Majesty’s apartment.”

There! no reception of any sort, no guards turning out, no escort, no tap of drum! It was more like the coming of the Court hairdresser to curl Her Majesty’s wig!

It is said, however, that his mother received him amiably,—after fourteen years’ separation! His[Pg 51] father, however, treated him with great harshness. “George,” says Mr. Wilkins, “had an unnatural and deep-rooted aversion to his eldest son, whom he regarded as necessarily his enemy.”

Certainly the boy—for he was little more—had come home in a sort of disgrace, he had been detected in scheming to run away with a young lady, but he had been checkmated, and the matter was ended. Certainly if there grew up in the after time a feeling of resentment against his parents in the Prince’s heart, he had some reason for it. It is agreed on all hands that he never had a chance, and that which might have proved a loving nature—and it was a loving nature as will be shown later on—was warped by ill-treatment and neglect into callousness and depravity.

To a Prince naturally of a nervous and shy disposition this reception in a strange land must have been most painful, especially when one remembers that most of the slights were received from those who ought to have shown him the most affection and consideration.

Lord Hervey gives an insight into the kind of life he led when he first arrived. He says:

“Whenever the Prince was in the room with him (i.e., 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[Pg 52] always seemed as if the King thought the Prince filled a void of space.”

According to Mr. Wilkins, “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 at the English Court.”

One can imagine those naughty maids-of-honour in their boarded-up pew in the gallery—perhaps poor Anne Vane there with them—saying anything but their prayers at their enclosed condition, which prevented them having a good look at the Prince. But if they did happen to catch a glimpse of him this is what they saw according to a contemporary letter of Lady Bristol, who describes him as “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 which is indescribable, and the most obliging address that can be conceived.”

Her account of him, however, falls far short of that which is generally accepted as being a description of his appearance in Smollett’s “Peregrine Pickle,” which depicts him at a Court ball; but as this was evidently some time after his arrival—as it is an event connected with his intrigue with Miss Vane—it is quite likely that he may have had time to add to his stature by natural growth. At a later period he was distinctly and creditably described as being tall. This is Smollett’s version:

[Pg 53]

“He was dressed in a coat of white cloth, faced with blue satin embroidered with silver, of the same piece with his waistcoat; his fine hair hung down his back in ringlets below his waist; his hat was laced with silver and garnished with a white feather; but his person beggared all description: he was tall and graceful, neither corpulent nor meagre, his limbs finely proportioned, his countenance open and majestic, his eyes full of sweetness and vivacity, his teeth regular, and his pouting lips of the complexion of the damask rose. In short, he was formed for love and inspired it wherever he appeared; nor was he a niggard of his talents, but liberally returned it, at least what passed for such; for he had a flow of gallantry for which many ladies of this land can vouch from their own experience.”

It must be remembered in reading above description of him, that he inherited his mother’s beautiful fair hair and complexion.

The Court poets were not behindhand with their fulsome verses concerning him, of which this is a sample:

Britain’s first hope apparently was George II.

But probably as regards his appearance when he[Pg 54] first came to England, Lady Bristol was nearest the mark, though there is no doubt that from this time forward he steadily improved both in stature and in handsomeness of person. Another description of him which will appear in due course will give an idea of the dignity and stateliness to which he attained in his maturer years.

Prince Frederick came from the obscure old town of Hanover with its narrow streets and tall gabled houses to what was then, as it is now, one of the great capitals of the world, London. But yet a very different London to that of our own time. A London of streets narrow and paved with cobbles, unlit save for a few dim swinging oil lamps held across the streets by ropes, leaving the intervening spaces in darkness, so that in winter time a man with a link or torch was an absolute necessity.

The busy London, the shopping London lay principally between Fleet Street and the end of Cheapside. Ludgate Hill was an especially favourite place for dress-buying ladies. As for what we call the “West End” it did not exist, Westminster being a separate town, and between it and London City large expanses of waste land.

Mr. Wilkins gives a good account of the Court and its environs. He says:

“The political and fashionable life of London collected round St. James’s and the Mall. St. James’s Park was the fashionable promenade; it was lined with avenues of trees, and ornamented[Pg 55] with a long canal and a duck pond. St. James’s Palace was much as it is now, and old Marlborough House (the residence at that time of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough) occupied the site of the present one; but on the site of Buckingham Palace stood Buckingham House, the seat of the powerful Duke of Buckingham, a stately mansion which the Duke had built in a ‘little wilderness full of blackbirds and nightingales.’ In St. James’s Street were the most frequented and fashionable coffee and chocolate houses, and also a few select ‘mug houses.’ Quaint signs, elaborately painted, carved and gilded, overhung the streets and largely took the place of numbers; houses were known as ‘The Blue Boar,’ ‘The Pig and Whistle,’ ‘The Merry Maidens,’ ‘The Red Bodice,’ and so forth.”

Piccadilly was practically a country road with a few mansions here and there. It ended in Hyde Park, then a wild heath.

Marylebone on the west, and Stepney on the east, were distinct villages some distance away; while as for the south, London appears to have ended at London Bridge, although the “Old Tabard” Inn in the Borough must certainly have existed at that time.

Bloomsbury, Soho and Seven Dials were fashionable suburbs, occupying, perhaps, much the same position as Kensington did fifty years ago. Grosvenor Square had been begun some twelve years, and was probably fairly covered by houses.

[Pg 56]

The most popular and agreeable mode of communication between London and the Court was by the Thames, and a stately barge with liveried rowers was as much a part of a nobleman’s equipment as his carriage or his “chair.” Very pretty must have been the appearance of the Thames at that time, although there was no Thames Embankment to view it from.

The streets at night were manifestly unsafe, being infested by a description of drunken young blackguards known as “Mohocks,” who apparently “squared” the equally drunken watchmen, and insulted women with impunity.

The public conveyance seems to have been of much the same description as that which one recollects in one’s youth in the shape of the ancient growler, musty and full of damp straw to keep the feet warm, but represented then by a rumbling old disused coach, very mouldy, with straw as above, and in which it must have been a great treat to traverse the irregular cobbles of the metropolitan streets. But with all its drawbacks London of 1728 rose immeasurably superior to London of the twentieth century in one respect, and one respect only. It had no fogs.

The streets apparently rang with more or less agreeable cries of itinerant traders, among which the still familiar cry of the milkman—or perhaps milk-girl—and the tinkle of the muffin bell must even then have been well established. There were,[Pg 57] however, other street cries which are unknown to us in the present day, those of the professional rat-catcher and the street gambler, which latter apparently stood in the gutter and rattled a dice-box as an invitation to passers by to come and have a throw, an invitation which, in all probability, ended in disaster to the unwary who accepted it.

Drunkenness, too, was very rife among all classes, the following inscription on a public-house being a fair sample of the tastes of the people:

As regards the time for meals in fashionable circles in those days, there was really little difference between those times and our own except that the meals were called by different names.

Dinner was taken in the middle of the day or a little later, which would very well correspond to our luncheon. As for the afternoon, why ladies of quality did very much the same then as they do now; they were trotted about in their sedan-chairs or coaches from one friend’s house to another drinking “dishes” of tea at each and destroying their nervous systems just as they do in 1911. Supper was the most pleasant meal of the day, and might well be set down to correspond with the very late dinner hour of the fashionable world at the present time.

[Pg 58]

So the world—the beau monde at any rate—has gone on for nearly two hundred years with but very little variation in its feeding time at any rate.

Very much the same might be said of the life in St. James’s Street as it is lived at the present time. There was no electric light, but the scene must have been very much more brilliant especially at night. The men-about-town of those days dressed in silks, satins, and velvets of varied colours, heavily laced with gold. Their sword hilts were either of gold or silver and very often jewelled. They carried in their hands long canes frequently jewelled too, and to add to the stateliness of their appearance they either wore white wigs or had their own hair powdered. The coffee and chocolate houses of St. James’s Street of those days, when full of their patrons, must have presented scenes worth looking upon. White’s Chocolate House was the principal, and the Cocoa Tree its rival, both represented at the present time by clubs of almost identical names. Of clubs, as we understand them, there were none in the year 1728, if we except such as the “October Club” and the “Hell Fire Club,” the former composed of old Jacobite squires who probably met at an inn, and the latter the drunken desecrators of Medmenhain Abbey on the Thames, neither of which societies had a club house as we understand it.

As for the ladies, they outrivalled the sterner sex, as they should do, in the splendour of their[Pg 59] attire. They wore powder, patches and hoops—the latter a revival apparently of Elizabeth’s day—which grew in size with the progression of the Georges, until fashion took a sudden revulsion in the days of the last, and left them off altogether, which was considered at the time highly indelicate.

In the earlier period referred to ladies did not scruple to walk abroad with their dresses even more than decolletée, a custom which possibly was not long persevered in on account of the climate. Ladies of the present day will rejoice to hear that enormous muffs were carried.

To sum up this topic so interesting to the softer sex, ladies at that time wore just as many furs and feathers, silks and satins, jewels and fine laces, as they do at the present day, and the craving after them, the debts incurred in their procuring, wrought them, possibly, quite as much harm, and were the cause, no doubt, of just as many broken marriage vows.

The world is very much the same at all times, except that now and then we take on a little extra enamel, which we call civilization, to hide our natural barbarism for a time, as the Greeks and the Romans and the Egyptians before them did—these latter even to having their hollow teeth gold-crowned as we do—until some upheaval from within, or a crushing blow from without, breaks the thin crust, and leaves us just the natural savages we were at first.

Floating in and out of English history of this period are the letters of a person who apparently was furnished by Providence to write tittle-tattle of his times for the information of posterity. These are the letters of the Honourable Peter Wentworth, mostly addressed to his brother, Lord Strafford, but others to his sister-in-law, Lady Strafford. To these we have to look for the first little insights into the Prince’s life in England.

Through the insistence of the Privy Council, not of the King’s own freewill, Frederick had been created Prince of Wales soon after his arrival in England, but the King had made no provision for him, although £100,000 per annum of the King’s income—he received no less than £900,000 a year from the country—had been earmarked for the Prince’s use, subject to his father’s pleasure. He preferred to keep him in the Palace like his other younger children, and under very much the same restrictions. The young Prince of Wales appears at this time to have had a good friend in his mother, even if she had forgotten her natural love for him. It was she who urged the King to[Pg 61] provide a separate establishment for him becoming his rank, even going as far as to look at a house for him in George Street, Hanover Square, but her solicitations produced no effect whatever upon the King, who would not make him any sufficient allowance. So Frederick, though over twenty-two, and Prince of Wales, had to remain at his mother’s apron strings.

He appears, however, at this time to have lived on very pleasant terms with the Queen, and to have steadily grown in the public favour. He had learned English in Hanover, and spoke it fairly well on his arrival in this country.

In a letter dated July 28th, 1729—a few months after the Prince’s coming—written by Mr. Peter Wentworth to Lord Strafford, his brother, we get a little glimpse of what the Prince’s life was like at this time.

From above it will be seen that these letters of Mr. Wentworth were written during the period of Queen Caroline’s first Regency, when George the Second was abroad, and consequently the Prince of Wales had more freedom of action. From what little can be gathered from them the Prince seems to have been leading a harmless and happy life with his mother, but unfortunately there is another of Mr. Wentworth’s letters which tells a different tale.

It has been said that the position imposed on him by his father, the King, would have tried the most dutiful and virtuous of sons, but then unfortunately Frederick was neither, certainly not the latter. Mr. Wentworth’s letter throws a strong light on this part of the Prince’s life:

“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[Pg 71] said: ‘I told you before ’twas you who stole it, and now it is very plain 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[Pg 72] 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 advertised.”[24]

The Prince of Wales having for the few years immediately succeeding his coming to England occupied his exalted position with a totally inadequate income had, as might reasonably have been expected, become exceedingly involved in debt.

Though possessing no separate establishment of his own (except as will be seen later an illicit one), yet he was placed in a position of much difficulty and temptation.

He appears to have received from his father a small and uncertain allowance, and when pressed by his creditors was absolutely refused assistance by the King.

The intervention of the Queen in favour of Frederick at this period seems to have been quite useless, and from that time forth grew up that sad state of affairs which eventually compassed the total estrangement of the Prince from his father and mother.

It has been said that this treatment would have tried the best of sons, but Frederick’s early training and environment had not been of a nature to breed many of the filial virtues in him. It is quite certain[Pg 74] that he felt his humiliating position most acutely, and that the slights and snubs he was subjected to by his father rankled considerably. Not the least of these was the fact that his mother was constituted Regent during the absences of his father in Hanover.

It is not surprising, therefore, that he began to look for at least friendship and support in another direction and found it among the opponents of his father’s Government.

Among the first of this faction to pay court to the Prince was the polished St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, a Secretary of State of Queen Anne, and one who, with the Duke of Ormond and the Earl of Oxford, had been impeached at the accession of George the First at the instigation of Sir Robert Walpole for a supposed plot to place Prince James Stuart on the throne. He had fled the country, some say unwisely, at the time, and had remained abroad for nine years. His pardon had been arranged by his devoted French wife Madame de Vilette, whom he had married whilst in exile, and who came to England and secured the services of that rapacious mistress of George the First, Schulemburg—who had been created Duchess of Kendal—at the price of £12,000.

Though pardoned, his attainder remained in force, his title was still withheld, and he was precluded from inheriting estates and excluded from the House of Lords.

[Pg 75]

Though deprived of any outward power, yet this brilliant statesman simply ruled the Tory party and moved its principals like so many puppets. It was this talented politician who offered his services to the Prince of Wales, and their first meeting took place at the house of a gentleman acquainted with both. It is said that Bolingbroke came first, and amused himself by reading a book until the Prince’s arrival. This took place somewhat unexpectedly, and before Bolingbroke could replace his book, in the hurry to kneel to the Prince it fell to the floor, and Bolingbroke was within an ace of following it as he slipped in making his obeisance.

What followed gives an insight into the amiability and undoubted charm of the Prince’s nature and his excellent tact. He caught Bolingbroke as he fell, and restoring him to his feet said: “My lord, I trust this may be an omen of my succeeding in raising your fortunes.”

It is said that the Prince inherited his charm of manner from his mother; doubtless he was like her in this respect, and did receive from her this gift. That he did not receive it from his father is certain, as George the Second was uncouthness itself, and was commonly called the “Gruff Gentleman.”

From the day of the meeting of the Prince and Bolingbroke their acquaintance grew, until the statesman became the Prince’s guiding spirit, not always urging him, as may be imagined, under the circumstances, on the road of duty to his parents[Pg 76] and his parents’ wishes. There is no doubt that through the Prince Bolingbroke paid back many a wrong and slight received in the years past from Walpole and the Whigs.

Of this influence of Bolingbroke—“the all-accomplished St. John, the Muses friend,” as he was styled by the principal poets of the time—upon the young Prince, Coxe makes the following comment:

“The Prince was fascinated by his conversation and manners. His confident assertions and popular declarations, his affected zeal to reconcile all ranks and conditions, the energy with which he decried the baneful spirit of party, and his plausible theories of a perfect Government without influence or corruption, acting by prerogative, were calculated to dazzle and captivate a young Prince of high spirit and sanguine disposition, and induce him to believe that the Minister (i.e., Walpole) was forming a systematic plan to overthrow the Constitution, and that the cause of opposition was that of honour and liberty.”[25]

The first political matter in which these two were actively engaged was the Excise Act, which was a strong measure of Walpole’s directed against smuggling. In espousing the side of the Opposition, the Prince was certainly making a strong bid for popular favour, for the increased price of tobacco and wines, which would undoubtedly have followed its passage through the two Houses of Parliament,[Pg 77] would have been by no means acceptable to the multitude at large.

The Prince’s amiability towards the people had already endeared him to them. He was accustomed to walk abroad accompanied by only one servant, and he was never known to neglect the salute of even the humblest of his father’s subjects, but always had a smile, sometimes a kind word for them.

Walpole introduced his new act into the House of Commons in a very moderate manner on March 14th, 1733, the Prince of Wales sitting under the gallery and listening to the debate. The arguments were heated and prolonged, and adjournments were extended to April 9th, when the Bill was eventually dropped, having regard to the storm of opposition it provoked in the country and especially in the City of London.

During the speeches of the Leaders of the Opposition, which included those of the well-known Pulteney, Wyndham and Barnard, the following point was made by Wyndham against Walpole: he denounced corruption and tyranny, and recalled the favourites of past monarchs.

“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.”

This allusion was cheered to the echo by the Opposition, and was subsequently a grave cause of[Pg 78] offence to the King and Queen, whose interests were greatly bound up in the passing of the Act by their favourite minister, Walpole. It is said that if their being sent back to Hanover had depended on the Bill they could not have shown more agitation.

It was therefore not surprising that the failure of the Bill aroused the King’s indignation, especially the support which his son, the Prince of Wales, had given the Opposition sub rosa it is true, but still a sympathy which was very evident.

The Honourable William Townshend, son of the celebrated politician, Viscount Townshend, and Groom of the Bedchamber, and Privy Purse to the Prince of Wales, very nearly lost his appointment and that of A.D.C. to the King through his temerity in voting against the measure.

The Townshend family seem always to have been sympathisers with the Prince, and to have been his good friends, and this association led to incidents which will be dealt with later.

Another of the Prince’s followers at this time, and one who was given much credit for the failure of the Excise Act, was the celebrated Bubb Doddington, a man of great wealth and a very large landowner, but the real credit for this rebuff to the King and Walpole must be given to the brilliant genius of Bolingbroke, which worked behind the Leaders of the Opposition and moved them like so many chess-men on a board. Bolingbroke’s hatred of Walpole was of that intense nature, that it is related by the[Pg 79] latter’s brother Horace that upon Bolingbroke’s return to England after his exile an attempt was made to reconcile the two enemies, and Bolingbroke so far mastered his pride as to accept an invitation to dine with Sir Robert at Chelsea, but it is further stated by the same authority that Bolingbroke rose from the table at the first course and left the room; his detestation of the great Minister could no longer be repressed.

Bolingbroke, therefore, was ever working against Walpole and the Court Party (by whom he was intensely hated), and there can be little doubt that he was responsible for the state of affairs between the Prince of Wales and his father and mother which existed at this time, and by so fanning their smouldering distrust and jealousy that it burst into the subsequent flame, which became a visible scandal to the whole country.

The Prince, however, had many other friends among the Opposition beside Bolingbroke and Doddington; his artistic temperament was gratified with the society of the witty Chesterfield (who had recently celebrated his marriage with Schulemburg’s daughter, the Countess of Walsingham, by taking another mistress), Pulteney and the eloquent Wyndham.

It cannot, however, be said that the Prince chose his companions for their virtues; it was rather for the absence of them; but possibly his young mind received as much harm from the crafty and unscrupulous[Pg 80] Doddington as all the others put together, who, after all, were, most of them, mere posers in their vices; but Doddington appears to have been a kind of fat Mephistopheles, always pouring into the Prince’s ear advice which on the surface had the appearance of being ingenuous and good, but had ever for its aim the aggrandisement of the giver.

Such is the opinion of Doddington’s character written by one of his connections who published his celebrated diary some years after his death.

George Bubb Doddington was the nephew of a great landowner—one of the wealthiest in England—whose sister had been picked up by an Irish apothecary of the name of Bubb, who practised some say at Carlisle, others at Weymouth, possibly at both places at different times. He appears to have been excluded from the family circle of the Doddington’s, but upon his death his widow seems to have been forgiven and her son George adopted by her rich brother, who eventually bequeathed to him the whole of his vast estates.

The young George Bubb added by royal licence to his own simple and somewhat common designation his uncle’s name and arms, and apparently from that time forth had but one object in life, viz., to obtain a peerage.

He had commenced his career by entering Parliament for one of the two boroughs which he owned, and attaching himself to Walpole. Being, however,[Pg 81] refused a peerage by that leader, he forsook him and deserted to the Opposition.

In due course, on the arrival of the Prince in England, and the manner of his reception by the King driving him to seek friends among his father’s opponents, Doddington was very pleased to bend the knee to him, and offer him not only his political support, which was considerable, but later his purse also. This lending of money to the Prince was the origin of the well-known unscrupulous remark, whether truthfully related or otherwise, which has been recorded against Frederick, and if made at all was probably a bit of boastfulness over wine cups to his boon companions, and it must not be forgotten that gentlemen were not at all above boasting in those days: “This is a strange country this England,” the Prince is said to have remarked, “I am told Doddington is reckoned a clever man, yet I got £5,000 out of him this morning, and he has no chance of ever seeing it again.” Another account, however, states that the Prince won it of him at play. Doddington, however, got the full value of the money he lent the Prince of Wales in the social distinction which the position of intimate adviser of the Heir-apparent conferred upon him.

Horace Walpole states that he even allowed himself to be wrapped in a blanket and rolled downstairs for the Prince’s amusement, when that young man was apparently indulging in a drunken frolic with his intimates. But even in his blanket[Pg 82] bumping down the stairs it is very probable that he had in his mind’s eye that peerage which he no doubt considered certain when the Prince came to the throne. But much water rolled under London Bridge before George Bubb Doddington’s head was compassed by the golden circlet of a peer, and then only for a little time.

We now pass from the Prince’s political and financial entanglements to the softer theme of his love, or rather loves, for alas! there were several of them!

This subject, however, cannot be entered upon without a reference to one of two great ladies whose personalities overshadowed St. James’s at the time of Frederick’s coming to England. These were the Duchesses of Marlborough and Buckingham, near neighbours and rivals, one living at Buckingham House, which, as before stated, had been built amid a grove of trees celebrated for its singing birds—the site of the present Buckingham Palace—the other occupying a house bearing her name on the other side of the Park, which was pulled down to make room for the present Marlborough House, up till recently the residence of the Prince of Wales.

These two great ladies lived in fair amity, but had their little differences like the rest of womankind, of which the following incident is a fair sample.

The Duchess of Buckingham had had the misfortune to lose her son, who had died in Rome, and[Pg 84] whose body she caused to be brought to England for sepulture in Westminster Abbey.

She sent across the Park to the widowed Duchess of Marlborough to borrow the hearse or funeral car on which the body of the great Duke had been borne to the grave some years before.

Sarah of Marlborough, in her none too refined manner, refused her request in the following terms:

“It carried my Lord Marlborough,” she replied, “and it shall never be used for any meaner mortal.”

This was hardly a consoling message to send to a sorrowing mother, but her Grace of Buckingham rose to the occasion even in her grief:

“I have consulted the undertaker,” she rejoined, “and he tells me I can have a finer for twenty pounds.”

The two seem to have outrivalled one another in pride and arrogance, and both affected to despise the House of Hanover, though they at times dissembled and attended the drawing-rooms “over the way,” which they considered doing the King and Queen an exceeding honour, and perhaps it was.

Both were enormously wealthy, she of Buckingham posing as an adherent of the House of Stuart, and no doubt using some of her wealth to support it, although it is said that she was mean enough to allow the pall covering the unburied coffin of James the Second in Paris to fall into rags, though she was in the habit of going there to weep over it.

“I believe I may sometime or other have complained[Pg 85] of Sir Robert Walpole’s treatment of me,” observed Sarah Duchess of Marlborough to her friend and dependent Dr. Hare in one of her letters, “but I never went through with it, believing that it was not easy to him.”

If the Duchess had reason to complain of that distinguished statesman in that month of August, 1726, in which she wrote, she had considerably more reason to do so a few years later, when he wrecked one of her pet schemes as completely as he had that of Her Majesty the Queen of Prussia concerning Prince Frederick, which latter endeavour had, perhaps, set the brains of the astute Sarah working on the very same subject.

The Duchess was, as it has been said, enormously rich, powerful, and, in addition, exceedingly ambitious, so enterprising, indeed, in this latter respect that she made a bold bid to make her grand-daughter, Lady Diana Spencer, Queen Consort of England. It came about in this wise:

Though the Prince of Wales had established himself as a kind of power by his alliance with Bolingbroke and his party, yet he had gained nothing by it financially.

The King remained perfectly obdurate on the subject of increasing his allowance, and meanwhile the sum of the Prince’s debts mounted higher and higher.

The story of the Prince’s embarrassments very soon travelled across that little space of thoroughfare[Pg 86] dividing St. James’s Palace from Marlborough House, and reached the ever open ears of the Duchess Sarah, always ready to hear any news from “over the way” the residence of “neighbour George” as she was in the habit of calling him.

The wily old Duchess must have brooded long before she took her next step; old diplomatiste as she was, it was a matter that could not have been entered upon without the deepest thought. It was about the boldest step “Sarah Jennings” had ever taken. When she had settled the matter in her mind, she sent a message to the Prince of Wales and asked him to favour her with an interview.

No record of this most interesting meeting has, unfortunately, been preserved; one would have liked to have seen a detailed account of it in Doddington’s diary, but there is nothing of it there.

There is no doubt, however, what was the nature of the interview; the wonderful old stateswoman there and then offered the Prince her favourite grand-daughter Lady Diana Spencer in marriage, and with her the sum of one hundred thousand pounds, which she no doubt calculated would come in very handy to the Prince in his involved condition.

It is necessary to make a comparison between the status of Lady Diana and that of the lady—the daughter of a petty German Prince—whom the Prince eventually married to understand that the Duchess’s offer was not by any means so outrageous[Pg 87] as one would imagine. Indeed, there are those who think that Lady Diana’s birth and position, combined with her wit and beauty, were far superior to those of the German Princess. Lady Diana was the youngest daughter of Charles, Earl of Sunderland, by Anne, daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough and Sarah his wife, and was undoubtedly a young lady of exceptional wit and beauty.

Although there is strong evidence to prove that the Prince had not forgotten his love for his cousin, the Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia, yet he accepted the Duchess of Marlborough’s offer. Some say it was to annoy his royal father and mother—things had reached that stage by then—others said as they naturally would say, Lord Hervey, the Queen’s confidant and really a bitter enemy of her son the Prince, no doubt among the number, that the hundred thousand pounds put into the scale against the Prince’s debts decided the matter, but possibly the young lady’s bright eyes—she was evidently a consenting party—and the persuasions and arguments of the experienced Duchess had something to do with it, at any rate the marriage was arranged to take place secretly in the Duchess’s lodge in Windsor Park, and was to be celebrated by her private chaplain. The very day was fixed.

If the old Duchess had acquired the vulgar habit of rubbing her hands, there is no doubt she did so over this matter, for it promised a repayment of old[Pg 88] debts and slights which had been heaping up interest for years.

No Royal Marriage Act existed or had been thought of at that time, and Lady Diana would have been the Prince’s lawful wife in the face of all England beyond question if the ceremony had taken place, but this time the Duchess Sarah had counted without her host, she had either left out of her calculations or ignored a very important personage indeed, viz., Sir Robert Walpole.

It is not at all surprising, when we consider the extraordinary little space which divided the residences of the two young people, that the fact that there was marriage in the air, and that a Royal one to boot, should creep out. Perhaps a confidential maid let the secret out—for there must have been a great question of dresses going on—or the young Prince betrayed it in a burst of confidence over a bowl—he was very good at drinking bon pères as we know—to some boon companion, but at any rate it reached the ears of Sir Robert Walpole, and Sir Robert stretched out his hand—and the arm belonging to it was a long one and could reach all over England and even across the Channel to foreign parts—and behold! the Royal Marriage Scheme of the great Sarah crumbled and was no more. “Sir Robert Walpole was able to prevent the marriage,” history records.

It must have been a dangerous act to have approached Her Grace of Marlborough during the[Pg 89] few days following upon her disappointment. History gives us no information as to what she remarked upon the frustration of her hopes at the time, neither is it recorded what course Lady Diana’s grief took at the disappointment. It is safe to assert that both ladies had a “good cry” in private; but how the old Duchess of Buckingham must have chuckled over it!

Lady Diana evidently soon dried her tears, and apparently took the matter as lightly as the Prince did, for very shortly after she became the Duchess of Bedford, viz., on October 12th, 1731, but, unfortunately, died young (on the 27th of September, 1735). But the great Duchess Sarah was not of the nature to forget Sir Robert Walpole’s part in this affair, and it is interesting to read her opinion of him written to Lord Stair in her old age; this opinion was written by the Duchess avowedly for the use of future historians.

“In another book,” she writes, “are a great many particulars which the historian may like to look into; but I have omitted these to relate something of Sir Robert Walpole, which shows that he betrayed the Duke of Marlborough, even at a time when he made the greatest professions to him.

“The Duke of Marlborough was made so uneasy at the end of the Queen’s reign, by turning men of service out of the Army to put in Mr. Hill and Mr. Masham over the heads of people improperly, that Mr. Walpole was employed to show the Queen how[Pg 90] detrimental to her service such steps must be. He had many opportunities of doing it. The Duke of Marlborough having obtained of the Queen that Cardonnel should be Secretary of War as a reward for his services, when the war was ended, which he hoped would be soon, and the Queen having allowed Mr. Cardonnel to kiss her hand upon that promise, but to let him go over with the Duke of Marlborough, that campaign or another, if the war happened to be not concluded. Mr. Walpole was so low then that he executed this place for Mr. Cardonnel, and attended the Duke of Marlborough when he was in England with a bag of writings like Mr. Cardonnel. He managed it so that to make the Duke of Marlborough believe that he had done all he could with the Queen, and at the same time gained all the points Mrs. Masham had desired for her husband and brother; and I had incontestable proofs afterwards that Mr. Walpole had acted this double part to oblige Mrs. Masham, and the Duke of Marlborough at that time had no reason to believe he could be so false.

“Sir Robert also had a great obligation to me; for by my interest wholly he was made Treasurer of the Navy when Sir T. Lyttleton died, though there were solicitations from many people for that employment, whom they thought it of more consequence to oblige. But I prevailed, and he had then only a small estate, and that much encumbered. And I have letters of acknowledgment to me, in which he[Pg 91] says ‘he is very sensible that he was entirely obliged to me for it.’

“Notwithstanding which at the commencement of his great power with the present family, he used me with all the folly and insolence upon every occasion, as he has treated several since he has acted as if he were King, which would be too tedious to relate.

“I am not sure that some account of this has not been given before. But if it has the truth is always the same. And it is no great matter, since what I write is only information of the historian to give character.

“For being perpetually interrupted, it is impossible to remember what I may have formally written on these subjects.”

All of which above tends to show that in her old age Duchess Sarah had grown testy, and not forgetful of her old enemies.

An early marriage with a beautiful girl such as Lady Diana Spencer would probably have been the best thing which could have happened to the young Prince of Wales; it would possibly have obliterated the scars of his old love for his cousin Wilhelmina, which wounds certainly broke out again at a later period, and it might have kept him from disgraceful liaisons; at any rate it would have left him without excuse for them. The first of these affaires du cœur, began in a flirtation and ended in a tragedy as so many of these unfortunate attachments do. Who knows its beginning? Perhaps a kiss in the dark corridors of St. James’s Palace!

The object of it was Miss Anne Vane (the “beautiful Vanilla”), daughter of Gilbert, 2nd Lord Barnard, a maid-of-honour to the Queen, and sister to the 1st Lord Darlington.

This young lady was possessed of much beauty, but is not credited with cleverness as we understand it, which was all the worse for her, as she found herself among a set of unscrupulous courtiers, such as Lords Harrington and Hervey, the latter of whom was not at all above boasting of conquests[Pg 93] over the opposite sex which he had not achieved, if such a word can be used in connection with the meanest act on earth.

Miss Vane is said to have been full of levity which was the result of her want of cleverness, perhaps, and possessed, no doubt, the usual quantity of vanity which is allotted to a pretty girl with plenty of admirers, but on the whole it cannot be doubted that she was fond of the Prince, and, as a result of it, paid that penalty for a love which many young ladies do who place their affections on a man who is unable to marry them—she became a mother. The Prince of Wales, however, did a man’s duty, and at once acknowledged the child.

The whole matter appears to have been very deplorable. The birth of the child—a boy—took place in her apartments as maid-of-honour in the palace of St. James’s, and the baby was baptized in the Chapel Royal, and given the name of Fitz Frederick Vane, evidently with the Prince’s full concurrence. (1732). He made no denial of his blame in the matter either in public or in private, but took the whole responsibility upon his own shoulders. In addition, as will be seen, he loved children.

The Queen, of course, lost very little time in turning her unfortunate maid-of-honour out of the Palace as soon as she was fit to go, and her family accentuated the Queen’s action by at once turning their backs upon her. The Prince did what little[Pg 94] he was able to do to atone in a way for the great injury he had done her. He took a house for her and her child in Grosvenor Street, and provided her with an income out of the uncertain allowance he received from the King. This affair, there is no doubt, laid the foundation of those debts which grew to be such a weight round his neck later on.

This state of affairs having continued for some time, there however appeared on the scene a remarkable person in the shape of Lady Archibald Hamilton, who from that time forth exerted a strong—and baneful—influence on the Prince’s life.[26]

Lady Archibald was five-and-thirty, the mother of ten children, and is said not to have possessed any special good looks, but she must, however, have been possessed of a strong will and a subtle power of fascination—which many plain women have—for she in a very short time subjugated the Prince of Wales and tied him, in the public gaze, at any rate, to her chariot wheels.

The very first act of this woman as is so often the case, was to turn the power she had gained against the poor girl, her rival, whose reputation the Prince had ruined. She urged him to get rid of her.

There is no question whatever that the Prince[Pg 95] was at this time thoroughly fascinated by Lady Archibald. Lord Hervey, who plays a wretched part in this episode, comments on his infatuation as follows:

“He,” the Prince, “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 frequent) his behaviour was so remarkable that his nose and her ear were inseparable.”

Lord Hervey, it has been said, played a despicable part in this affair, more despicable perhaps because he had been the Prince’s friend—a very false one.

John, Lord Hervey, was the eldest son of the first Earl of Bristol, had been Gentleman of the Bedchamber to George the Second when Prince of Wales, and was a great favourite with Caroline the Queen.

It is difficult to estimate the amount of mischief this wretched man made between the Queen and her son, the Prince of Wales; one thing is quite certain, and that is, that from the time a coolness sprang up between the Prince and Lord Hervey—and there was good reason for it as will be seen—things began to take a much worse turn between the former and his royal parents.

Hervey was the Queen’s devoted companion, and bearer of tittle tattle. She did not scruple to even[Pg 96] allow him to sit by her bed when she was ill and amuse her with gossip, and to this arrangement the King seems to have offered no objection, though he was devoted to Caroline. The Prince of Wales, however, expressed himself strongly on the subject of Hervey’s association with his mother and sisters.

The Queen appears to have selected a strange companion. The following is a description of his appearance and character:

“He was considered an exquisite beau and wit, and showed himself in after life to be possessed of considerable ability both as writer and orator.” (He was the author of the well-known “Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second”). “He was an accomplished courtier, and possessed some of the worst vices of courtiers; he was double-faced, untrustworthy, and ungrateful. He had a frivolous and effeminate character; he was full of petty spite and meannesses, and given to painting his face and other abominations, which earned for him the nickname of ‘Lord Fanny.’”

He is described by some of the poets of the time as being possessed of great personal beauty; the Duchess of Marlborough was of an opposite opinion:

“He has certainly parts and wit,” she writes, “but is the most wretched profligate man that ever was born, besides ridiculous; a painted face and not a tooth in his head.”[27]

He appears, however, to have been a favourite[Pg 97] with the fair sex, even to marrying the beautiful Mary Lepel, maid-of-honour to the Queen when Princess of Wales.

National Portrait Gallery.Emery Walker.
LORD HERVEY.

Poor Mary!

Lord Hervey had been a married man over ten years when the first rumours of the Vane scandal began to permeate St. James’s about the end of 1731. It was then that the estrangement between the Prince of Wales and Lord Hervey began, and the reason for it is not far to seek.

Lord Hervey had been talking of Miss Vane, and his remarks had reached the ears of Frederick.

Horace Walpole gives the key to the whole matter in his “Reminiscences”; he states that the Prince of Wales, Lord Hervey and the 1st Lord Harrington each came to his brother, Sir Robert, and confided the fact of being the father of Miss Vane’s child!

As far as the Prince of Wales was concerned, it is to be understood; he had committed a grave fault, he had incurred a grave responsibility, he had no wish to shirk it, although as we know he was kept very short of money by his father. He knew that as a man he was bound to see this poor girl through her trouble at any cost, and he did it.

But how about the cur Hervey with the painted face, and his finicking woman’s tittle-tattle? How about Lord Harrington, who was little better?

Either these two were lying, or they were[Pg 98] playing the most despicable parts that men could play, viz., boasting of their prowess in ruining a young girl, deserting her in her trouble, and shifting the public blame on to some one else.

But as far as Lord Hervey is concerned, it is more probable that he was lying; the circumstances look very much like it. He had evidently been an admirer of the beautiful Miss Vane before the Prince devoted himself to her; it is more than probable that the Prince cut him out, and that the reason of their quarrel was simply jealousy, accentuated by Hervey’s spiteful tongue. Certainly hereafter the Prince had no more bitter enemy than Lord Hervey, and, unfortunately, the latter was placed in a position about the Queen which enabled him to fan the embers of their quarrel, and to do the Prince’s cause an infinity of harm. Certainly no one can read the history of that period without coming to this conclusion.

It has been seen that the Prince of Wales, however, had formed an attachment to another lady, much older than himself, a woman of the world, the mother of ten children, Lady Archibald Hamilton, and this lady had availed herself of her ascendancy over him to urge him to break with Miss Vane. It may be very fairly surmised that the boastings of Hervey and Hamilton were pretty well dinned into his ears; at any rate Lady Archibald succeeded in persuading him, probably in a fit of jealous anger, to send one of his lords in[Pg 99] waiting, Lord Baltimore, to Miss Vane with an insulting message.

This message, as it is recorded in history, does not read like a man’s message at all; it savours far more of the composition of a spiteful woman. In it the Prince is represented as desiring her to go abroad for two or three years, and to leave her son to be educated in England. If she agreed, she was to receive from the Prince her usual allowance of £1,600 a year for life. The message is said to have concluded in the following words: “If she would not live abroad, she might starve for him in England.”

A most unlikely ending to have come from the Prince, having regard to his known habits of kind-heartedness and courtesy.

It is needless to say that Miss Vane was deeply hurt at this message, and declined to answer it by Lord Baltimore.

It is here that Lord Hervey comes again upon the scene.

He states that Miss Vane sent for him and telling him of the Prince’s message asked his advice as a friend; the result was the following letter, which, if Miss Vane wrote it, certainly Lord Hervey composed it, with a view, as it can easily be seen, to its future publication; it ran as follows:

“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,[Pg 100] 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[28] of going out of England, far from all friends and all physicians I can trust, and of whom I stand so much in 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 the Prince received this letter, strangely enough, he did not dissolve into tears at its pathos; he was on the contrary exceedingly angry. He said at once that Miss Vane—or “the minx” as it is reported—“was incapable of writing such a letter, and that he would punish the ‘rascal’ who had dictated it to her.”

He was probably well acquainted with her[Pg 101] capabilities in this respect, and possibly knew her modes of expression very well; as a rule the ladies of the Court of that time were nothing like so refined in their correspondence; this was evidently the composition of a man and one indeed skilled in letters. All this would be extremely strange if one element which prevailed at the time were not well known, viz., that the clever, diplomatic, Queen Caroline was exceedingly anxious that the Prince, her son, should break with Miss Vane, as she had a strong wish that he should marry, and this well-known liaison might form an obstacle, though apparently she had no particular Princess in view.

There is another point, also, which must not be lost sight of, and that is that during the three years and more that the Prince had been in England, he had grown year by year in popular favour, and had entirely eclipsed the Queen’s favourite son, the Duke of Cumberland, whom as we know the King and Queen would gladly have seen in his brother Frederick’s place as heir to the English throne.

It is impossible to say how far the crafty Hervey with his great influence over the Queen may have worked upon this feeling of jealousy at her eldest son’s popularity.

Unnatural as it seems, unless we read it in the light of later events, the Queen may have been induced to take a hidden part in this affair of Miss Vane to decrease the Prince of Wales’s growing popularity with the people.

[Pg 102]

For what followed? Very soon the details of this affair began to leak out among the public, a series of scurrilous songs and pamphlets began to make their appearance: “Vanilla, or the Amours of the Court”; “Vanessi, or the Humours of the Court of Modern Gallantry”; and a particularly offensive one “Vanilla on the Straw.”

Knowing as we do that Lord Hervey composed Miss Vane’s answer to the Prince’s message, that the copy of it was soon made public, and the Prince’s cruel message widely disseminated by Miss Vane, who apparently was at this time entirely under Lord Hervey’s influence, it is impossible to doubt for a moment that Hervey was striking a very heavy blow at the Prince’s popularity.

At this juncture, however, the mature judgment of Pulteney, the leader of the Opposition, came to the Prince’s aid, as it did at a later time also, and under his advice Miss Vane received the provision which the Prince had originally intended for her, viz., a settlement of £1,600 a year for life, a gift of the house in Grosvenor Street in which she had resided since her dismissal from Court, and that which she doubtless prized more than all, the custody of her child. All this without any request to her to leave the country.

And so the matter faded away, out of the public eye, and out of the public knowledge, for Miss Vane, with her child, went away to Bath, where very soon after both died; the child first, the mother after.

[Pg 103]

Perhaps, as it is said, this poor girl had a true affection for the Prince, and the separation broke her heart; certainly after the death of the child she could have very little left to live for; forsaken by the man who had wronged her, robbed by death of the little one on whom possibly all her hopes and love were then centred.

But it was not the poor broken-hearted mother who bore the whole of the sorrow at this little child’s death, the Queen, and the Princess Caroline, her daughter, both bear testimony “that they never believed it possible that the Prince of Wales could show such grief as he did at the death of the boy.” Perhaps a fitting conclusion to this chapter will be an Extract from the Register of Westminster Abbey, 26th February, 1735-6:

“Fitz Frederick, natural child of the Prince of Wales by Anne Vane, daughter of Gilbert, Lord Barnard, buried, aged four.”

The Court life of the reign of George the Second was far from being gay; it was very different from what his life had been during the reign of his father when he was Prince of Wales. About the time of the Vane scandal Lord Hervey writes to his friend Mrs. Clayton and complains of the dulness of the routine.

“I will not trouble you,” he says, “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 almanac 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, levees, and audiences fill the morning; at night the King plays 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[Pg 105] 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 Lorry; my Lord Grantham to Lady Francis and Mr. Clark; some to supper, and some to bed, and thus (to speak in the Scripture phrase) the evening and the morning make the day.”

Things had been very different in the former days referred to. Mrs. Howard, the King’s mistress, to whom reference has been made, was a shining light at that time. She had been complacently made Woman of the Bedchamber by Queen Caroline, with a view apparently to please the King, and keep her about the palace; but she must have been a woman of great tact as she seems to have got on very well with the Queen, except that at one time there was[Pg 106] some little difficulty about getting her to kneel down and hold the Queen’s basin while she washed her hands, which under the circumstances is not to be wondered at.

Mrs. Howard, however, despite her immorality—which was looked upon apparently as a fashionable weakness—was a great favourite with the other ladies of the Court. A companion of sweet Mary Bellenden and her friend Mary Lepel, both maids-of-honour.

Here is a description of the celebrated Henrietta Howard by Horace Walpole who knew her intimately in her widowhood when she lived at Marble Hill, Twickenham, and he at Strawberry Hill: he says of her appearance that she was “ladylike.” She was of good height, well made, extremely fair, with the finest light brown hair, was remarkably “genteel,” and—a great recommendation and interesting to ladies—was always dressed with taste and simplicity. He concludes his description: “For her face was regular and agreeable, rather than beautiful, and those charms she retained with little diminution to her death, at the age of seventy-nine” (in July, 1767). He states that she was “grave and mild of character, a lover of truth, and circumstantial about small things. She lived in a decent and dignified manner after her retirement from Court, and was considered and respected by those around her in her old age.”

King George the Second has often, when Mrs.[Pg 107] Howard, his mistress, was dressing the Queen, come into the room, and snatched the handkerchief off, and cried, “Because you have an ugly neck yourself, you like to hide the Queen’s.” Her Majesty (all the while calling her “My good Howard”) took great joy in employing her in the most servile offices about her person. The King was so communicative to his wife, that one day Mrs. Selwyn, another of the bedchamber women, told him he should be the last man with whom she would have an intrigue, because he always told the Queen.

Mrs. Howard was celebrated for her agreeable supper parties, which were often attended by the King. At Hampton Court the maids-of-honour used to call her rooms the “Swiss Cantons,” because they were neutral ground on which all could meet. Henrietta Howard wisely mixed herself up with no factions, and was a woman naturally, without spite or jealousy, and though slightly deaf, a wonderful hostess.

On account of the name given to her rooms, she was known as the “Swiss.”

Many years after Mary Bellenden, when a married woman, looked back with pleasure to the pleasant time spent with Mrs. Howard. “I wish we were all in the ‘Swiss Cantons’ again,” she writes.

And later still Molly Lepel, then Lady Hervey, writes in the same strain to Mrs. Howard:

“The place your letter was dated from (Hampton Court) recalls a thousand agreeable things to my[Pg 108] remembrance, which I flatter myself I do not quite forget. I wish that I could persuade myself that you regret them, or that you could think the tea-table more welcome in the morning if attended, as formerly by the ‘Schatz’ (a pet name for herself). I really believe frizelation (flirtation) would be a surer means of restoring my spirits than the exercise and hartshorn I now make use of. I do not suppose that name still subsists; but pray let me know if the thing itself does, or if they meet in the same cheerful manner to sup as formerly. Are ballads and epigrams the consequence of these meetings? Is good sense in the morning and wit in the evening the subject, or, rather, the foundation, of the conversation? That is an unnecessary question; I can answer it myself, since I know you are of the party, but in short, do you not want poor Tom, and Bellenden, as much as I want ‘Swiss’ in the first place, and them?” But all that was now changed, and the state of affairs, as depicted by Lord Hervey, prevailed.

Mrs. Howard also writes herself on the subject to Lady Hervey as far back as September, 1728 (the year of the Prince’s coming to England).

“Hampton is very different from the place you knew; and to say we wished Tom Lepel, 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 Lepel can restore them to life; but to tell you my opinion[Pg 109] freely, the people you now converse with” (books) “are much more alive than any of your old acquaintances.”

MARY LEPEL,
Lady Hervey,
In middle life.

These letters from dainty hands long since of the earth, seem to bring vividly before one’s eyes the trio of fair women, “The Swiss,” “Bella-dine”; and the scarcely less beautiful Mollie Lepel, “The Schatz,” their tea-table, their “frizelation” and “dangleation,” and other pet names for love-making, and it seems hard to believe it was nearly two hundred years ago!

Mrs. Howard appears to have separated from her husband in 1718, and devoted herself entirely to the service of the Queen—and the King.

Some may be curious to know what was her recompense for this position of degradation. It was not very great.

Queen Caroline stated that she received twelve hundred pounds a year from the King while he was Prince of Wales, and three thousand two hundred pounds a year when he became King. He gave her also twelve thousand pounds towards building her villa at Marble Hill, near Twickenham, in addition to several “little dabs” (the Queen’s expression) before and after he came to the throne. She had expected much more when the King came to the throne, and so had her friends, but they were disappointed. She obtained a peerage for her brother, Sir Henry Hobart, but Horace Walpole says of her:

“No established mistress of a sovereign ever[Pg 110] enjoyed less brilliancy of the situation than Lady Suffolk.”

This state of affairs appears to have prevailed until the year 1731, when Mrs. Howard’s brother-in-law, the Earl of Suffolk, died, and her husband succeeded to the title. Becoming a Countess, she could no longer hold the place of bedchamber woman to the Queen; she resigned her post at Court.

Despite her position, however, with regard to the King, Queen Caroline seems to have had some sort of affection for her, and wished to retain her about her person. Caroline could not have been much troubled with jealousy of her spouse, but possibly her intense passion for politics and all belonging to the world of diplomacy, had long since wiped out the other passion. Indeed, at times, she seems to have taken a keen and appreciative interest in the recitation of her husband’s infidelities, which facts little George appears to have had a mania for communicating to her.

The Queen, however, offered the new Countess of Suffolk the position of Mistress of the Robes, which post she held in conjunction with that of Mistress to the King until the year 1734.

She was delighted with her change of office, and wrote to the poet Gay in June, 1731, anent it:

“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[Pg 111] 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 for more happiness for the latter part of my life than I have yet had the prospect of (she was then forty-five). Seven nights quiet sleep, and seven easy days, have almost worked a miracle in me.”

Lady Suffolk, however, was not content to live the placid life which her letter indicates, she appears to have forsaken her old wise course of holding aloof from politics.

In 1733 her husband, the Earl of Suffolk died, and she found herself a free woman with a moderate competence. She wished to resign her office of Mistress of the Robes, and retire from Court, but this the Queen would not hear of, fearing, perhaps, to get a younger woman in her place who would not understand her ways, nor the King’s.

This feeling, however, the King by no means shared; he had long since tired of the Countess and wanted to get rid of her. He expressed himself to the Queen in the following refined and gentlemanly terms:—

“I do not know,” he reasoned, “why you will not let me part with the deaf old woman of whom I am weary.”

The Countess, however, who was by this time forty-eight, and thoroughly weary also, it is stated, of her degrading position, very soon gave the King the[Pg 112] opportunity he wanted by meddling in politics. She appears to have entered into some sort of a job in obtaining a favour for Lord Chesterfield, in which she slighted the Queen by getting the favour granted by the King over the Queen’s head.

This gave George the opportunity he required to be very rude to his former favourite, and to Lord Chesterfield too, as a result of which Lady Suffolk retired to Bath, and Lord Chesterfield shortly after was dismissed from Court, when of course he became a partisan of the Prince of Wales, as might be expected.

The mode of Lord Chesterfield’s dismissal was rather amusing. He had grievously offended Walpole and the King by his opposition to the Excise Scheme. Of all those who had done likewise, Lord Chesterfield, who held the office of Lord Steward of the Household, was the first to suffer. Two days after the extinction of the Excise Bill, he was going up the great staircase of St. James’s Palace—which is not so very great—when an attendant stopped him from entering the presence chamber, and handed him a summons requesting him to surrender his white staff. In this was the hand of the Queen, who had never forgiven him for his little deal with Mrs. Howard. There was also another reason. The Queen had a little window of observation overlooking the entrance to Mrs. Howard’s rooms. One Twelfth Night Lord Chesterfield had won a large sum of money at play, some[Pg 113] say fifteen thousand pounds, and being afraid of being robbed of it in the none too safe streets of London, determined to deposit it with Mrs. Howard. The Queen, through her little window of observation, saw him enter the apartments of the fair Howard, and drew her own conclusions. Thenceforward Lord Chesterfield obtained no more favours at Court, for the Queen controlled them.

Lady Suffolk went to Bath, but was not content, however, with drinking the waters in the kingdom of Beau Nash, she met there Bolingbroke, and is credited with a political intrigue with him, the person most detested by the Court. Whether this political intrigue existed or not, King George availed himself of the rumour of it, and upon her return to Court ignored her. He was an adept at ignoring people, especially his own son and heir, the Prince of Wales. This not being deemed sufficient, the King publicly insulted the Countess of Suffolk, and this had the desired effect; she resigned her post, and finally retired from the Court.

There is a curious memorandum in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum of an interview which took place between Queen Caroline and the Countess, written apparently by the latter, from which it seems that the Queen was even then very loth to lose her services. But not so the King.

Lady Suffolk shortly afterwards married the Honourable George Berkeley,[29] fourth son of the[Pg 114] second Earl of Berkeley, and found a good husband, only to lose him soon by death; but this was the comment of the King to the Queen upon hearing of the union, the news of which reached him in Hanover:

“J’étais extrément surpris de la disposition que vous m’avez mandé que ma vielle maitresse a fait de son corps en mariage à ce vieux goutteaux George Berkeley, et je m’en réjouis fort. Je ne voudrois pas faire de tels présents à mes amis; et quand mes ennemis me volent, plut à Dieu que ce soit toujours de cette façon.”

Which, though rather witty, shows that the little man’s pride was hurt, even when an old mistress was made an honest woman.

It may be imagined that in the differences which had arisen between the Prince of Wales and his parents, the rest of his family had not played a neutral part. His brother William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, born April 25th, 1721, was of course but a boy at his first coming to England, but old enough to resent such an eclipse of his own importance by the elder brother whom he had never before seen, and whom, perhaps, he may have been taught to regard as a rival.

The fact has already been referred to, that George the Second and his Queen are credited with the intention of endeavouring to make their second son, the Duke of Cumberland—the idol of his mother—heir to the English throne, without giving any[Pg 115] consideration to the fact that the throne was not theirs to give.

Such a determination which could not but have become known to the brothers was not likely to foster much fraternal love. As regards the Prince of Wales’s sisters, the two elder Princesses Anne and Amelia, cannot be said to have ever been his friends. Amelia exhibited some signs of affection at first, but when the Prince discovered that she was betraying his confidences to his father, he very naturally would have no more to do with her, as a result of which perfidy she became despised both by her brother and the King.

Anne, the elder Princess, had apparently never exhibited anything but dislike for her elder brother, whom neither she nor her sister could have had any distinct recollection of in their infancy when they left Hanover, and whom they both regarded as a stranger and interloper.

This state of unfortunate enmity which existed between the Prince and his sisters took an active form in a peculiar way. Anne, the Princess Royal, was devoted to music, and had had the advantage of the great Handel as her instructor, to whom she was much attached.

Handel at one time became the manager of the Opera House at the Haymarket,—one can imagine it with its hundreds of wax candles, its powder, patches, and orange girls—this undertaking the Princess Royal aided by every means in her power,[Pg 116] inducing the King and Queen to not only subscribe to a box, but to frequently visit the theatre. This must have been an infliction upon King George, whose dislike for “bainting and boetry,” together with the other arts is proverbial.

It cannot be denied that Frederick, Prince of Wales, had the attribute of combativeness, and a natural power of enraging others by his mode of opposition. No sooner had his sister’s protégé established his opera at the Haymarket theatre than he forthwith started an opposition opera at the theatre in Lincolns Inn Fields, possibly not very far from the present Gaiety.

Then commenced a state of affairs which can only be regarded as extremely comical. All the adherents of the Prince—and he was very popular among the nobility as well as the people—ceased their patronage of Handel’s theatre, and transferred it to the Prince’s undertaking in Lincolns Inn Fields. Excitement between the two parties was high at the time, and the Prince’s theatre was crowded.

Lord Chesterfield, who by this time was becoming a strong partisan of Frederick’s, wittily commented on the state of affairs one evening at the Lincolns Inn Fields establishment. He had, he informed the Prince, just looked in at the Haymarket theatre on his way down, and found nobody there but the King and Queen, “and as I thought they might be talking business,” he concluded, airily, “I came away.”

[Pg 117]

Much as this joke pleased the Prince it cannot be expected that its repetition gave much satisfaction to the King and Queen, and the Princess Royal, the latter of whom spoke bitterly of the whole affair. She commented with a sneer that “she expected in a little while to see half the House of Lords playing in the orchestra at the Prince’s Theatre in their robes and coronets,” which was a remark truly worthy of a spiteful young lady, and the anger of the King, her father, can be understood when it is considered that he had been dragged to witness a performance he did not care a bit about, to be snubbed by his nobility and made a public spectacle of.

The King’s appreciation of a theatrical performance was not of a very high order; of an opera it was probably much worse. The following anecdote is related of one of his visits to a theatre when the play was Richard the Third, and Garrick sustained the title rôle.

Notwithstanding the talent of the great actor, King George’s fancy was captured by the man who played the part of Lord Mayor.

During the remainder of the performance the little monarch continually worried his attendants with the following questions: “Will not that lor-mayor come again? I like dat lor-mayor. When will he come again?”

But the resentment engendered by the slights and ill-treatment the Prince had received from his[Pg 118] family—what a family to live in the same house with!—which resentment was shared and fostered by his party, especially Bolingbroke, the moving spirit of it, began to assume a definite form about this time, till at last the Prince, no doubt inspired by Bolingbroke, determined to address his father personally on the subject of his wrongs. He took a step against which Bubb Doddington in his diary says he did his best to dissuade him.

One morning in the early summer of 1734, the Prince of Wales presented himself without previous notice at the King’s ante-chamber and requested an immediate audience. The King, upon whom this presumptuous request no doubt produced an instant fit of fuming, delayed admitting him until he had sent for Sir Robert Walpole, a very wise proceeding as it turned out. The King no doubt scented danger in the air.

On the arrival of Sir Robert, the King boiling with rage, expressed his indignation at the Prince’s audacity, but the Minister counselled moderation and at last persuaded the King to receive his son reasonably.

On his admittance the Prince made three requests:

The first to serve a campaign on the Rhine in the Imperial army; the second related to an augmentation of his revenue, with a broad hint that he was in debt; and the third, a very reasonable suggestion, that he should be settled by a suitable marriage. He was then twenty-seven.

[Pg 119]

To the first and last of these three propositions the King made no answer, to the second he seemed inclined to agree. Here the interview appears to have ended.

But although under the cool advice of his Minister Walpole the King had controlled himself, his anger broke out with redoubled fury when he heard for the first time, and it must have been a blow, that the Prince of Wales intended bringing the matter of his income before Parliament. This was particularly inopportune to the King, as it was a well-known fact that out of his immense income of £900,000 per annum, £100,000 was intended by Parliament for the Prince of Wales, though the King’s discretion in dealing with his children was not hampered in any way. But here the Queen stepped in; despite Lord Hervey’s weak but spiteful satire, the Queen and her son were still on the terms of mother and child; she used her best endeavours to make peace between the father and son, and had her ears not been systematically poisoned against Frederick by Hervey and others, and had not the Prince on the other hand been controlled by the strong hand of Bolingbroke, she might have continued her natural office of peacemaker between these two.

On the present occasion, however, she succeeded in at least patching up a truce; her influence over the weaker nature of the King was at this time, as it always had been and in fact continued to the day[Pg 120] of her death, boundless. She could mould him in those soft white hands of hers, of which she was no doubt naturally proud, into any form she chose, and with the Prince she took the business line of telling him he would gain nothing by trying to force the King’s hand through Parliament.

But at the same time she induced George to advance his son a sum of money with which to liquidate his most pressing debts, and so with this little sacrifice on the King’s part, the matter ended,—for the time.

Just about this time (1735), a very important event indeed occurred; the King took a new mistress!

He made his triennial visit to Hanover this year, and became smitten with the charms of a young German lady named Walmoden. This middle-aged Don Juan—he was getting on, he was fifty-two—induced this estimable lady to leave her husband for the trifling consideration of a thousand ducats.

Madame Walmoden was a great niece of the Countess von Platen who had been one of the mistresses of George the First, and consequently had a good strain of the courtesan in her blood before she disposed of herself for the aforesaid thousand ducats.

Little George at once wrote off to his wife in England and told her all about it, just as if he had bought a new horse; he did not scruple to describe the person of his new purchase to his wife, minutely. He even solicited his wife’s affection for her! A curious race these Hanoverian Kings!

Further, George did not scamp the details of his amour in his letters to his wife, which were immensely long and always written in French, which[Pg 122] he apparently considered a language more fitted for descriptions of love affairs; his sort of love affairs at any rate. This is a sample of one of his letters written concerning the inviting to England by the Queen (which he besought her to contrive) of a certain Princess of Modena, a daughter of a late Regent of France, to whom he had the greatest possible inclination to pay his addresses, particularly because he understood she was not at all particular from whom she received such marks of favour. “Un plaisir,” he wrote, “que je suis sûr, ma chère Caroline, vous serez bien aise de me procurer, quand je vous dis combien je le souhaite!”

According to Lord Hervey, the Queen’s confidant, the general opinion was that Madame Walmoden, the King’s new mistress, would oust the Queen from her influence, but the diplomatic Caroline rose to the occasion. She, to retain her power, expressed the utmost interest in the King’s new mistress, and awaited further details with impatience. She got them.[30] Not in such a manner as a profligate husband would write in our days, even to a mistress debased enough to read such letters, but hot and strong in the terms of Shakespeare expressed in French.

So far from being offended, the Queen replied in the same strain, equalling in every respect her husband’s flights of fancy in the regions of Venus.

[Pg 123]

It is this correspondence between Caroline and the King, coupled with her very objectionable letters to the Duchess of Orleans, which have caused many writers to take exception to the remark of Lord Mahon, which described this Queen’s character as “without a blemish.” At any rate it gives us an insight into the private life of the mother of our Prince Frederick, and accounts perhaps for some of her unnatural conduct towards him, for where there is not purity of mind, how can there be purity of motherly affection?

Again, a mind which could take pleasure daily in the conversation of such a man as Lord Hervey—epigrammatic though that conversation might be—could not be expected to contain the natural solicitude which a loving parent would have for her first-born son.

The little King, however, was having a particularly effulgent time in Hanover with his new light o’ love, a time which he kept up, not exactly religiously, until the very night before he left for England, when standing glass in hand at a supper party on that eventful evening he pledged himself to Madame Walmoden and the other demireps forming the company to return without fail on the following 29th May.

Upon hearing of which promise some short time after, Sir Robert Walpole, his sturdy Prime Minister, remarked: “He wants to go to Hanover, does he”? he asked, when Lord Hervey told him[Pg 124] of it, “and to be there by the 29th May? Well, he shan’t go for all that.”

So much did the King enjoy his revels in Hanover that he had paintings made of them, each containing portraits, sent them to England and had them hung up in his wife’s dressing room! She must have enjoyed the privilege!

So George returned to England and made himself exceedingly disagreeable to his wife when he got there, as a testy love-sick gentleman of fifty-two might be expected to do who had recently left a new and youngish lady-love hundreds of miles behind. For the time being Caroline and the English bored him; with regard to the latter he expressed himself as follows: “No English, or French cook could dress a dinner; no English confectioner set out a dessert; no English player could act; no English coachman could drive, no English jockey ride, nor were any English horses fit to be drove or fit to be ridden; no Englishman knew how to come into a room, nor any English woman how to dress herself.”[31]

How this particular strain of English King must have degenerated since James the First’s daughter made a mésalliance and married the King of Bohemia!

But the little King had not wasted all his time in Hanover, he had seen a Princess—the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha—whom he thought would[Pg 125] do for a daughter-in-law, and had straightway communicated this fact to his Queen, mixed up with accounts of his own prowess on the field of love, in a less innocent direction.

No sooner, however, had the King set foot in England, than the Prince of Wales, urged to this filial act of duty by Doddington, put in an appearance at one of his father’s first Levees, from which functions he had absented himself for a considerable time. His father, however, once more scented mischief in the air, and once more his olfactory nerves had not led him astray. Frederick at once renewed his demands, this time asking for his full allowance of £100,000 a year, a separate establishment, and—a wife. The Prince was insistent.

There can be little doubt from an incident which followed that in this demand for a wife, the Prince had in his mind his old love, his cousin Wilhelmina, still unmarried.

The King, his father, however, had no intention whatever of uniting his son with that Princess; he and the King of Prussia had been quarrelling for years, even going the length of challenging one another to single combat, an encounter which would have been exceedingly grotesque but for the redeeming point that though George the Second was very little, yet he was undoubtedly plucky for his size, and would have given a good account of himself in any case. But, “unfortunately,” as some[Pg 126] historians put it, no mortal combat came off, and Europe had to put up with the two sovereigns for some years longer. The King, as usual, talked the matter of his son’s request over with his Queen, especially the part about the £100,000 a year, which her Majesty was dead against, she had all along resisted the demand of the Prince of Wales for a regular income, and this opposition being persevered in on her part had undoubtedly made matters worse between them.

The King and Queen’s talk resulted in the conclusion that it would be cheaper to marry him off and make him an allowance than to keep on paying some of his debts, therefore having put their heads together for the last time on the subject, they sent a message by five of the Privy Council, proposing to the Prince of Wales a marriage with the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the young lady whom the King had seen when abroad. But this was evidently not what the Prince expected, for this is what happened.

In the first place more than a year after his coming to England, when there had been a spark of revival in the double marriage scheme, Frederick had written to Hotham, the Special Envoy in Berlin, on the subject of Wilhelmina:

“Please, dear Hotham, get my marriage settled, my impatience increases daily for I am quite foolishly in love!”[32]

[Pg 127]

There is something plaintive in this message, for whatever were his faults, and they were numerous, yet this constancy to the girl he wished to make his wife was honest and admirable, and had he been given her, he might have become a different man. But Wilhelmina was a strange girl, and in her diary, written long after, affects to think it was only his characteristic obstinacy which caused the Prince to evince such affection. Perhaps it was the old tale of the sourness of the fruit which had not come her way.

When therefore the deputation of the five Privy Councillors from the King waited upon the Prince of Wales and proposed to him a marriage with the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, they evidently threw him into a state of consternation. It was not Augusta he wanted, but Wilhelmina, his cousin.

He appears to have remonstrated with some heat[33] and then to have sent for Baron Borck, the Prussian Minister.

To him he complained that his father, the King, was forcing him to marry a lady he had never seen and to renounce all hopes of “a Prussian Princess”—there could not be much doubt about the identity of this Princess.

He requested him to lay this statement before the King of Prussia. He expressed his heartfelt grief at not being allowed to take a wife from a family which he loved more than his own, and to which,[Pg 128] from infancy, all his desires had been directed. He begged for the King of Prussia’s favour and friendship notwithstanding, and deplored that he should be denied his support. He complained, too, that he should still be under the control of his father and mother, for it was a part of King George’s scheme that the young married couple should live with him, presumably to save expense.

All this and much more the excited young Prince appears to have said, and he seems to have deplored the fact of the King of England disdaining the friendship of such a great monarch as the King of Prussia, which could only lead to the ruin of his, Prince Frederick’s, house.

This impassioned appeal to his feelings affected even that astute old diplomatist, Baron Borck, who with Lord Townshend, had gained notoriety, by preventing the comic duel between the King of Prussia and King George.

It is more than probable that Baron Borck gave the distressed young Prince some fatherly advice and impressed upon him the hopelessness of thinking any more of his cousin Wilhelmina. None knew better than the Baron that such a marriage could never take place. In addition the Queen informed her son—they still had some confidence in each other left—that the King of Prussia had definitely refused to give him the hand of his daughter.

Soon after, the Prince gave in, and accepted the marriage his father had arranged for him, apparently[Pg 129] in sheer desperation, and no doubt in consequence of a little pressure being put upon him financially, for his father gave him no fixed allowance then as it has been said, but simply as much or as little as he chose.

The young man’s pleadings to Baron Borck, however, were not without effect; the Baron wrote off at once to his master the King of Prussia, and reported all the Prince of Wales’ messages, but as luck would have it the letter fell into the hands of Walpole, who was not at all above tampering with the Ambassador’s post bags, and the whole of the Prince’s love ravings were communicated to the King, his father, whose anger passed comprehension, especially about that part which referred to his “disdaining the support of such a great monarch as the King of Prussia” whom he hated, and his own ruin speedily following.

All this was no doubt stored up by the Royal couple against their troublesome son, who seemed to be in ill-luck’s way. His parents were determined. They had married off their daughter Anne, the Princess Royal, in 1733 to the Prince of Orange, an amiable but deformed gentleman who apparently married his royal wife—he was only Serene himself—on the traditions of another Prince William of Orange who had preceded him. A marriage the English King and Queen would have now. Frederick was to marry the Princess Augusta, or go short, and it is not at all surprising, considering all things, that he gave in.

[Pg 130]

With regard to the above-mentioned marriage of Frederick’s eldest sister with the Prince of Orange, the way in which this unfortunate man was treated could not have been a better testimony to the bad breeding of King George and his wife. The poor Dutchman fell ill when he landed in England, and lay in that state for months, during which time the whole of the Royal Family were forbidden to go near him, lest they should make him proud by having such an attention from a “Royal” House as a sick visit. He was to be taught by little George to understand that if he ever should receive any dignity at all, it was not to be his own but a reflection from his marriage with a Royal Princess of England. In addition, to make things more pleasant all round—especially for the bride—he was given the name of “the Baboon” by the King in the family circle, and the Queen generally graciously referred to him as “that Animal.” All this was calculated to establish the future happiness of the young couple on a firm and sound basis.

But to return to Frederick, it is very evident that he hesitated long before he accepted the marriage his father proposed for him, until in fact it was demonstrated to him that the desire of his heart was unattainable; then he agreed in the following words: “whoever His Majesty thought a proper match for his son would be agreeable to him,” and the negotiations went forward forthwith.

The King, after an unusual struggle, had[Pg 131] intimated—undoubtedly on the initiative of the Queen, for she suggested everything, or at any rate sanctioned everything before it passed through her hands—that he intended to allow the Prince £50,000 per annum, which seems a large sum to us considering the fact that the young couple were to live with “his people,” but when the sum is dissected, and the huge taxes deducted, the amount, as will be seen later, was not by any means too great an income for a Prince of Wales at that time. The sum that the young princess was to receive from her father’s grateful subjects of Saxe-Gotha by way of income, did not transpire.

The Prince having given his reluctant consent to the marriage—and there was something pitiable about it—little time was lost. Walpole was most anxious to get the Prince married, perhaps he was glad to put a final stop on the double marriage scheme which had worried him at intervals for years. Lord Delaware was selected, principally on account of his ugliness, to demand the hand of the Princess of Saxe-Gotha. King George had recollections, perhaps, of a certain handsome Count Königsmarck, who had played havoc in his father’s family, and was taking no risks in that respect in the present instance. This long, lank, unpolished nobleman shambled off to fetch the Princess Augusta, leaving no jealous feeling in anybody’s heart, that he would play the part of Paolo to the Princess’s Francesca.

There is no doubt whatever that the Princess[Pg 132] Augusta was handsome; certainly she was only seventeen, but gave promise of great beauty, she was tall, slender, but naturally unformed and fresh from the schoolroom.

Now commenced a somewhat humorous episode. The little King George was due to meet his dear Walmoden in Hanover on the 29th of the following May according to promise—how he had endured the intervening months in his state of middle-aged infatuation it is difficult to conceive—and the staid, leisurely formalities of the marriage contract over which the ungainly Delaware presided on behalf of the Prince in Saxe-Gotha, were one long drawn out agony to the amorous little King of England, whose deep-drawn sighs of love for his far-away German courtesan must have been exceedingly gratifying to his wife, the Queen, to listen to, she being perfectly informed from his own lips how matters stood. At last King George sent word to Lord Delaware that if the Princess could not arrive in England by the end of April, the marriage would either have to be put off till the winter or take place without his presence.

This had the desired effect of hurrying the Princess, who was at the time saying good-bye to her numerous girl friends, and of course having her trousseau made. She forthwith set out alone, under the care of that plain-featured nobleman who had been sent for her.

Poor child! It was a cheerless beginning to the[Pg 133] festivities of a marriage, coming alone without father or mother or relative of any sort to a strange land to wed with a man she had never seen, and who did not love her.

The etiquette of King George’s Court did not admit of a Prince of Wales going to woo a Princess of such an inferior state as Saxe-Gotha; on the contrary, she had to come to him, but it is said that the young Princess came joyfully, dazzled by the prospect of becoming Queen of England.

She arrived at Greenwich in the royal yacht, “William and Mary,” on Sunday, April 25th, 1736, and was duly handed ashore by Lord Delaware, who not being a lady’s man was no doubt glad to be rid of his charge.

There was, however, nobody there to meet her. King George did not believe in, as the Irish say, “cocking up” these small “Serenities” with too much attention, so she spent the night at Greenwich Palace alone.

One is confused at this time with the number of royal palaces; St. James’s, Richmond, Kew, Hampton Court, Leicester House, Kensington, Greenwich, and Windsor Castle, which latter seemed to be very little used.

The young Princess created a very favourable impression on the people on landing; she was exceedingly amiable and engaging, and possessed all the charm of youth. She showed herself to the people on the balcony of the Palace and was very warmly received.

[Pg 134]

The poets were ready with plenty of verses for the young couple, of the description following:

Which somehow reminds one of the verses of Mr. Feeder, B.A., in “Dombey and Son.”

Walpole made the following amusing remark upon it:—“I believe the Princess will have more beauties bestowed upon her by the occasional poets than even a painter would afford her. They will cook up a new Pandora, and in the bottom of the box enclose Hope—that all they have said is true. A great many, out of excess of good breeding, who have heard that it was rude to talk Latin before women, proposed complimenting her in English; which she will be much the better for.[34] I doubt most of them instead of fearing their compositions should not be understood, should fear they should; they wish they don’t know what, to be read by they don’t know who.”

The next day after the landing of the Princess Augusta came the Prince, and the meeting must have been an exceedingly interesting one to those about them, especially to the populace who loved them both for their amiability, and who cheered themselves hoarse in consequence whenever they caught sight of the pair.

[Pg 135]

It is said that the Prince was very pleased with her, as indeed he might well have been, for there is no doubt that she was a very charming young girl, and what man—especially one of the Prince’s temperament—would not have been pleased under the circumstances?

But after his impassioned appeal to Baron Borck, which occurred only a few days before, it is impossible to believe that this child from abroad—who by the bye brought a doll with her, poor dear—could have effaced from Frederick’s heart the passion for his cousin Wilhelmina, which had burned there for so many years, almost from his childhood.

And now the hour had come when she was to lose him for ever; perhaps there were some tears shed in the private chamber of Wilhelmina in far-away Berlin, for what girl likes to lose a devoted lover?

Meanwhile, the young Princess waited patiently at Greenwich Palace for something to occur; she remained there it is said for forty-eight hours without anyone coming near her, except the Prince, this being a result, without doubt, of the King’s orders.

His Majesty, however, came down so far from his great altitude as to send the poor little Princess a message from himself and his family:

“Their compliments, and they hoped she was well.”

This was being taken to the warm bosom of a loving family with a vengeance! And yet the little[Pg 136] Princess seemed to put up with it without a murmur. Perhaps she confided all her disappointments to her doll, and wept over them in secret with it, or what was still more probable, they did things differently in Germany and it was no surprise to her. Certainly the Royal Family could not have sent a barer message if the Prince had been going to marry Cinderella.

The Prince, however, was a gentleman and certainly did his best to make up for the coldness of his relatives whose excuse was that they were so bound up with etiquette that until Augusta became Princess of Wales they did not know upon what footing to treat her.

Frederick came down to Greenwich the next day after his first visit in his state barge and dined with his bride elect; then he did the exact thing to please a girl. He took her out for a row in his flag-bedecked barge on the Thames, with a band playing sweet music before them, guns firing from the river craft, and the people cheering them on the bank; these seeing their bright young faces, thought how happy the Prince of Wales must be, not knowing of course anything about his cousin Wilhelmina over in Berlin.

It is not a far-fetched idea to imagine that the Prince thought of his lost-love on that journey on the river—they went as far as the Tower and back again—and wondered how she would have looked in the same place beside him. It is just what a[Pg 137] lover under such circumstances could not well help doing.

From “Caroline the Illustrious,” by permission of Messrs, Longmans, Green & Co.
PRINCESS AUGUSTA.
Wife of Frederick, Prince of Wales.

The account in the Gentleman’s Magazine for April, 1736, concludes by saying that the happy couple returned to Greenwich together, and “supped in public,” which meant that the young people took their meal near an open window for the people to see them.

Certainly this must have been an enjoyable day for the young Princess, during which probably she did not miss the presence of the King and Queen, whose personality was pretty well known on the Continent.

The next day after this excursion, one of the Royal coaches was sent down to Greenwich to bring the Princess up to Lambeth, where she embarked in a royal barge and was rowed across the river to Whitehall. Thence she was carried in one of Queen Caroline’s sedan chairs to the garden entrance of St. James’s Palace, by a couple of stout carriers, to the great content no doubt of the inhabitants of Westminster, who were assembled there to see her.

Her reception at the palace is said to have been magnificent and tasteful. Certainly the meeting itself of Frederick and Augusta was very pretty and likely to impress the public and increase the young people’s popularity with them.

On the arrival of the bride, Frederick was there to meet her and gallantly assisted her from her chair. Then when she attempted to kneel and kiss[Pg 138] his hand, he prevented her, but instead drew her to him and kissed her twice upon the lips before everybody, a proceeding no doubt which gave satisfaction to all, including the Princess.

The picture of confusion and happiness, it is said the young couple ascended the broad staircase of the Palace together hand in hand. Thus they proceeded into the Presence Chamber crowded with courtiers of both sexes.

Here, according to Lord Hervey, the Princess “threw herself all along the floor, first at the King’s, then at the Queen’s feet,” and by so doing greatly pleased little George, whose kingly brow had been disfigured by wrinkles when she arrived, for she was a little late.

This act was considered by the Court as being so exceedingly tactful that she was given the credit at once of being a girl of “propriety and sense.”

But the King graciously raised her up and kissed her on both cheeks with his royal arm round her. The Queen embraced her too, and the remainder of the family did their best to make up for their neglect of her at Greenwich.

This must have been a trying ordeal for the young Princess considering that her wedding was to take place that very night at nine o’clock!

To avoid the question of precedence before Augusta became Princess of Wales, the King and Queen decided that she should dine with the younger members of the family, and this incident[Pg 139] gave rise to a scene which can only be regarded as exceedingly comic, and which gave the bride an idea of what sort of a family she was marrying into.

Of course it must be remembered that the actors in this absurd scene were all young, though the Prince was the eldest and certainly twenty-nine.

For some reason, possibly by way of a joke, for he was extremely fond of joking, vide the Bubb Doddington incident, the Prince decreed that at this meal, his brother and all his sisters should sit on stools without any backs, whilst he and his bride luxuriated in arm-chairs at the head of the table. Upon this the Duke of Cumberland, who was fifteen, and the Princesses, refused to go into the Dining Chamber until the stools were all removed—there ought to have been one for the Princess Augusta’s doll—and chairs substituted in their place.

This formality being complied with, exception was taken by these young royalties to the fact that the Prince of Wales and the bride were being served on bended knee and they were not. This difficulty was got over by their being allowed to be waited on by their own servants, who it is presumed served them also on bended knee or in any other position in which it pleased them to have their food handed to them.

But these young sticklers remained firm on one point, they would not receive coffee from the Prince’s servants for fear they should “pass some indignity upon them with the cups.” Altogether it[Pg 140] was a scene which was well fitted for a nursery, and no doubt heartily enjoyed by Augusta who had just come away from one.

It is notable that the King, perhaps having an idea what this dinner party of his children was likely to be, commanded that they were to dine “undressed,” that is in their ordinary clothes, and not in the grand paraphernalia of the wedding. This was probably a wise precaution.

The dinner and the various objections and counter-objections concerning the etiquette to be observed at the meal occupied nearly all the afternoon, so that when the time came for uprising, Augusta had barely time to withdraw to her rooms, and commence that most important dressing of a girl’s life, whether she be a princess or a ’prentice, her wedding toilette.

How the Prince and his friends passed the interval between dinner and the ceremony is not stated in history, but if they spent it over their wine certainly the Prince came up to time looking his best when the procession was formed in the great drawing-room of St. James’s Palace at eight o’clock; then, the great crowd of peers and peeresses were marshalled into order of precedence.

The ceremony took place in the Chapel of the Palace and was performed by the Bishop of London to a running accompaniment of artillery in the neighbouring park. Here is an account of it all from the Gentleman’s Magazine for April, 1736, which must also have been a Ladies’ Magazine in the reading at any rate, from the elaborate descriptions of the dresses worn; no doubt this accurate journal issued a double wedding number to give room for the information, and greatly increased its circulation thereby.

The account:

“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[Pg 142] 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.

[Pg 143]

“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 bridegroom sitting up in bed surrounded by all the Royal Family.”

That must have been an engaging sight which the little King came upon, when due intimation had been conveyed to his royal ears that the bride had been undressed, and re-dressed by her royal maids; the spectacle of a pretty Princess, in very becoming night attire, sitting up in bed and blushingly awaiting her bridegroom, must have been a taking sight indeed.

It seems to have been the custom in those days for a Royal bride and bridegroom to have held a formal reception in their bedroom, while sitting up in bed, before finally saying good-night. As a matter of fact, this was not an English tradition at all, but a ceremony borrowed from Versailles, where it might have been better understood.

On the occasion of the previous marriage in the family when the Princess Royal had wedded the Prince of Orange, the latter, never a favourite with the Queen—as has been stated already—did not make much of a show sitting up in bed without his peruke and gorgeous wedding-clothes, which had certainly toned down his deformities and want of good looks.

[Pg 144]

Commenting on the following day upon the sight of this royal couple, the Queen cried:—

“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 Princess, however, did not share this view, and in her way really appeared to be fond of her husband, and was dutiful to him according to her lights.

It may be well to mention that the four bridesmaids referred to in the foregoing account were: Lady Caroline Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond; Lady Caroline Fitzroy, daughter of the Duke of Grafton; Lady Caroline Cavendish, daughter of the Duke of Devonshire.

It will be seen that all these ladies bore the name of the Queen, the fourth, Lady Sophia Fermor, daughter of the Earl of Pomfret, bore the name of the King’s mother, whom he had always regarded as Queen of England.

It is said that the King had grumbled at the scarcity of new clothes at his birthday drawing-room, certainly he could not with reason have complained of the display at his son’s wedding.

This is a description of some of them from that excellent journal the Gentleman’s Magazine, and which seems to have fulfilled, and fulfilled well, the double functions of the Queen newspaper and the Court Circular of our day:

[Pg 145]

“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 fine clothes were the manufactures of England, and in honour of our own artists. The few which were French did not come up to these in richness or goodness or fancy, as was seen by the clothes worn by the Royal Family, which were all of 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 lower than hath been done for some time.”[35]

[Pg 146]

One account states that the Prince in his night attire of “silver stuff”—which must have been most uncomfortable—passed gaily among the guests at his bedroom reception, whilst his pretty young wife sat bolt upright in the heavily-draped four-poster. That he exchanged quips and retorts with the ladies and gentlemen of the Court, in the broad style which then was fashionable, and that a general air of levity and frolic prevailed over all without restraint.

One could have wished that those two joyous maids-of-honour, Mary Bellenden and Mollie Lepel, could have been there, with their bosom friend, Mrs. Howard, to add their witty congratulations to the crowd of compliments which floated round the fair young girl wife sitting up in bed; if those good-humoured jokes were perhaps a little stronger than they ought to have been, we may rest assured that judging from their letters which are still extant, that beautiful merry trio, “Bella-dine,” “the Swiss” and “the Schatz” would have been quite equal to the occasion.[36]

And so the stiff brocades and the powdered heads having made due obeisance to the four-poster and its sacred contents, someone discreetly pulled the curtains, and the crowd withdrew.

MARY BELLENDEN,
4th Duchess of Argyll.
Copied for this book from the Gallery at Inverary by the kindness of the present Duke.

After the marriage nobody seems to have been able to find sufficiently superlative expressions in which to convey their appreciation of the Princess’s conduct at the wedding. Lord Waldegrave stated that she 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.” The aged Duchess of Marlborough, who was by no means in love with the Royal Family, said of her “that she always appeared good-natured and civil to everybody.”

While Sir Robert Walpole paid her a greater compliment than all when he observed how she had conquered the gruff old King and attracted her husband’s esteem, he declared that there were “circumstances which spoke strongly in favour of brains which had but seventeen years to ripen.” It may be said here that the Princess’s future conduct fully justified these favourable comments. She had indeed a most difficult and painful part to play, considering the state of affairs which existed between the Prince of Wales, her husband, and his[Pg 148] father, and this at the very threshold of her married life was greatly complicated by a most disagreeable episode which ought never to have occurred. This was a dispute between the Queen and Frederick as to whether Lady Archibald Hamilton, the lady of thirty-five with ten children, who had obtained a strong ascendency over the Prince, should be appointed one of the ladies-in-waiting upon the Princess.

The Queen very properly argued that scandal had linked the Prince’s name with this lady’s, and it was invidious to appoint her to his household, but to this, of course, the Prince retorted very improperly—but que voulez-vous with such a father?—that “Lady Suffolk had been appointed to his mother’s household under similar circumstances.” Lady Archibald Hamilton, however, had her way in the end. It was arranged by the astute Queen Caroline that only three ladies-in-waiting on the Princess of Wales should be appointed, leaving Lady Archibald out, and that the fourth should be left to the Princess’s choice. The Queen, no doubt, had a pretty shrewd idea who the fourth lady-in-waiting would be, but was anxious to avoid the responsibility of her appointment; as a matter of fact, later events point to Lady Archibald really being a creature of Queen Caroline’s.

Frederick’s influence over his girl-wife very soon became apparent and was very natural. Lady Archibald’s influence over the Prince also soon[Pg 149] became a patent fact, with the result that may be easily imagined, “the Hamilton woman,” as she was called, filled the vacant fourth place among the ladies-in-waiting. Not only was this piece of finesse easily accomplished by her, but she at once began to exert a strong influence over the seventeen-year-old Princess of Wales, which was not to be wondered at. This influence was not exerted for the young Princess’s benefit by any means; it would almost seem that Lady Archibald set herself to work to make this pretty young girl ridiculous in the eyes of the people. Augusta was wholly ignorant of the customs of the country, and of course very easily led by such a person of experience as Lady Archibald.

Under the advice of this lady she was persuaded to walk abroad in Kensington Gardens, preceded by two gentlemen ushers, a chamberlain leading her by the hand, a page in attendance on her train, and the rear brought up by ladies-in-waiting, among whom it is pretty certain the instigator of this absurdity was not present.

The Queen is said to have met this pageant in Kensington Gardens and to have burst into peals of laughter, which very naturally surprised the child Princess. Queen Caroline, however, enlightened her there and then, and compared her to a tragedy queen.

To whose interest was it that this pretty young Princess should be made ridiculous in the eyes of[Pg 150] the English people, upon whom she had made a favourable first impression?

Had there not also been another Princess of Wales who had made an equally favourable impression upon the English people and who now was Queen? Had not this lady reigned unrivalled from 1714 to that year 1736, for her daughters were never attractive enough to become popular favourites, and they knew that fact very well and resented it.

Is it not a very plain conclusion to draw, that in this making Augusta absurd in the people’s eyes, Lady Archibald was simply acting under orders from the Queen, who feared her own fading attractions—she was very fat—were likely to suffer by comparison with the youthful radiance of the new Princess of Wales?

In addition, Lady Archibald introduced into the Prince’s household as many of her husband’s relatives as she possibly could, so that his apartments were said to be peopled by Hamiltons. But despite the evil influence of this woman, the Prince and Princess of Wales greatly gained in popularity after their marriage, and very uncomplimentary comparisons were drawn by the public between the affability and courtesy of the young Prince and his bride, and the distinctly phlegmatic German manners of the King. The Queen had always made herself agreeable to the people; she was far too wise to do anything else.

Within a few weeks of her marriage the Princess[Pg 151] was witness of a fight in a theatre for the first time, when the celebrated riot of the footmen in Drury Lane took place, these brothers of the shoulder knot and long cane objecting to be shut out of the gallery to which they claimed to be admitted free, and emphasizing their objections by storming the doors of the theatre and starting a free fight within, in which several persons were injured. In the sequel, many of the footmen were marched off to Newgate.

At this time, too, the great William Pitt—“Cornet Pitt,” and afterwards Earl of Chatham—made his first speech in the House of Commons, in seconding the Address of Congratulation to the King on the marriage of his son, which address was moved by Lyttleton. So laudatory was Pitt of the virtues of the son that he mortally offended the father, who never forgave him, and as an instalment of future spite deprived him of his commissions of Cornet.

But little George the King had other fish to fry; he was due at Hanover on the 29th May, and whether Sir Robert Walpole approved or not he intended to go, and keep his tryst with Madame Walmoden and the other members of her select circle. From the King’s point of view it was high time he went to look after his interests in this direction, as there was a certain Captain von der Schulemburg about in connexion with whom a rope ladder was discovered dangling from Madame Walmoden’s bedroom window during the King’s[Pg 152] visit. But George had made up his mind to go, and go he would, and did.

Sir Robert Walpole, however, by way of asserting his authority in some shape or form, got him to take his brother Horace with him as Minister in Attendance.

But before departing the King appointed the Queen as his Regent, as usual ignoring his eldest son; at the same time he sent a message to Frederick intimating that wherever the Queen was, there would be provided apartments for him and the Princess. The Prince of Wales very naturally resented this order, which practically constituted him and his wife prisoners in whichever of the Royal palaces the Queen happened to be living. The fact of the Queen being appointed Regent was also a subject of bitter discord between the mother and son, creating a gap which widened day by day.

It has been already stated that there was at Hanover a certain Captain von der Schulemberg, whose name became very much coupled with that of the King’s mistress, Madame Walmoden, and it came about in this wise.

Madame Walmoden inhabited certain grand apartments in the old Leine Schloss in the town of Hanover—in which palace it will be remembered that Prince Frederick was born.

The King lived at Herrenhausen Schloss two miles away, and thither the Walmoden was accustomed to drive every morning and spend the day with the King. The King, too, would sometimes return with her to the Leine Palace.

Another important fact must also be mentioned and that is that Madame Walmoden had presented the King with a fine boy, which she, of course, declared to be his. The King was fifty-three, fatuous and ready to believe anything she told him; the birth of this child attached him more to the Walmoden than ever, a consummation she had no doubt calculated upon. Now it came about that one night, when the King was away at Herrenhausen, a muddle-headed gardener with no knowledge of the courtly world and its pretty little ways,[Pg 154] stumbled over a ladder in the small hours placed immediately under Madame Walmoden’s window, which looked upon the gardens of the old Leine Schloss, those gardens through which it is said Sophie Dorothea, the mother of George the Second, stole disguised to meet her lover Königsmarck at his lodgings hard by.

The obtuse gardener, instead of leaving the ladder where it was and going his way, officiously thrust his nose into other people’s business, and having carefully examined the ladder—some say it was a rope ladder and fixed to the Walmoden’s window-sill—proceeded to search the gardens, believing as subsequently stated that a robber was planning the removal of the mistress’s jewels. As might have been expected by one less dense he presently discovered a man hiding in some bushes near. This man he seized, and at the same time alarmed the palace guard. This man being placed in the guard room and examined proved as it is stated in one account, “to everyone’s astonishment,” to be a certain officer in the Austrian service named Schulemberg; Captain von der Schulemberg, and certainly not a robber in the ordinary sense of the word. In addition, he was a relative of the Duchess of Kendal—old Melusine von der Schulemberg—the mistress of George the First. How these Hanoverian courtesans and their belongings got mixed up!

Von Schulemberg protested vigorously against[Pg 155] his treatment, which he, perhaps, rightly considered a violation of his dignity as a diplomatic envoy from the Court of Vienna, but he did not explain how his diplomatic mission had brought him to the foot of the rope ladder in the Leine Schloss gardens, which ladder led into the bedroom of Madame Walmoden. He, however, made so great a noise in the guard room, striking terror into the heart of the captain of the guard by referring to the vengeance his master, the Austrian Emperor, would exact for this insult to his envoy, that the officer let him go, and he departed into the night, no doubt cursing the gardener.

The story, as may be imagined, was very soon in everybody’s mouth, and Madame Walmoden was thoroughly alarmed; she knew there were plenty to carry the story to the King. But she took her courage in both hands, and did what every woman has done in similar circumstances and will no doubt continue to do as long as women exist on this earth, beloved by natures weaker than their own. She ordered her coach soon after daylight, and by six o’clock was on the road to Herrenhausen to be the first to tell her version of the story to her elderly royal lover.

At Herrenhausen she passed the royal guards who knew her, and went straight to the King’s bedroom. Here she cast herself on her knees by the bed in which little George lay half awakened rubbing his eyes.

[Pg 156]

She besought him to protect her from insult or allow her to retire from his Court; in a torrent of tears she declared that she loved him, not as a king, but as a man and for himself alone. He must have looked far from loveable at the moment, unshaven and in his nightcap, but these things are never remembered when a pretty and designing woman is making love to a man the wrong side of fifty. George the King rubbed his eyes, and asked for an explanation.

She told him amid her sobs that she was the subject of a dastardly plot, that a certain Madame d’Elitz had caused a ladder to be placed beneath her window, with a view to ruining her with the King.

Now Madame d’Elitz was herself a von der Schulemburg, and was credited by scandal with having been the mistress successively of George the First, George the Second, and Prince Frederick before he came over to England. These achievements, however, are doubted by historians as far as the Prince was concerned, but it is pretty certain she had been the mistress of the two first Georges, father and son. This bringing in of Madame d’Elitz was a stroke of genius, as it opened the door for the Walmoden to tell the King of the arrest of Captain von Schulemberg in the Leine Schloss gardens. It need hardly be said that her story was accepted by King George, who ordered the captain of the Leine Palace Guard to be placed in[Pg 157] arrest, and search to be made for von der Schulemberg, that he might be again made prisoner.

THE PALACE OF HERRENHAUSEN, HANOVER.

But here Horace Walpole, the English minister in attendance, secretly interposed; he sent word privately to Schulemberg to be off across the frontier as quickly as he could, and he took care that no obstacles should be put in the way of his doing so, for the last thing, he knew very well, that his brother, Sir Robert, wanted, was trouble with the Austrian Emperor.

And so Madame Walmoden triumphed; but the story spread, even to England, and in Hanover the infantine features of Madame Walmoden’s fine boy were scanned more eagerly than ever for traces of his paternity.

And now, for Queen Caroline in England, a very painful period had commenced. In the first place the Prince of Wales and his wife had taken very unkindly to the restrictions put upon them most unreasonably like two children by the absent King, and not even the influence of Lady Archibald Hamilton could prevent them from showing it.

The commands concerning moving about with the Queen from palace to palace were not complied with, and a very ingeniously arranged succession of illnesses of the Princess utterly defeated the King’s intention. So keenly had the Prince felt the humiliations put upon him by his father in appointing the Queen as Regent instead of himself, that he did not attend the opening of the Commission—which[Pg 158] was invariably held when news arrived of the King’s landing on the Continent—but came designedly when the proceedings were over. In this and in many other ways the breach between the Prince and his mother widened, though it must be said that at this time the Queen showed both to him and his wife the utmost patience under very trying circumstances. This was no doubt owing to Walpole, who was, as Prime Minister, very naturally her constant attendant at this time; the patience and good sense of Walpole no doubt kept peace in the Royal Family for a much longer period than it would have been maintained under the counsels of a less sagacious minister, and it is much to be wondered at, that Sir Robert did not use his influence to persuade the King to give the Prince of Wales the full allowance of £100,000 a year to which he was so clearly entitled by the vote of Parliament.

But there was another matter, which was the subject of much discussion at Court and of much pain to the Queen, and this was the hopeless infatuation of the King for Madame Walmoden. It was well known to all the Court that the King had hastened back to Hanover after an interval of only eight months, instead of three years, and that, moreover, he showed no signs of coming back again. But now the Queen was not taking his infidelity with the same calmness which she had shown in former cases; there were signs that her[Pg 159] patience was giving out, and that she was losing heart. Her letters were abridged, from the usual four dozen pages to seven or eight; it was this circumstance particularly which alarmed Walpole and others, till at last the rough, uncouth Sir Robert spoke out to her on the subject in perhaps the plainest language in which a subject has ever addressed a King’s wife. He naturally feared with the rest of the Court that her power over the King might die out altogether, especially if she showed any resentment to the infamous conduct of her husband which strangely enough she had never done before. Walpole did not spare her feelings; he reminded her of her age and the beauty of her rival, the Walmoden; he did not scruple to say that the Queen’s attractions had faded, and that she could never expect to regain the ascendency over the King which she had for so long enjoyed. He urged her to resume her long letters to her husband, and to write them in a spirit of humility and submission. Finally, he made the most extraordinary request that has ever been made to a wronged and angry wife; he advised her to write and invite the King to bring back his new mistress to England with him.

No wonder the tears sprang to the Queen’s eyes; but it is said she at once suppressed them, and attracted by the bait of fresh power over her husband temptingly held out by the wily Sir Robert—who wished to get this new mistress of the King[Pg 160] into his own power, and under his own eye—the Queen consented to follow his advice.

Then came a time of doubt and apprehension; it was questioned whether the woman in the Queen’s nature would not get the ascendency, and that she would revolt from this vile thing. But she did nothing of the sort; in a few days Walpole had the satisfaction of knowing that the very letter he desired had been sent off to the King. Still Walpole had some distrust of the Queen; she was too calm and too compliant to satisfy him, and he confided to a friend that he could stand the Queen’s anger and reproof, but he was afraid of her when she “daubed” (i.e., flattered).

But the Queen spoke quite calmly of her rival, and actually allotted her rooms in the palace. Moreover, to Walpole’s amazement, she proposed to take her into her own service, no doubt with a view to keeping an eye upon her, as she had done in the case of the King’s former mistress, Lady Suffolk.

But this arrangement Walpole opposed, and she in reply quoted the case of Lady Suffolk; to this Sir Robert rejoined that “there was a difference between the King making a mistress of the Queen’s servant, and making a Queen’s servant of his mistress!”

“The people,” he continued, “might reasonably look upon the first as a very natural condition of things, whilst popular feelings of morality might be outraged by the second.”

[Pg 161]

The King’s reply to his wife’s letter was just what the old minister had calculated upon; it was full of admiration at his wife’s amiability, and he forthwith proceeded to give her by way of reward glowing descriptions of her rival’s attractions, both of the mind and body. Principally the latter, and he finished up with a fervent tribute to his wife’s virtue, which he longed to imitate, but he excused himself pitifully: “You know my passions, my dear Caroline”—he prided himself on his passions—“you know my weaknesses,” and he finished up with a semi-blasphemous appeal to God that Caroline might cure him of them. But as the Queen had failed to do this as a beautiful young woman, it was rather hopeless to look for a cure that way now that she was fat, getting wrinkled, and nearly fifty-four.

The King about this time also took an opportunity of consulting the Queen on the subject of that very convincing rope ladder which had been discovered dangling from Madame Walmoden’s bedroom window with Captain von der Schulemberg hiding in very close proximity to its earthly end, by which it is supposed that he intended to mount to a very carnal Elysium. Little George was anxious to hear what his wife thought of the matter, which looks very much as if he had not entirely swallowed that very ingenious story sobbed out by the implicated fair one that early morning at Herrenhausen. But much as he valued her opinion, still[Pg 162] he advised her to take further advice on the point, as if it were a subject of State importance. He asked her to consult Walpole—who must have been intensely amused, and probably had a good laugh over it with the Queen. Walpole “le gros homme” as he called him, “who,” continued the simple little King, “has more experience in these sort of matters, my dear Caroline, than yourself, and who, in the present affair, must necessarily be less prejudiced than I am.” How they must have roared!

But while the King was wasting his time in Hanover, the Prince and Princess of Wales were growing in popular favour at home, and it must be said that the young couple did their best to further this feeling of the people.

There was slowly and surely growing among the public a feeling of disgust at the King, and it was said by some that it would be better if he remained away in Hanover with his German mistress altogether. Another matter which brought George the Second into disrepute was that it was said he kept several important commissions in the Army vacant, and pocketed the pay attached to them.[37] This was the kind of thing very popular with his late father’s mistresses, Schulemburg and others.

The Queen was greatly commiserated, and indeed was to be pitied under the circumstances, although she had to a great extent brought the trouble[Pg 163] on herself by her abominable pandering to her husband’s vices.

Insulting pasquinades now began to make their appearance directed against the King. A lame, blind and aged horse with a saddle and a pillion behind it was sent to wander loose through the streets—in which, of course, there were no police—with a placard tied to its head asking that no one should stop him as he was “the King’s Hanoverian equipage going to fetch His Majesty and his w—— to England.”

But the most insulting of these public notices was that affixed to St. James’s Palace itself and which read as follows:

“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 Churchwardens of St. James’s Parish so as 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.”

Strangely enough the little King was not exasperated with these public satires on his immorality and neglect of his wife. He liked to be considered a Don Juan and a bit of a rake; the only jokes which angered him were those in which he was referred to as a senile libertine, past the age for gallantry.

Meanwhile the friction between Frederick and his mother increased, and was much added to by[Pg 164] the conduct of the Princess in arriving late for church on several Sundays, and causing Her Majesty to cease her devotions, rise from her knees, and permit the Princess to squeeze by her—the Queen was very stout and the pew small—to her seat.

This conduct was attributed by those about the Queen to the Prince of Wales, who had designed a studied insult by it, to make his mother look ridiculous, but it is much more likely to have been the thoughtless act of a young girl. However, after two or three Sundays of it, the Queen made arrangements for the Princess to come in at another door. Lord Hervey appears to have been very active in fomenting the disagreement between Queen Caroline and the Prince and Princess of Wales at this time, particularly during a squabble which occurred concerning the removal of Frederick and his wife from Kensington to St. James’s, when they found the dulness of the former place intolerable. The Queen was greatly upset by this, as it is pretty certain that she had received definite orders from her husband not to let the Prince of Wales live in any other palace but that which she inhabited, for the very good reason that he did not want him to set up a separate Court, which would have been in opposition to his own, and in addition, an exceedingly popular one.

The Prince’s letter in reply—written in French—seems to have been a very dutiful one, but was[Pg 165] thought to have been written for him by Lord Chesterfield. Lord Hervey unintentionally paid a great compliment to Lord Chesterfield’s accomplishments by saying that the letter might have been written by “Young Pitt,” but was certainly not sufficiently elegant for Lord Chesterfield. It was about this time that the Prince began to sink deeper and deeper into debt, a consequence no doubt of his marriage, and very foolishly began to raise money at enormous interest to be repaid on the death of his father.

This, of course, very soon reached the ears of the Queen, and Lord Hervey appears to have made himself particularly active about the matter. During a discussion which ensued between them the Queen seems to have remarked that she considered the Prince of Wales far too unambitious to wish for the death of his father, to which Hervey replied that if that were so, certainly the feeling did not extend to the Prince’s creditors, who would be immensely benefited by the King’s death. He went so far as to point out that the Sovereign’s life was in jeopardy as a result of the post obits of the Prince of Wales, and suggested that a Bill should be brought into Parliament making it a capital offence for any man to lend money for a premium at the King’s death, and so worked upon the Queen’s feelings that she replied:

“To be sure it ought to be so, and pray talk a little with Sir Robert Walpole about it.”

[Pg 166]

But Walpole very wisely ignored the suggestion, being, no doubt well aware of the source from which it came; he was far too sagacious to bring the private disputes of the Royal Family before the public.

The Queen then approached the Princess of Wales with a view to engaging her influence to prevent the Prince borrowing money, but the Princess showed her wisdom by declining to take sides against her husband, for which dutiful decision she gained but small thanks from her mother-in-law. But now the King at last decided to tear himself away from Hanover, and at the same time to accept the Queen’s very kindly offer that he should bring his lady love, Madame de Walmoden, to England with him. What an offer from a wife! What a married state for any unfortunate woman to have lived in! King George was in deadly earnest about bringing over his paramour with him, and ordered the apartments lately occupied by Lady Suffolk to be prepared for her, and this it appears, under the Queen’s directions, was done.

This letter of the King was shown to Walpole by Caroline:

“Well now, Sir Robert,” she said, “I hope you are satisfied. You see this minion is coming to England.”

Walpole, however, had evidently received private information from his brother who was Minister in Attendance on the King in Hanover; he shook[Pg 167] his head in answer to the Queen’s remark, and said he did not believe that the Walmoden would come, and that, in his opinion, she was afraid of the Queen.

He was quite right; at the last moment, Madame de Walmoden changed her mind—if she really had had any intention of coming—and decided to remain in Hanover; she had no fancy for crossing swords with Caroline. So King George set off in a huff by himself for Helvetsluis en route for home.

The Prince of Wales, meanwhile, had been steadily gaining in popular favour, while it was known that the King had been squandering large sums of money—English money for the most part—in Hanover on German women, a fact which greatly disgusted his English subjects. Frederick very judiciously gave £500 to the Lord Mayor for the purpose of releasing poor freemen of the city from debtors’ prisons. This was particularly exasperating to the Queen, Hervey and other members of the Court party, who knew that this £500 was probably borrowed at usurious interest on a post obit of the King. Frederick and his wife, however, went placidly on their way, leaving their suite at Kensington, where the Queen was, and themselves coming into town and holding a little Court of their own, which was the very thing the little King had tried to prevent.

It may have been reports of these matters, and the growing discontent at his absence which caused the King to hasten to Helvetsluis—he left Hanover[Pg 168] on December 7th after a ball and farewell supper at Herrenhausen, without even stopping at the Hague to see his daughter Anne, Princess of Orange, who was at that time at death’s door after the death of a still-born daughter, and had sent him an urgent message to come to her. But George was not a feeling parent, and, above all, disliked anything to do with children.

And now occurred an event which caused in England both consternation and satisfaction; consternation to the Queen and the Court party—Hervey and his like particularly felt it—and satisfaction to the bulk of the English people, who had had quite sufficient of George the Second and his doings and who ardently desired the accession to the throne of their favourite the Prince of Wales.

The wind being fair, and the King being reported arrived at Helvetsluis and about to embark, a terrific hurricane arose in the channel in which it was considered impossible that the Royal Yacht could have lived. Wagers were freely laid in London against the King ever setting foot in his kingdom of England again. The possibilities of the future began to be very freely discussed, even in the Royal Family, and the Queen’s confidant showed decided signs of trimming. The Queen was greatly alarmed, and even imagined that she saw in Frederick signs of satisfaction; she now roundly abused her son to Hervey, saying: “Mon Dieu! Popularity always makes me feel sick, but Fritz’s popularity makes me vomit.”

[Pg 169]

The Prince, however, appears to have conducted himself very moderately during this period, and to have had every consideration for his mother. Not one infilial remark is recorded of him at this crisis, and if he had made one it is pretty certain to have been noted by his enemy Hervey in his letters, which did not omit much, true or false, which was to the Prince’s discredit.

The Princesses, his sisters, who had been his enemies also, were appalled at the prospect of his becoming King, and one of them declared that it was her intention to depart “au grand galop.” The state of uncertainty as to the King’s safety continued for over a week, during which the fears of the Queen and her party were increased by the news that the sound of guns booming far away in the channel as if fired by ships in distress had been heard from Harwich.

Things began to look very black indeed, and it was thought necessary for the Prince to prepare his mother for the worst, and Lord Hervey also hinted that he thought the King’s case was hopeless.

But the citizens of London who idolized the Prince and Princess of Wales were secretly delighted, and would not have been averse to hearing that the Walmoden was on Board the Royal Yacht with the King. But at the gloomiest moment, a courier who had risked his life in the awful tempest with the crew of the vessel in which he sailed especially to carry a letter to the Queen[Pg 170] was “miraculously,” as it was excitedly stated, flung ashore at Yarmouth, and came post haste to London with the news that the King had not embarked at all, but was waiting for fine weather at Helvetsluis. This courageous messenger and the still more courageous crew of the vessel had been three days at sea with the wind in their teeth and their opportune landing was spoken of by mariners in the terms mentioned above.

The Queen showed great joy at hearing everybody cry “The King is safe! the King is safe!” when the courier in his muddy boots arrived, but it was a terrible shock to the partisans of the Prince, and his friends in the City could with difficulty muster up the necessary congratulations.

The Queen who had shown an outward calm during the crisis now expressed herself joyously in characteristic terms:—

“J’ai toujours dit que le Roi n’était pas embarque;” she exclaimed. “On a beau voulu m’effraier cet après-diner avec leur letters, et leur sots, gens de Harwich; j’ai continue à lire mon Rollin, et me moquois de tout cela.”

This was a hit at Frederick who had brought her the news from Harwich in a letter. Rollin was one of her favourite books. But strange to say the matter by no means ended here. Fine weather came with an easterly wind which was just what the King wanted, and matters looked perfectly settled for his return, but it was not so. Scarcely[Pg 171] had this fine spell lasted long enough to allow the King time to embark when the wind veered to the north-west and blew again an awful hurricane, worse if possible than the former one which had caused such grave anxiety at the Court. This was on the 20th of December, 1736, and no doubt whatever was now held that the King had embarked as indeed he had. From the 20th to the 24th there was no news of him at all, but on the latter date tidings arrived which were far from reassuring. A shattered mastless sloop was thrown up on the coast, having on board a party of clerks from the Secretary’s office of the King, and these stated that they had sailed with His Majesty from Helvetsluis on the previous Monday, and that they had remained with the rest of the fleet until the storm arose when the Admiral, Sir Charles Wager, had made the signal for each ship to look after itself. When the passengers of the sloop last saw the Royal Yacht, she was “tacking about” with a view apparently to make an endeavour to return to Helvetsluis. So grave was this news considered, that Sir Robert Walpole prevented the Queen from interviewing these shipwrecked clerks. Once more were the hopes and exultations of the Court Party ruthlessly shattered; once more did the partisans of the Prince with his stout friends in the city rub their hands in dark corners. This time the Queen was thoroughly alarmed, and showed it in her countenance. The next day, Christmas Day, was[Pg 172] perhaps the gloomiest in men’s knowledge at that time. On this day, probably in the early morning, four ships of the King’s convoy were thrown up in a mastless condition on the coast, and the only account of the King which they could give, was that about six o’clock on the Monday night, the 20th December, a gun was fired by Sir Charles Wager’s order as a signal for the fleet to separate; a kind of sauve qui peut. That the wind continued in its full violence for forty-eight hours after this. One of the letters containing this intelligence was brought by Lord Augustus Fitzroy, second son of the Duke of Grafton, who, though only twenty years of age, was Captain of a man-of-war, “The Eltham,” which had succeeded with great difficulty in getting into Margate that Christmas morning.

This further news was kept from the Queen altogether, and that evening a sad party sat down in the Palace of St. James’s to pretend to play cards, while every ear was strained to catch the least sound which might be the precursor of the news of the King’s death. In basset and cribbage was that Christmas night passed by the Queen, while Sir Robert Walpole, the Dukes of Grafton, Newcastle, Montagu, Devonshire and Richmond, with Lord Hervey, talked of everything they could think of, but the King’s danger, or walked moodily up and down in the shadows.

But the next morning, the 26th, Sir Robert Walpole came to the Queen at nine o’clock and told[Pg 173] her all. Then her fortitude gave way and she wept, but not for long. She dried her tears and expressed her intention of going to church—it was a Sunday. This resolve Sir Robert considered most injudicious as it would make the Queen an object of curiosity in public, which in her disturbed state was not desirable. It did not seem to strike this old heathen that she went there to pray, and even if it had, he would have been quite wrong, as the Queen’s own expressed reason was that she would not give up hope, and believe her husband drowned until it became a certainty. That her stopping away from Church would have been construed into an admission of the King’s death. However, all her doubts were ended during the service, as once more an express arrived from the King to tell her he was safe and sound, but had been terribly sea-sick. That after setting sail from Helvetsluis on the previous Monday morning at eight o’clock, he had with difficulty regained that port at three on the following afternoon.

The King blamed Sir Charles Wager for the whole business, and said the Admiral had hurried him on board against his will, whereas, in truth it was the King who was impatient, and who had said that unless the Admiral would sail, he would go over in a packet boat rather than endure Helvetsluis any longer.

“Be the weather what it may,” concluded the irascible little King, “I am not afraid.”

[Pg 174]

“I am,” laconically responded the Admiral.

George persisted.

“I want to see a storm,” continued the King, “and would rather be twelve hours in one than shut up twenty-four in Helvetsluis.”

“Twelve hours in a storm,” replied the rough and ready Admiral, “four hours would do your business for you.”

The Admiral refused to sail until the wind was fair, clinching the argument by remarking that though the King might make him go, “I,” concluded Sir Charles with satisfaction, “can make you come back again.”

And he did bring him back again, for which the King ought to have been eternally grateful to him, for it was only the splendid seamanship of the Admiral which saved him.

“Sir,” remarked Sir Charles, when they did get back, “you wished to see a storm, how did your Majesty like it?”

“So well,” answered the King, no doubt with a most rueful countenance, for he had been fearfully sick, “that I never wish to see another!”

The Admiral remarked in a letter to a friend at the time: “His Majesty was at present as tame as any about him.”

“An epithet,” comments Lord Hervey who had read the letter, “that his Majesty, had he known it, would, I fancy, have liked, next to the storm, the least of anything that happened to him.”

[Pg 175]

But there were many of these letters came to the Court by the same ship which brought the King’s, and the above passage of words between George and the Admiral was well known in the King’s suite at Helvetsluis, therefore when the Queen walked about with the King’s letter in her hand praising her husband’s patience, and condemning Admiral Wager as the cause of all their apprehension, it was somewhat difficult for the couriers to keep their countenances when they realized the King’s wilful mendacity to his wife.

All the hopes of the Prince’s party were now crushed, but it is not recorded by Lord Hervey that Frederick gave vent to any other remark but that of thankfulness for his father’s return.

His followers, and especially those in the city, while expressing their thankfulness, qualified it; the common expression in referring to the King’s escape was—“It’s the mercy of God, but a thousand pities!”

It is to be feared that had they heard that the Royal Yacht with the King and Madame Walmoden on board, had sunk in mid-Channel, the expression of their thanks might have been the same without the concluding sentence.

The catch query at the time of this voyage was:

“How’s the wind for the King?”

And the popular answer was:—“Like the nation, against him.”

The danger over, the Queen confided her feelings[Pg 176] to her almost inseparable companion the Vice-Chamberlain, Lord Hervey; after telling him of her affection for him—it was a motherly affection, she was fifty-three,—and the pleasure his society gave her she added:

“You and yours should have gone with me to Somerset House[38] and though I have neither so good an apartment there for you as you have here, nor an employment worth your taking, I should have lodged you as well as I could, and given you at least as much as you have now from the King.”

The Queen, however, wrote a very dutiful and tender letter to the King, full of art and flattery, but it seems to have touched George’s heart deeply; perhaps in those twelve hours of tossing in the storms of the Channel, the little man had thought seriously of the foolishness of leaving so good a wife, that in the search after happiness, he was leaving the substance in Caroline—and she was certainly substantial—for the elusive shadow in the Walmoden; anyhow he wrote his Queen a most remarkable letter of thirty pages, more the effusion of an eager lover than an old man for his wife.

“In spite of all the danger I have incurred in this tempest, my dear Caroline,” he wrote, “and notwithstanding all I have suffered, having been ill to an excess which I thought the human body could not bear, I assure you that I would expose myself to it again and again to have the pleasure of hearing[Pg 177] the testimonies of your affection, with which my position inspired you. This affection which you testify for me, this friendship, this fidelity, the inexhaustible goodness which you show for me, and the indulgence which you have for all my weaknesses, are so many obligations, which I can never sufficiently recompense, can never sufficiently merit, but which I also can never forget.”[39]

Certainly the storm had shaken the little man very much and left him in a condition which would have proved weak in the crisis which arose after his return, had he not been supported on the one hand by Walpole and on the other by his ever scheming Queen.

It has been stated that the Prince of Wales’s popularity had been steadily growing ever since his marriage. It was much increased about this time, just before the King’s return, by his determined action at a fire which occurred near the Temple, the latter cluster of old buildings being said to have been saved by his timely intervention, which limited the loss to five or six houses.

He appears to have worked among the crowd, and to have excited its admiration to a remarkable degree. Some unwise persons raised a cry of “Crown him! Crown him!!” and this being duly reported to his mother, the Queen, caused her the gravest anxiety, and the most unreasonable anger.

Hervey, as usual, poured oil, not upon the troubled waters, but upon the fire of her wrath; he suggested that owing to the King being so much hated and the Prince so popular, the latter believed that his favour with the people helped to keep his father on the throne.

[Pg 179]

To this the Queen replied bitterly that owing to the reports of the Prince’s popularity—brought to her principally by Lord Hervey, who was her news-carrier-in-chief—that popularity, instead of keeping the King upon the throne, was likely to depose him. But a far greater cause of dissension between the Prince of Wales and his parents was now looming very near. It cannot be doubted that when Lord Bolingbroke, to use his own words, “left the stage,” he gave to the Prince detailed instructions for a move to be made in Parliament for an increase of his income; that increase which he, together with the bulk of the nation, considered he was fully entitled to under the settlement of the Civil List on his father ascending the throne of England. The subtle talent of the great diplomatist had mapped all this out long before he left these shores, possibly as a Parthian shaft at his enemies whom he left behind triumphant. Be this as it may, a glance at the Prince’s position will, however, fully justify the course he took.

Before his marriage, it appears that he received from his father £24,000 a year, not in any fixed or settled income, but as the King chose to give it to him. It must be remembered that the cost of living for royal personages was then much more than it is at present, the expenses for dress and the personnel of the Household were far in excess of anything we know of in our day. In those times as much as five hundred pounds were given for one court suit, and[Pg 180] the ladies’ dresses were in proportion as regards cost.

On the Prince’s marriage, no jointure was settled on his wife, who brought him a paltry dowry of five thousand pounds, but the King increased his allowance to £50,000 a year.

This on the face of it appeared a wonderful addition, but it must be remembered that the Prince was very much in debt, and that the expenses of the marriage itself were enormous; they could not possibly have been otherwise in the case of a Prince of Wales.

As regards the increase in his household, the expenses were at once doubled, as the Princess had practically a new household of her own, with ladies-in-waiting, gentlemen-in-waiting, women of the bedchamber, gentlemen ushers, and a host of others required by the Court etiquette of the time. What would have been a large income for a nobleman was totally inadequate for the Prince of Wales, and as a result he commenced at once to fall deeper and deeper into debt. It is not surprising with these facts facing him, and with the knowledge that his father—who most of this time was engaged in squandering enormous sums of good English gold on German women—received from George the First, the full sum of £100,000 per annum allotted by Parliament as the income of the Prince of Wales. These thoughts, together with the prospect of greatly increased expenses in the future must have been very galling—for the probability of a child[Pg 181] being born to them must have been known to the Prince and Princess at this time, though not disclosed until later. It is not to be wondered at then that the Prince thought over Bolingbroke’s counsels, and eventually decided to take a strong step to obtain that increase in his income to which he was evidently fully entitled by Act of Parliament, and which he would have received in the ordinary way but for the fact of the hatred and meanness of his parents towards him. For the hatred at least a good reason will be shown in its proper place.

The Prince then having consulted with his advisers—and the principal of these were the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Carteret and Mr. Pulteney—decided to appeal to Parliament to petition the King to grant him that same income as Prince of Wales, which he himself received from George the First.

The first sign of the King’s return home was a letter received on the early morning of Saturday, January 14th, by express from his Majesty stating that after a delay of five weeks at Helvetsluis, he had at last embarked, and after encountering a contrary wind all the way, they had tacked until at last they made Lowestoft, at which port the King had landed about noon on the previous day.

The news seems to have been held back in the ante-room while the Queen slept, and here Sir Robert Walpole and the Prince of Wales appear to[Pg 182] have met and had a two hours’ chat, whilst they waited for the Queen to wake.

According to Hervey, most of the talking appears to have been carried on by Sir Robert, who seems to have grasped the opportunity to lecture the Prince in that fatherly manner adopted by old men towards young ones when their pockets are not affected. As reported by Hervey, Walpole’s discourse was a string of sleepy platitudes—he had been roused out of his bed—peculiarly irritating to the Prince under the circumstances, which he seems to have listened to with exemplary patience, but the vital subject of the increase in his income does not appear to have been touched upon at all. The next day the King arrived at St. James’s Palace, and the Queen and the whole of the Royal Family went down into the Colonnade to receive him.

Contrary to all expectation he was in an excellent humour, but suffering from a terrible cold.

He kissed everybody, including the Prince of Wales, and was at once marched off to bed by his solicitous spouse, to be doctored for his cold, which by this time, from long neglect, required careful nursing. Here in his bedroom he was kept a close prisoner by the Queen, and very few people were allowed to see him; those that did, did not come away with any great opinion either of his health or his temper, which had not improved by confinement. Any allusion to his royal health irritated him beyond measure. Lord Dunmore, one of his Lords[Pg 183] of the Chamber, offended in this respect, and was ordered out. To Lord Pembroke, whom he called to take his place, he spoke of the erring nobleman as a troublesome inquisitive “puppy,” a designation very much in the royal favour at that time; he added that he and others were always plagueing him about his health like a parcel of old nurses.

Sir Robert Walpole and others got very anxious about the King at this time, mainly on account of the seclusion in which he was kept by the Queen. He was certainly unwell, suffering undoubtedly from the reaction after the excitement of his escape from shipwreck, and perhaps his excesses in Hanover, for he was getting old; but his indisposition was but a slight one, and when he came out from his apartments, which he did just at the time it suited the Queen to let him, it was found that his recovery was very rapid indeed.

It is more than probable that the Queen had a strong reason for keeping up at this time the idea of his ill-health, and a reason may be easily found for it, in the following incident.

There can be no doubt whatever, although, according to Hervey, she strenuously denied it, that during the summer of 1736, the Prince of Wales soon after his marriage appealed to his mother on the subject of his financial position, and that at the same time he informed her of his intention to seek the aid of Parliament to obtain his full allowance of £100,000 a year as Prince of Wales, and a jointure[Pg 184] for the Princess. The circumstance is recorded both by Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, in his papers, and by Doddington in his diary.

The Queen affected to receive the announcement airily, and to laugh it off, according to the Prince’s description of the interview, but nevertheless she may have taken the matter to heart more seriously than she pretended, and knowing that Parliament was to meet almost immediately after the King’s return; it is quite possible that she made the most of the King’s indisposition to keep the Prince and his Party from bringing the matter of the income forward. If she did, she made a miscalculation, for many votes probably went the Prince’s side on account of this supposed uncertainty of the King’s life, and the probable accession of the Prince to the throne.

It was, however, only a few days before the motion was made in the House of Commons that definite information reached the Court, through Lord Hervey, as usual, that the Prince intended to lay the dispute between himself and his father concerning his income before Parliament.

Lord Hervey begged the Queen not to tell the King that night as it might disturb his rest and set him fuming, but to break it gently to him in the morning; this she did, when the King took the news much more calmly than was expected, and in fact showed much less concern than the Queen all through.

[Pg 185]

Then began a state of excitement which divided the country into two great parties, those for the King, and those for the Prince, which latter was by far the larger party.

But as in the present day, but still a great deal more so then, the House of Commons was divided by many interests, principally the interests of the individuals who sat there.

For a King to be sending about in the House, bribing members with actual hard cash to vote for him, seems a very shocking thing in our eyes, but it was not uncommon then. In addition there was a strong party among the Tories—at whose head was Sir William Wyndham—who regarded the Prince’s application to Parliament as a motion injurious to the constitution, and who, while sympathizing with him and determined not to vote against him, yet hesitated to commit themselves by voting for him. But the Prince and his Party lost no opportunity to secure votes; Mr. Pulteney, the leader of the Opposition was with them hand and glove, and it certainly appeared, if the Tory party could be counted upon, that the Prince would gain the victory, which would have been a crushing blow to the Court and Walpole. So serious did matters begin to look that Sir Robert counselled a compromise, and with great difficulty persuaded the King—and Queen—to send a message to the Prince offering to settle Fifty Thousand a year upon him certain, instead of the present voluntary allowance[Pg 186] and to give the Princess a jointure—amount not stated. The following is the text of this document with which the Lord Chancellor (Lord Hardwicke, who had only received the Great Seal that morning, and who did not relish this message to the Prince as the first act of his Chancellorship), Lord President, Lord Steward, Lord Chamberlain, Dukes of Richmond, Argyll[40] and Newcastle, Earls of Pembroke and Scarborough and Lord Harrington, were sent to the Prince of Wales:

“His Majesty has commanded us to acquaint your Royal Highness, in his name, that upon your Royal Highness’s marriage, he immediately took into his Royal consideration the settling a proper jointure upon the Princess of Wales; but his sudden going abroad and his indisposition since his return had hitherto retarded the execution of these his gracious intentions; from which short delay His Majesty did not apprehend any serious inconvenience could arise[41]; especially since no application had in any manner been made to him upon this subject by your Royal Highness; and that His Majesty hath now given orders for settling a jointure upon the Princess of Wales, as far as he is enabled by law, suitable to her rank and dignity; which he will in proper time lay before his Parliament in order to be made certain and effectual for the benefit[Pg 187] of Her Royal Highness. The King has further commanded us to acquaint your Royal Highness that though your Royal Highness has not thought fit, by any application to His Majesty, to desire that your allowance of fifty thousand pounds per annum, which is now paid you by monthly payments, at the choice of your Royal Highness, preferably to quarterly payments, might by His Majesty’s further grace and favour be rendered less precarious. His Majesty, to prevent the bad consequences which he apprehends may follow from the undutiful measures, which His Majesty is informed your Royal Highness has been advised to pursue, will grant to your Royal Highness for His Majesty’s life, the said fifty thousand pounds per annum, to be issuing out of His Majesty’s Civil List Revenues, over and above your Royal Highness’s revenues arising from the Duchy of Cornwall, which His Majesty considers a very competent allowance, considering his numerous issue and the great expenses which do and must necessarily attend an honourable provision for his whole family.”

Such was the message which the Lord Chancellor, by command of King George, read over to his son, in the presence of the nine other noblemen who accompanied him.

According to the circumstantial account of the interview given by Lord Hervey, the Prince stepped up to Lord Hardwicke, who had kissed hands and been congratulated by him on his appointment as[Pg 188] Chancellor, and made the following communication in a “sort of whisper”:

“That he wondered it should be said in the message that he had made no sort of communication to the King on this business, when the Queen knew he had often applied to him through her, and that he had been forbidden by the King ever since the audience he asked of his Majesty two years ago at Kensington, relating to his marriage, ever to apply to him again any way but by the Queen.”

Upon this communication being repeated to the Queen, she flew into a violent rage, and called the Prince a liar!

To this she added, according to Lord Hervey’s account—which looks very much like his own cooking—a great deal of special pleading to endeavour to show that there were no witnesses to prove the Prince’s assertion. But the plain answer to this is that it was hardly the sort of communication, especially passing between mother and son, at which the Prince would have been likely to have provided himself with witnesses. Against the Queen’s denial, we have the record of such a communication having taken place in the papers of Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, who gives circumstances and the nature of the interview, and we have also the same fact mentioned in Doddington’s Diary (Appendix). In the celebrated interview which took place between Doddington and the Prince there recorded, it is clearly shown that the Prince made this statement[Pg 189] concerning the communication to his mother, to Doddington on February 8th, 1737, long before the deputation of his father’s noblemen waited on him, and that to Doddington he stated that the interview with the Queen had taken place during the previous summer. This seems to be a very strong piece of evidence that the Prince was speaking the truth and his mother the reverse. In fact from this time forth her hatred of him seemed to grow stronger day by day.

But to return to the deputation to the Prince with the King’s terms of settlement.

If these had not been communicated privately to him before, Frederick must have known that the King’s offer really meant very little, and he seemed quite prepared with his reply. It was at once taken down as he spoke it, and was as follows:—“That His Royal Highness desired the Lords to lay him with all humility at his Majesty’s feet, and to assure his Majesty that he had, and ever should retain, the utmost duty for his Royal person; that His Royal Highness was very thankful for any instance of his Majesty’s goodness to him or the Princess, and particularly for his Majesty’s intention of settling a jointure upon Her Royal Highness; but that as to the message, the affair was now out of his hands, and therefore he could give no answer to it.” After which His Royal Highness used many dutiful expressions towards his Majesty; and then added: “Indeed, my Lords, it is in other[Pg 190] hands—I am sorry for it,” or to that effect. His Royal Highness concluded with earnestly desiring the Lords to represent his answer to His Majesty in the most respectful and dutiful manner.

There does not seem much in this answer to find fault with in the direction of respect at any rate, under the circumstances. The interview, however, ended there, and the Lords withdrew to convey the Prince’s answer back to his Royal Father in another part of the same Palace of St. James’s.

Both the King and Queen were enraged at the reply, and the former commenced at once to abuse rather roughly Sir Robert Walpole for persuading him to send it, but the minister sagely answered that he expected the good result of it not that day but on the morrow—the day of the Motion in the House of Commons. He was not wrong for he made the utmost use of it himself on that occasion in his speech.

So the agreement between father and son having fallen through, and everybody being worked up to the required pitch of excitement, the matter went forward, and on the next day, February 22nd, Pulteney made his motion before the House of Commons, for an address to be presented to the King, humbly asking for a settlement of £100,000 a year on the Prince of Wales and the same jointure on the Princess, as the Queen had when she was Princess of Wales, giving the King the assurance that the House would support him in this measure.

[Pg 191]

The strong points of Pulteney’s speech were, the claim the Prince had to the increase of income, which he said was founded on equity and good policy, and a legal right founded on law and precedent.

He contended that the revenue of the Civil List had been granted to George the First, and afterwards added to in the case of George the Second, on the express—or at any rate implied condition—that out of the revenue a sum of £100,000 a year should be set aside for the Prince of Wales. Pulteney is said to have spoken on the subject with great ability for an hour and a half, Lord Hervey adding in his account that in the speech there was “a great deal of matter and a great deal of knowledge, as well as art and wit, and yet I cannot but say I have often heard him speak infinitely better than he did that day. There was a languor in it, that one almost always perceives in the speeches that have been so long preparing and compiling.”

Sir Robert Walpole at once answered and, as might have been expected almost at the commencement of his speech, conveyed to the House the orders he had received from His Majesty to communicate to them the message he had sent his son on the previous day. This of course was the reason of his advising the King to send the message at all.

Sir Robert read aloud the whole of the King’s message to his son, this magnanimous offer of something he could not get out of giving, and after[Pg 192] it the Minister made all he could of the Prince’s answer:

“Indeed, my Lords, it is in other hands; I am sorry for it.”

Walpole’s speech was an able one, and for the most part went to show that the King could really not afford—out of an income of nearly a million—to give his son the extra £50,000 per annum, and if he could, he was not bound to give it by the Settlement made by Parliament of his Civil List.

But of all the speeches that were made that evening, by far the most telling was one by a supporter of the Prince, of which the following is a summary:

“By the regulation and Settlement of the Prince’s Household, as made sometime since by His Majesty himself[42] the yearly expense comes to £63,000 without allowing one shilling to His Royal Highness for acts of charity and generosity.

“By the message now before us, it is proposed to settle upon him only £50,000 a year, and yet from this sum we must deduct the Land Tax, which, at two shillings in the pound, amounts to £5,000 a year, we must likewise deduct the sixpenny duty to the Civil List Lottery, which amounts to £1,250 a year, and we must also deduct the fees paid at the Exchequer, which amount to about £750 a year more. All these deductions amount to £7,000 a[Pg 193] year, and reduce the £50,000, proposed to be settled upon him by the message to £43,000 a year.

National Portrait Gallery.Spooner & Co.
SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.

“Now, as His Royal Highness has no other estate but the Duchy of Cornwall, which cannot be reckoned, at the most, above £9,000, his whole yearly revenue can amount but to £52,000, and yet the yearly expense of his Household, according to His Majesty’s own regulations, is to amount to £63,000, without allowing His Royal Highness one shilling for the indulgence of that generous and charitable disposition with which he is known to be endued in a very eminent degree. Suppose then we allow him but £10,000 a year for the indulgence of that laudable disposition, his whole yearly expense, by His Majesty’s own acknowledgment, must then amount to £73,000, and his yearly income, according to this message, can amount to no more than £52,000. Is this, sir, showing any respect to his merit? Is this providing for his generosity? Is it not reducing him to real want, even with respect to his necessities, and consequently to an unavoidable dependence too upon his father’s Ministers and servants.

“I confess, sir, when I first heard this motion made, I was wavering a good deal in my opinion; but this message has confirmed me. I now see, that without the interposition of Parliament, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, the Heir Apparent to our Crown, must be reduced to the greatest straits, the most insufferable hardships.”

[Pg 194]

However, despite this statement, after a few more speeches from Lord Baltimore, Mr. Hedges—both of the Prince’s Household, and the Master of the Rolls, who was neither one way nor the other, the House divided at eleven o’clock, with the result that the motion in favour of the Prince was negatived by 234 votes to 204. A very close majority considering, and that was entirely owing to forty-five Tories rising and leaving the House in a body without voting.

But the King and Queen were delighted and heaped renewed abuse upon their son, the very mildest terms of which were “Puppy” and “scoundrel.” Congratulations poured in upon the Royal Parents from the Court Party, not only upon the rejection of the motion, but upon the small amount of money it had cost the King in bribes to the Members of the House of Commons—the matter seemed to be quite public property, for it was known that the King had only disbursed £900 in all; £500 to one man, and £400 to another, and this in any case would have had to have been given them at the end of the Session—for selling their constituents’ interests apparently—but they clamoured for it then. One would have liked to have seen these two clamouring members of the House.

But the Prince nothing daunted, consented to the wishes of his friends, and had the same motion made two days after (February 23rd)[Pg 195] in the House of Lords by Lord Carteret—who was a double-faced man, and apologized to the Queen before he made it, urging that he was forced to make it, which was not the truth. In the Upper House, however, the Prince was even less fortunate, and the motion was lost there by a majority of 103 against 40. But in all the excitement which prevailed at this time we may be certain of one thing, and that is that the victorious little King, with his strong German accent always spoke of the sum asked for by his son as “dat Puppy’s fifty sousand pound.”

The Prince, on his part, however the adverse vote of the House of Commons may have affected him, certainly did not desire the increase in his income to come out of the pockets of the British Taxpayer, for when a suggestion of that nature was made to him by Doddington at his interview already referred to on February 8th, that the Fifty Thousand Pounds should be voted by Parliament apart from the King’s income, Frederick made the following fine answer:

“I think the nation has done enough, if not too much, for the family already; I would rather beg my bread from door to door than be a further charge on them.”

The following is the comment of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough on this affair, written to Lord Stair at the time:

“1736. A great battle in the Houses of Parliament[Pg 196] concerning the revenue which the public pays to the King to support the Prince of Wales. The Court carried it by a majority of thirty, not without the expense of a great deal of money, and a most shameful proceeding to threaten and fetch sick men out of their beds to vote, for fear of losing their bread. But notwithstanding this, the minority for the Prince was two hundred and four; and a great many other members who would have been in it if they had been in town. A great many charming truths were said on that side; no justice or common sense was expressed on the other. The speakers on the majority were Sir Robert, Horace, Sir W. Yonge, Pelham, and somebody of the Admiralty that I have never heard of before. I am confident that though the Prince lost the question, the ministers were mightily frighted, and not without reason, for it is a heavy-weight two hundred and four, who were certainly on the right side of the question—and I am apt to think, that men who have been so base with estates and so mean as to act against the interests of their country, will grow very weary of voting to starve the next heir to the crown; since the generality of the majority has a view only to their own interest, and it is apprehended that the King is in so bad a state of health, that though he has got over his illness so far as sometimes to appear in public, yet we shall not be so happy as to have him live long; and everybody that sees him tells me that he looks at this time extremely ill. The[Pg 197] Prince in all this affair has shown a great deal of spirit and sense, and the intolerable treatment which he has had for so many years will no doubt continue him to be very firm, and to act right.

“House of Lords:—Proxies and all but forty for the Prince, and a majority of near three to one on the other side. Nobody surprised at that. I really think that they might pass an Act there, if they pleased, to take away Magna Charta. ’Tis said they don’t intend to turn out anybody in the King’s service who voted in this question for the Prince in either House. If they don’t, I think that shows some fear.

“I am never very sanguine, and for a long time could not imagine which way the liberties of England could be saved. But I really do think now there is a little glimmering of daylight.”

The King and Queen in the jubilation of their victory over the Prince of Wales had a mind to celebrate it by turning him and his young wife out of St. James’s Palace, but they were dissuaded from this benevolent intention by the judicious Sir Robert Walpole. Instead the Prince retained his position—though no doubt he would have much preferred a house of his own—but the state of affairs under these circumstances must have reached the limit of painfulness to the young Princess and her husband.

Each night “he led the Queen by the hand to dinner,” says Doran, “and she could have stabbed him on the way; for her wrath was more bitter than ever against him, for the reason that he had introduced her name, through his friends, in the Parliamentary debate.”

This referred presumably to his mention of the fact that he had told his mother of his embarrassments.

The Prince still attended his father’s levees occasionally, but the King never acknowledged his presence in any way whatever. Very soon, however, at the conclusion of the session of Parliament, the Court moved to Richmond, and there the little[Pg 199] King, now quite restored to health, distinguished this year 1737 by another gracious act; he took still another mistress. This time the object of his Royal selection was the children’s governess, Lady Deloraine.

The lady in question was Mary Howard—the King seemed to favour the name of Howard in his amours—of the Suffolk family, who had married Henry Scott, first Earl of Deloraine; but at this period he was dead and she had remarried William Wyndham, Esq., of Cassham.

She was an extremely pretty woman, but celebrated for the looseness of her talk in that age of looseness. She was not a woman of much brain power, and a fair estimate of her character may be formed from the following incident.

Sir Robert Walpole came across her one day in the Hall at Richmond while she was dangling her little boy of about twelve months in her arms, and made the following characteristic remark—“That’s a very pretty boy, Lady Deloraine, whose is it?” Her ladyship, nothing abashed, took the enquiry in the spirit in which it was offered, and replied before a group of people—“Mr. Wyndham’s, upon honour;” and then laughingly continued, “but I will not promise whose the next shall be!”

Continuing the discourse later in private with Sir Robert Walpole, she pretended that she had not yet yielded to the King’s importunities, and remarked that “she was not of an age to act like[Pg 200] a vain or a loving fool, but if she did consent she would be well paid.” She added naively to Sir Robert—who himself had a mistress, the well known Miss Skerrett, whom he adored and afterwards married—“nothing but interest should bribe her; for as to love she had enough of that, as well as a younger man at home; and that she thought old men and Kings ought always to be made to pay well!” Her empty head and want of morals led her to boast freely at this time; she confided in the well known Lady Sundon, with whom she had a very slight acquaintance, that the King had been very importunate these two years, and had often told her how unkind she was to refuse him, that it was mere crossness, for that he was sure her husband (Mr. Wyndham, who was sub-governor to the Duke of Cumberland) would not take it at all ill.

She made a similar communication to Lord Hervey, abruptly one day at Richmond, at this time before a room full of people: “Do you know the King has been in love with me these two years?” she queried.

At which Lord Hervey, rather taken aback, answered, to turn the conversation, “Who is not in love with you?”

He himself certainly was not, for this is how he sums her up in his Memoirs:

“Her Ladyship was one of the vainest as well as one of the simplest women that ever lived; but to this wretched head there was certainly joined one of[Pg 201] the prettiest faces that ever was formed, which, though she was now five and thirty,[43] had a bloom upon it too, that not one woman in ten thousand has at fifteen.” This was Horace Walpole’s opinion of Lady Deloraine: “A pretty idiot, with most of the vices of her own sex, and the additional one of ours—drinking.

“Yet this thing of convenience on the arrival of Lady Yarmouth, Madame Walmoden, put on all that dignity of passion, which even revolts real inclination.”

Lady Deloraine, however, went on her way rejoicing at this time, and as the summer wore on and the King showed no signs of returning to Hanover and Madame de Walmoden, openly boasted that she was keeping him in England.

She did not, however, appear to derive much substantial profit from her position, as the following incident, related by Sir Robert Walpole to the Queen, will show; neither had the King forgotten Madame de Walmoden.

George had ordered Walpole one day to buy one hundred lottery tickets, and to charge the amount, £1,000, to the Secret Service Fund, an atrocious robbery of the public!

Walpole, having carried out his commission without a murmur, confided the transaction to Lord Hervey, mentioning that it was for the King’s favourite.

[Pg 202]

Hervey, thinking he meant Lady Deloraine, commented: “I did not think he went so deep there,” referring to the amount.

“No,” Walpole corrected, “I mean the Hanover woman. You are right to imagine that he does not go so deep to his lying fool here. He will give her a couple of the tickets and think her generously used.”

By which it seems that the King’s German women had by far the better knack of getting money out of him than the English favourites.

But Walpole’s sagacity had, just previous to this, at the end of the Parliamentary Session, brought the question of the Prince of Wales’s income adroitly into something of a settlement. He had with the greatest difficulty induced the King and Queen to agree to a settlement of the £50,000 a year mentioned in the King’s celebrated message to the Prince, and the difficulty of the other £50,000 a year claimed by Frederick was got over by Parliament being persuaded to settle an extra large jointure on the Princess of Wales, £50,000 a year in fact. So the parsimonious little King got out of paying it after all.

We now approach some of the most extraordinary events of the Prince’s life, those circumstances surrounding the birth of his first child.

There had been a great deal of speculation, which was very natural under the circumstances, as to the probability of the Princess of Wales bearing a child, and the Queen and the Princess Caroline are said to have formed an opinion, for reasons unknown, that she never would. In all probability the wish in this case was father to the thought, for the coming of a lineal heir to the crown through the Prince of Wales, was an event not desired by the King or Queen, who it was well known desired the crown for the Duke of Cumberland, now a handsome boy of sixteen.

It was therefore no doubt owing to this reason that neither the Prince or Princess of Wales appeared to be in any hurry to publicly announce this event. As a matter of fact the first formal intimation of it was conveyed in the following letter from the Prince to his royal mother, sent by Lord North, his Lord of the Bedchamber then in waiting.

[Pg 204]

Lord Hervey relates in his Memoirs that on the occasion of the next visit of the Princess to the Court, she was subjected by the Queen to a series of questions, perhaps quite natural under the circumstances. To these questions she received from the Princess of Wales but one answer throughout:—“I don’t know.”

Being at last wearied with this continual repetition of the same response, she changed the subject. But in the light of other events it is perfectly clear that the Princess had her answer prepared beforehand, and was determined she would give the Queen as little information on the subject as possible. There cannot be a doubt that the Prince and Princess had made their minds up together on this point, and that they had some very good reason for it.

What was that reason?

[Pg 205]

A study of the events that followed will probably disclose the answer.

The most circumstantial record of these events is undoubtedly that given by Lord Hervey, though written with great bias, and his usual endeavour to blacken the Prince’s character as much as possible.

There appears to have been a strong desire on the part of the King and Queen that the Princess’s lying-in should take place at Hampton Court, and an equally strong determination on the part of the Prince and Princess that it should not. This intense desire of the King and Queen that the young Princess should lie-in at Hampton Court seems to have exceeded all bounds.

So much did the Queen work upon the feelings of the King and Sir Robert Walpole—she seems to have been the Prime mover—that it was decided to send a message to the Prince of Wales commanding that the Princess should lie-in at Hampton Court. They seem to have had some insane idea that there would be a supposititious child, though why this should be needed, in the case of a healthy young man and woman, never transpired. The message, however, was never sent, according to Lord Hervey, though some writers say it was. If it was not it was certainly owing to the wisdom of Walpole.

“At her labour I will positively be,” remarked the Queen, “for she cannot be brought to bed as quick as one can blow one’s nose, and I will be sure it is her child.”

[Pg 206]

What was the reason of this absurd anxiety?

It is impossible to say with certainty what was passing in the minds of these young people at this time; the girl wife of eighteen, and her husband who, among all his many relatives, could not rely upon one as a friend. There must, however, have been some very strong motive—a feeling which they held in sympathy, to have caused them to have acted as they did.

The Court in the meantime had removed from Richmond—the old palace down by the river near Kew[44] to Hampton Court, and with it the Prince and Princess of Wales with their household as usual. The Court had gone on its usual humdrum way, one long summer’s day being, in its regular routine of walks, drives, bowls and cards in the evening, as much like another as possible, in the manner so bitterly complained of by Lady Suffolk in her last days at Court.

Everything went on as usual, and the accouchement of the Princess was looked upon by everyone as being a yet far off event.

So matters stood until Sunday, the 31st of July, 1737. This is the account given by Lord Hervey of the amusements on the evening of that day:

“The King played at commerce below stairs, the Queen above at quadrille, the Princess Emily at her commerce table, and the Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey at cribbage, just as usual, and separated all[Pg 207] at ten o’clock; and what is incredible to relate, went to bed all at eleven, without hearing one single syllable of the Princess’s being ill, or even of her not being in the house.”

So the whole household retired to rest and peace reigned over the ancient mansion of Cardinal Wolsey. But not for long. At half-past one a courier arrived at the Palace, and eventually succeeded in arousing one of the Queen’s Women of the Bedchamber, a certain Mrs. Tichborne, who forthwith, on hearing what the courier had to say, went straight off to their Majesties’ sacred bedroom, and awakened them.

The Queen, on her entering the chamber, started up, and very naturally enquired whether the house was on fire.

Mrs. Tichborne, having eased the Royal mind on this point, proceeded to give the Queen, as best she could, information on a very delicate subject. She said the Prince had sent to let their Majesties know the Princess was in labour.

The suddenness of this communication produced the effect upon the Queen which might have been expected.

“My God!” she cried, starting up, “my night gown, I’ll go to her this moment.”

“Your night gown, Madam?” repeated Mrs. Tichborne, thinking it about time she should know all, “and your coaches too; the Princess is at St. James’s.”

[Pg 208]

“Are you mad,” interrupted the Queen, “or are you asleep, my good Tichborne? You dream!”

Mrs. Tichborne, however, confirmed her first assertion, and an excited little nightcap popped up from the King’s side of the bed, and there came from beneath it a torrent of very guttural German, of which the following is a translation:

“You see now, with all your wisdom, how they have outwitted you. This is all your fault. There is a false child which will be upon you, and how will you answer it to all your children? This has been fine care and fine management for your son William—he is mightily obliged to you. And for Ann I hope she will come over and scold you herself. I am sure you deserve anything she can say to you.”

This allusion to the Princess Royal referred to an idea she had that she might succeed to the throne of England if neither of her brothers married. But the poor Queen was far too anxious and excited to pay any attention to her wrathful little royal spouse; apparently during most of the tirade she was getting into her clothes the best way she could, with the assistance of Mrs. Tichborne. While dressing as fast as possible, she ordered her coaches and sent messages to the Duke of Grafton and Lord Hervey to go with her. For to St. James’s she was going as fast as she could.

At half-past two, the great coaches containing the Queen, the two eldest Princesses with their ladies,[Pg 209] the Duke of Grafton, Lord Hervey and Lord Essex, who was to be sent back with news to the King, rumbled out of the gateway of Hampton Court Palace and drove off through the summer night towards London.

An account is now desirable of what took place earlier in the evening in the Princess’s apartments at Hampton Court.

It appears that the Princess of Wales, having decorously dined in public—in presence of the household—that Sunday evening, was, on her return to her own rooms, taken very ill; it soon became apparent that the pains she was suffering from were those of labour.

Despite the strong endeavour of Lord Hervey in his account of this affair to make it appear that the Prince was forcing his wife to go in the state she was to St. James’s Palace, it must be distinctly remembered that the Princess herself stated that the removal to St. James’s Palace was made at her own request, and her reason for taking this course will be shown later.

When it became apparent beyond all doubt that the Princess was enduring the pains of labour, the Prince ordered a coach to be secretly got ready; there is no doubt whatever that provision for this had been made beforehand.

It appears that by the time the coach was ready the Princess was suffering a good deal, and had to[Pg 210] be supported by the Prince, a Mr. Bloodworth, one of the Prince’s equerries, and by a Monsieur Desnoyer, a dancing master above all people, who appears to have been a sort of privileged person, allowed to roam free over the Palaces.

The whole proceeding was highly indelicate, and what followed more so; Lady Archibald Hamilton, and Mr. Townshend, one of the Prince’s Grooms-in-Waiting, are both said to have protested against the proceeding, and to have done so very properly. But why were these young people so anxious to get away from Hampton Court Palace, that their child might be born elsewhere? It is perfectly plain that they had a very strong motive indeed. What was that motive?

The poor young Princess seems to have been got down stairs and into the waiting coach with the greatest difficulty, and was in a terrible plight when she arrived there, as one might very well expect, considering her age and the novelty of her condition. There entered into the coach with her, Lady Archibald Hamilton and two of her dressers, Mrs. Clavering and Mrs. Paine. Reid, the Prince’s Valet-de-Chambre, who also appears to have been a surgeon, and a man midwife, mounted upon the box, and Bloodworth the Equerry, and two or three more mounted behind the coach.

After enjoining secrecy on all his household concerning his removal—which injunction seems to have been faithfully heeded—the Prince entered the[Pg 211] coach and gave the order to drive at a gallop to St. James’s Palace.

There must have been a pretty scene inside the coach, considering the Princess’s state, and the condition of mind, under the circumstances, of the three ladies in attendance. The Prince seems to have been in a high state of excitement, and to have divided his time between trying to comfort his young wife and using strong language.

About ten o’clock “this cargo,” as Lord Hervey elegantly describes it, arrived at St. James’s Palace, where, of course, nothing whatever was ready for the Princess’s accouchement. The only attendant there, and that a very necessary one, was the midwife, and she appeared in a few minutes, having evidently been warned beforehand. There were not even sheets ready for the Princess, and it is said that the Prince and one of the ladies aired two tablecloths, between which the Princess was put to bed.

There should, of course, have been present at this, the birth of a direct heir to the Crown, some of the Lords of the Council, but Lord Wilmington, and Lord Godolphin, Privy Seal, somehow appeared mysteriously upon the scene. It seems, however, that Lord Wilmington had received a message from the Prince at his house at Chiswick, and came at once. At a quarter before eleven, within three quarters of an hour of her arrival, the Princess was delivered of what Lord Hervey delicately[Pg 212] describes as “a little rat of a girl, about the bigness of a good large tooth-pick case.”

Mark the hearty welcome extended to this little stranger by the King and Queen’s confidant!

It may be here mentioned that the “little rat” grew into an exceedingly pretty girl, but with a peculiar gift of unintentionally upsetting people, which was supposed to be a result of her mother’s trials at her birth. She became Duchess of Brunswick, and died in 1813.

It was four o’clock before the Queen’s Party reached St. James’s Palace, and then being told, in answer to an enquiry, that the Princess was very well, concluded that nothing had happened. However, the Queen, to whom this whole affair must have been a great trial—for she was in very bad health—ascended the stairs to the Prince’s apartments, and Lord Hervey considerately promised to get her a fire and some chocolate in his own room. As she parted from him she made this most extraordinary remark, which can be taken as a sample of the unreasonable fear and hatred towards their son which had obsessed the minds of the King and Queen.

“To be sure,” replied the Queen, referring to the chocolate and the fire, “I shall not stay long; I shall be mightily obliged to you”; then winked and added: “nor you need not fear my tasting anything in this side of the house.”

[Pg 213]

The Prince received his mother and sisters in what is described by Lord Hervey as his night gown and night cap, but what we should more correctly describe as a dressing gown perhaps; he kissed the Queen’s hand and cheek in German fashion, and then broke the news to her of the birth of his daughter.

Then there appears to have ensued a passage of words between mother and son as to why a messenger had not been sent to Hampton Court before to acquaint the King and herself of the happy event, as she had not left until more than three hours after the birth of the child.

To this the Prince replied that he had sent a messenger as soon as he could write the news, and this may very well have happened, as the journey took the Queen an hour and a half, with no doubt four horses to each coach.

The Queen went into the Princess’s bedchamber, and seems to have greeted her kindly and congratulated her.

“Apparrement, Madame,” she observed, “vous avez horriblement souffert.”

“Point de tout,” answered the Princess; “ce n’est rien.” Then the “little rat” was brought in by Lady Hamilton and duly kissed by the royal grandmother:

“Le bon Dieu,” she remarked, piously, “vous benisse pauvre petite creature! Vous voila arrivée dans un disagrèable monde!”

[Pg 214]

The little one had not then been dressed, and was wrapped up in a red mantle.

The Prince appears to have excitedly but perfectly openly narrated to his mother the circumstances of the journey, freely admitting that on the previous Monday and Friday he had also carried the Princess to London, thinking then that the event was imminent.

The birth having taken place he seems to have made no secret of their desire that the accouchement of the Princess should take place in London.

Lord Hervey, in his account, goes very fully into details, too much so, perhaps, to suit modern ideas of delicacy, but the Prince made no secret to his mother that at one time he thought that he should have had to take his wife into some house on the road, so imminent did the event seem.

To his long account the Queen answered not a word, but turned the shafts of her wrath upon Lady Hamilton, who was standing by with the baby.

“At the indiscretion of young fools who knew nothing of the dangers to which this poor child and its mother were exposed, I am less surprised; but for you, my Lady Archibald, who have had ten children, that with your experience, and at your age, you should suffer these people to act such a madness, I am astonished, and wonder how you could, for your own sake as well as theirs, venture to be concerned in such an expedition.”

Lady Archibald made the Queen no answer to[Pg 215] this address, which sounded rather like a rebuke to one of her own dependents, which Lady Archibald probably really was. The latter turned to the Prince and simply remarked:

“You see, sir.”

Lord Hervey appears to have received an account of this interview direct from the Queen and Princesses when they were partaking of the chocolate he had had prepared for them in his room, and we may take it that any conversation unfavourable to them was discreetly left out.

The Duke of Grafton, Lord Essex and Lord Hervey, were then admitted to see the baby, and the Queen withdrew with this very considerate remark to the Princess of Wales after embracing her:

“My good Princess, is there anything you want, anything you wish or anything you would have me do? Here I am, you have but to speak and ask, and whatever is in my power that you would have me do, I promise you I will do it.”

The Prince accompanied her to the foot of the stairs where he parted from his mother, who walked across the courtyard to Lord Hervey’s lodgings. Arrived there she made the following characteristic and elegant observation to the two Princesses and the Duke of Grafton, and Lord Hervey who accompanied her:

“Well, upon my honour, I no more doubt this poor little bit of a thing is the Princess’s child than I doubt of either of these two being mine; though[Pg 216] I own to you I had my doubts upon the road that there would be some juggle, and if instead of this poor little ugly she-mouse there had been a brave, large, fat, jolly boy, I should not have been cured of my suspicions.”

And now comes the great question which has puzzled everybody from that day to this, and to which only the feeblest and most unsatisfying answers have been given.

Why did the Prince and Princess take all this trouble in removing from Hampton Court in order that their child might be born in London?

That they had made their preparations beforehand in providing the nurse who appeared at a few minutes’ notice cannot be doubted, and that, like the careless young people that they were, they left out many of the essentials—such as the sheets—is also evident. Why did they take all this trouble?

Some historians state that it was simply a studied act of disobedience to the King and Queen.

If that were so, then it was a most inconvenient mode of showing it, and the same end might have been achieved at much less trouble to themselves.

Others—and Lord Hervey amongst them—describe it as a pure act of bravado and arrogance to show the Prince’s independence. If this were the true reason then the Prince must have been an inhuman brute, and we know from a great many instances of his kindness and undoubted affection for his young wife, that he was not.

[Pg 217]

No, to venture an opinion of the real reason for this most extraordinary proceeding, we must review a few simple facts. In the first place the true position of the Prince of Wales with regard to his parents and the rest of the Royal Family, must have been well known to the Princess Augusta before she came to England at all. She knew full well, in common with most continental Princesses, that the heir to the throne of England was by no means a favourite with his parents and that he was only brought over from Hanover because the English people demanded it. He was not wanted by the Royal Family, they wanted the crown of England for the handsome second son, William Duke of Cumberland, afterwards adorned with the additional title of “The Butcher of Culloden.”

Frederick was not handsome though he had a charm of manner, chiefly owing to his amiability and kind-heartedness which endeared him to the people. William had none of these attributes, he was handsome, and very like his mother—a glance at their portraits will show that—and he also had an exceedingly cruel nature, which perhaps the people soon found out.

Any doubt which may exist in a reader’s mind as to the preference of King George the Second and his Queen for their second son, may be set at rest by a glance at the following account of certain events which took place in the reign of George the First:

“George I. in his enmity to George II. entertained[Pg 218] some idea of separating the sovereignty of England and Hanover (Coxe’s Walpole, p. 132) and we find from Lord Chancellor King’s Diary, under the date of June, 1725, ‘a negotiation had been lately on foot in relation to the two young Princes, Frederick and William. The Prince (George II.) and his wife were for excluding Prince Frederick, but that after the King and the Prince, he would be Elector of Hanover and Prince William, King of Great Britain; but that the King said it would be unjust to do it without Prince Frederick’s consent, who was now of an age to judge for himself, and so the matter now stood.’ (Campbell’s Chancellors IV. 318). Sir Robert Walpole, who communicated this to the Chancellor, added that he had told George I. that ‘if he did not bring Prince Frederick over in his lifetime, he would never set his foot on English ground.’”[45]

This early enmity of his parents to Frederick, Lord Campbell cannot explain.

So that it is quite clear that but for the intervention of his grandfather, George the First (about the only disinterested friend he ever had) Frederick would have been left to the tender mercies of his father and mother who would very certainly have deprived him of his birthright in favour of their handsome second boy. The Princess of Wales’s reception in England had not been of that warm description to convey to her the idea that her coming had been particularly desired. It will be[Pg 219] remembered that she remained at Gravesend for forty-eight hours without any of the Royal Family coming near her at all except Frederick. She very soon realized the state of affairs, and there is something pitiable about the young girl of seventeen, casting herself at the feet of George the Second and his wife as if to propitiate them, in spite of their disinclination to receive her.

No, it was very soon made plain to the young Princess of Wales that her husband was not wanted here at all, nay that he was hated for standing in the way of his handsome brother, and that she, too, this despised Prince’s wife, was not wanted either.

To a girl of her keen perception, for it was shown by her conduct on her arrival that she was exceedingly intelligent, it cannot be for a moment doubted that as those anxious moments of imminent motherhood drew near she painfully realized too, that her baby was not wanted either, to be another stumbling block in the way of the favourite son.

It is not at all an uncommon thing for young married people to have this overstrung sense of anxiety for their coming little one, and to conjure up in their minds fears for which, perhaps, there is no reason. It cannot be said for a moment that the King and Queen had any designs on the life of the coming grandchild, although it was a barbarous age, when life was held much cheaper than it is now, and the life of a little baby—especially a “little rat”—did not count for much. Even King George himself[Pg 220] used to say there were not half enough hangings, and that if they came into his hands he would not spare them, although God knows at that time men and women were strung up in rows outside the gaols in numbers sufficient to satisfy the most bloodthirsty advocate of capital punishment.

No, there cannot be a reasonable doubt that this night journey of the Prince and Princess was undertaken in an unreasoning panic maybe, but in an honest fear that the life of their coming little one was not safe at Hampton Court Palace, and that at any risk to themselves they would have the birth of the child take place in surroundings over which they had entire control, even though, as it happened, the royal child should be born between two tablecloths instead of sheets.

This act of the Prince and Princess of Wales was construed into such a flagrant violation of the Royal Will, that the enraged little King at once took steps to assert his authority. Fortunately in these days Princesses of Wales are not peremptorily ordered to arrange their accouchements in places agreeable to the Royal Will.

They arrange them just wherever they like.

A brisk interchange of letters took place between the King and his eldest son, which ended in a somewhat abrupt command from the King to the Prince to remove himself and his family out of St. James’s Palace, which possibly was an order which the Prince and his wife were not at all sorry to obey; it gave them the opportunity of setting up their own home.

(From the King at Hampton Court Palace to the Prince of Wales at St. James’s, by Lord Dunmore, August 20th, 1737).

“It being now near three weeks since the Princess was brought to bed, his Majesty hopes that there can be no inconvenience to the Princess if Monday, the twenty-ninth, be appointed for baptising the[Pg 222] Princess, his grand-daughter; and having determined that His Majesty the King, the Queen and the Duchess-Dowager of Saxe-Gotha shall be godfather and godmothers, will send his Lord Chamberlain to represent himself and the Queen’s Lady of the Bedchamber to represent the Queen, and desires that the Princess will order one of the Ladies of her Bedchamber to stand for the Duchess-Dowager of Saxe-Gotha, and the King will send to the Archbishop of Canterbury to attend and perform the ceremony.” (p. 225, Hervey.)

To which the Prince dutifully replied:

Which does not read much like the letter of a disobedient and contumacious son, but rather that of one who owns a fault which he never intended to commit and asks for pardon.

These are some of the letters which passed between the King and Queen and the Prince of Wales; the two first the Queen found at Hampton Court Palace on her return from her night journey to St. James’s.

These letters are written, as the Prince wrote them in bad French badly spelt.

Lord Hervey states that the morning after these two epistles were received, was occupied with conversation between the King and Queen and Sir Robert Walpole, which on the part of His Majesty consisted largely of the following epithets which he[Pg 225] applied to his son the Prince of Wales: “Scoundrel and Puppy!” “Knave and Fool!” “Liar and coward!” and no doubt many choice German expletives thrown in where English failed.

The King, eventually, however, commanded the following answer to be sent by the hands of Lord Essex, to his son’s happy announcement of the birth of his daughter. This is what Lord Essex read out to the Prince:

“The King has commanded me to acquaint your Royal Highness that His Majesty most heartily rejoices at the safe delivery of the Princess; but that your carrying away her Royal Highness from Hampton Court, the then residence of the King, the Queen and the Royal Family, under the pains—and certain indication of immediate labour to the imminent danger, and hazard both of the Princess and her child, and after sufficient warnings for a week before to have made the necessary preparations for the happy event without acquainting his Majesty or the Queen with the circumstances the Princess was in, or giving them the least notice of your departure, is looked upon by the King to be such a deliberate indignity offered to himself and the Queen, that he has commanded me to acquaint your Royal Highness that he resents it to the highest degree, and will not see you.”

But this time the worry proved too much for the Queen, whose health was fast failing, and she was seized with a violent attack of the gout.

[Pg 226]

However, she had her comforter in her close attendant, Lord Hervey; and this time she broke through all rules of etiquette and admitted him to the sick room to sit by her bed. Here he made himself agreeable and amusing as usual, and did not forget to keep alive the Queen’s resentment against her son.

The Prince of Wales very dutifully sent Lord North to inquire after his mother’s health. This message seemed to annoy Lord Hervey, who, in his petty way, was probably jealous. He offered to write a much more sincere message—from his point of view—than the Prince had really sent.

He went into the next room with the Princess Caroline and wrote the following abominable doggerel rhymes.

The Griff[46] to the Queen:

[Pg 227]

And yet Lord Hervey considered himself a poet!

Of course the gentle insinuation intended in his lines was that the Prince hoped that the gout would fly to the Queen’s head or stomach and kill her.

Poor soul! she had a much more fatal malady, which she bore in secret, and which even Lord Hervey, her constant companion, knew nothing of.

It is said that the Queen was greatly entertained by these verses!

Lord Hervey and Pope the Poet were by no means good friends.

Pope very savagely attacked both his verses and his character. The former he refers to in speaking of a supposed charge of weakness against his own verses. He says:

and

These allusions stung Lord Hervey’s shallow feelings. This was his idea of a refined and witty rejoinder.

“To the imitator of the Satires of the Second Book of Horace.”

[Pg 228]

Which reminds one, somehow, of the lines one used to hear in the old-fashioned Christmas pantomimes given out by the Demon. But these were very cruel and in bad taste considering Pope was a cripple.

But in the same poem, Lord Hervey refers to the poet’s affliction again:

Pope, as will be seen was, however, quite equal to a rejoinder in the same strain.

It is stated by Lord Hailes that Lord Hervey having suffered some attacks of epilepsy dieted himself—or rather starved himself—after in the following extraordinary manner; his daily food consisted of a small quantity of asses’ milk and a flour biscuit. This stayed the progress of the terrible disease, but it gave him a very ghastly complexion. He is also stated to have used emetics daily, which, under the circumstances, appeared hardly necessary. Once a week he took the indulgence of an apple.

To hide his cadaverous appearance, he painted his face as it has been already stated.

None of these weaknesses seem to have been overlooked by Pope in his reply to Hervey whom he satirized as “Sporus”:

To this apparently Lord Hervey vouchsafed no retort, so Pope was adjudged to have been the victor in the affair. But not content with this, he wrote an open letter in prose to Lord Hervey. But this was suppressed, as Queen Caroline got hold of a copy of it, and desired Pope not to publish it, as it held her dear friend and companion up to the most cutting ridicule. She hated Pope for this, but concealed her rage lest worse should come of it. But Lord Hervey’s duels were not all confined to poetry; he had one with Pulteney, and the weapons were not words but swords. This occurred in 1730. It was a squabble over the authorship of a pamphlet[Pg 230] called “Sedition and Defamation Displayed,” which attacked both Pulteney and Bolingbroke very severely, and with the writing of which Hervey was credited, and unjustly as it turned out eventually.

The heated Pulteney, however, rushed into print, and published another pamphlet “A Proper Reply to a late Scurrilous Libel” in which he abused Walpole and Hervey, referring to the latter by his nickname of “Lord Fanny,” and depicted him half man and half woman, dragging in, as was usual, in those days with execrable taste, certain of Hervey’s infirmities.

This pamphlet created a perfect fury of anger at Court, and very naturally aroused the resentment of Hervey peculiarly susceptible, like many who indulge in cruel satire about others. He wrote to Pulteney and demanded to know whether he had written the pamphlet, and upon Pulteney replying that he would tell him, when he admitted the authorship of “Sedition and Defamation Displayed,” Hervey worked himself up into such a fury, and was so egged on by the other courtiers—he was not a fighting man—that he got at last entangled in a duel with Pulteney.

They met on a fine June afternoon between three and four o’clock in Upper St. James’s Park, just behind Arlington Street, Hervey being accompanied by Fox, and Pulteney by Sir J. Rushout.

There appears to have been some pretty sword play, and both got slightly wounded—which shows[Pg 231] that Hervey had some pluck—“but,” writes Mr. Thomas Pelham, a witness of the affray, “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.”

Pulteney, then, in a very magnanimous manner, appears to have embraced Hervey, and expressed sorrow at “the accident of their quarrel.”

At the same time he very unnecessarily added that he would never attack Lord Hervey again either with his pen or his lips.

Hervey, however, showed his quality by not reciprocating his kindly feeling, but merely bowed and sulked.

“And to use a common expression,” concludes Mr. Pelham, “thus they parted.”

Sir Charles Hanbury Williams wrote some lines on this duel addressed to Pulteney.

Which effusion stamps Sir C. Hanbury Williams as a poet at once!

But Lord Hervey soon had something more agreeable to do than even writing poetry or fighting duels.

There had been a series of letters from the Prince, already published above, craving his father’s pardon, and these had, in no way, abated the King’s[Pg 232] wrath. Neither was the Queen touched. But the King’s message still remained to be agreed upon. It was at last settled and arranged—in fact a notice to quit—the Queen being the prime mover and prompter of Sir Robert Walpole, who, of course, acted for the King in the matter.

Concerning the final interview between the King and the Minister, the Queen had stipulated that she should have the last word with Sir Robert before he went in to the King, so it may be taken for granted that the terms of the message to be sent to the Prince were practically her terms.

Upon leaving the King, Sir Robert Walpole encountered Lord Hervey whom he told that the resolution of his Majesty was to leave the child with the Princess, and not to take it away as George the First had taken the children of his son, when he quarrelled with him and turned him out of St. James’s Palace. The reason given was this:

“Lest any accident might happen to this little Royal animal, and the world in that case accuse the King and Queen of having murdered it, for the sake of the Duke of Cumberland.”[48] Sir Robert continued that he liked to hear other people’s opinions as well as his own, and then and there desired Lord Hervey to sit down and write exactly what he would advise the King to say if he stood in his—Sir Robert’s—position. This Lord Hervey was overjoyed to do[Pg 233] as it gave him an opportunity to show his resentment against the Prince.

It was drawn up in the form of a letter to be signed by the King as follows, in Lord Hervey’s words:

“It is in vain for you to hope that I can be so far deceived by your empty professions, wholly inconsistent with all your actions, as to think that they in any manner palliate or excuse a series of the most insolent and premeditated indignities offered to me and the Queen, your Mother.

“You never gave the least notice to me or the Queen of the Princess’s being breeding or with child till about three weeks before the time when you yourself have owned you expected her to be brought to bed, and removed her from the place of my residence for that purpose. You twice in one week carried her away from Hampton Court with an avowed design of having her lie-in in town, without consulting me or the Queen, or so much as communicating your intention to either of us. At your return you industriously concealed everything relating to this important affair from our knowledge; and last of all, you clandestinely hurried the Princess to St. James’s in circumstances not fit to be named, and less fit for such an expedition.

“This extravagant and undutiful behaviour in a matter of such great consequence as the birth of an heir to my crown, to the manifest peril of the Princess and her child (whilst you pretend your[Pg 234] regard for her was your motive) inconsistent with the natural right of all parents, and in violation of your double duty to me, as your father and as your King, is what cannot be excused by any false plea, so repugnant to the whole tenor of your conduct, of the innocence of your intentions, or atoned for by specious pretences or plausible expressions.

“Your behaviour for a long time has been so devoid of duty and regard to me, even before this last open proof you have given to all the world of your contempt for me and my authority, that I have long been justly offended at it; nor will I suffer any part of any of my palaces to be any longer the resort and refuge of all those whom discontent, disappointment or disaffection have made the avowed opposers of all my measures; who espouse you only to distress me, and who call you the head, whilst they make you the instrument of a faction that acts with no other view than to weaken my authority in every particular, and can have no other end in their success but weakening the common interest of my whole family.

“My pleasure therefore is, that you and all your family remove from St. James’s as soon as ever the safety and convenience of the Princess will permit.

“I will leave the case of my grand-daughter to the Princess till the time comes when I shall think it proper to give directions for her education.

“To this I will receive no reply. When you shall, by a consistency in your words and actions,[Pg 235] show that you repent of your past conduct, and are resolved to return to your duty, parental affection may then and not till then, induce me to forgive what parental justice now obliges me to resent.”

So much for Lord Hervey’s idea of what he considered a just punishment for his enemy the Prince of Wales.

Coxe, in his “Walpole,” refers to the expressions in this draft as “harsh, improper and indecorous.” The Chancellor, Lord Hardwicke, was the chief reviser of this abominable letter of Hervey’s, and even when several amendments had been made, considered it in its completed form too strong, but it was practically that letter of Lord Hervey’s, though some of the words were softened, which was eventually delivered to the Prince of Wales, and upon which he and his family had to turn out of St. James’s Palace.

But there is one incident which occurred at this time and which has been much used by Lord Hervey, Horace Walpole, and other enemies of the Prince.

On the ninth day after the confinement of the Princess of Wales, the Queen, with her two eldest daughters, drove from Hampton Court to St. James’s to pay another visit to the mother and child.

It is said that this visit was a very painful one, because the Queen and her son—who met her only at the door of his wife’s bedchamber, whether by accident or design it is not stated—did not speak.[Pg 236] It is very evident that from this time forward, the Prince, whether rightly or wrongly, regarded his mother as the cause of the King’s anger against him, and did not conceal his feelings on the point.

During the hour which his mother spent with the Princess and the Royal baby, not a word passed between mother and son, and exception is taken to the fact that when the Queen observed that “she feared she was troublesome,” nobody had the politeness to say she was not. At the conclusion of the visit, the Prince very properly led his mother down to her coach, and arriving at it, did something which greatly exasperated Lord Hervey and Horace Walpole; he knelt down in the dirty street and kissed his mother’s hand!

What a terrible thing for a son to do! What an outrage!

Both Hervey and Horace Walpole try to make out that he did it for effect, and to inspire the people who were looking on; but is it not much more likely that both Hervey and Walpole—and perhaps the people in the street, too, would have had a great deal more to say if he had not done it, for it was the common etiquette of the Court, and remains very much the same to the present day. But there was another interest about this parting, too. It was the last time that mother and son ever met on earth.

In such fashion were the sayings and doings of this Prince, who was not wanted, continually[Pg 237] distorted by those around the King and Queen, and yet they never succeeded in shaking his popularity with the people.

Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, has left an account behind him of an interview with the Prince about this time, which throws some light on the reason for the secret removal of the Princess from Hampton Court.

“On the fourth day of August,” writes Lord Hardwicke, “the day of proroguing the Parliament, I went to St. James’s in my way to Westminster in order to inquire after the health of the Princess of Wales and the new-born Princess. After I had performed that ceremony, I went away, and was overtaken at the further end of Pall Mall by one of the Prince’s footmen, with a message that His Royal Highness desired to speak with me. Being returned, I was carried into the nursery, whither the Prince came immediately, out of the Princess’s bedchamber, and turned all the ladies out of the room.”

Shade of Earl Cairns! what should we think in these days if we heard of the Lord High Chancellor of England being shown into the nursery at Marlborough House when on a visit of ceremony, and “all the ladies being turned out,” and apparently the baby too, to give the Prince of Wales an opportunity of talking serious State matters with his lordship?

The room, however, being at last clear, the Prince took Lord Hardwicke into his confidence, evidently[Pg 238] with the object of persuading him to soften the hearts of the King and Queen and inter alia referring to the removal of the Princess from Hampton Court in much the same terms used in his first letter to his father, but with this significant addition: “What if the King, who was apt sometimes to be pretty quick, should have objected to her going to London, and an altercation should have arisen, what a condition would the poor Princess have been in!”

The two sat and discoursed for some time, and the old Chancellor gave Frederick just the sort of advice an old lawyer would naturally give a young man under the circumstances, urging submission and dutiful behaviour to bring about a union of the family, and adding that it would be the “zealous endeavour of himself with the other servants of the King,” to bring about this end.

“He answered,” continued Hardwicke, “‘My Lord, I don’t doubt you in the least, for I believe you to be a very honest man,’ and as I was rising up embraced me, offering to kiss me. I instantly kneeled down and kissed his hand, whereupon he raised me up and kissed my cheek.

“The scene had something in it moving, and my heart was full of the melancholy prospect that I thought lay before me, which made me almost burst into tears. The Prince observed this, and appeared moved himself, and said: ‘Let us sit down, my Lord, a little, and recollect ourselves, that we may not go out thus.’

[Pg 239]

“Soon after which I took my leave, and went directly to the House of Lords.”

Minutes of Lord Harrington and Sir Robert Walpole’s conversation with the Prince by his bedside, August 1st, about five in the morning, and taken down in writing about three hours after.

[Pg 240]

The opinion of that remarkably sensible woman of the time, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, on this event, can but be read with interest.

“There has been an extraordinary quarrel at Court. The 31st of last month, July, 1737, the Princess fell in labour. The King and Queen both knew she was to lie in at St. James’s, where everything was prepared. It was her first child, and so little a way to London that she thought it less hazard to go immediately away from Hampton Court to London, where she had all the assistance that could be, and everything prepared, than to stay at Hampton Court, where she had nothing, and might be forced to make use of a country midwife. There was not a minute’s time to be lost in debating this matter, nor in ceremonials, the Princess begging earnestly of the Prince to carry her to St. James’s in such a hurry that gentlemen went behind the coach like footmen. They got to St. James’s safe; and she was brought to bed in one hour after. Her Majesty followed them as soon as she could, but did not come until it was all over. However, she expressed a great deal of anger to the Prince for having carried her away, though she and the child were very well. I should have thought it would have been most natural for a grandmother to have said, she had been mightily frighted, but she was so glad it was so well over. The Prince said all the respectful and dutiful things imaginable to her and to the King, desiring her Majesty to support the[Pg 241] reasons which made him go away as he did, without acquainting his Majesty with it. And I believe that all human creatures will allow, that this was natural for a man not to debate a thing of this kind, nor to lose a minute’s time for ceremony; which was very useless, considering that it is a great while since the King has spoken to him, or taken the least notice of him. The Prince told her Majesty he intended to go that morning to pay his duty to the King; but she advised him not. This was Monday morning, and she said Wednesday was time enough. And, indeed, I think in that her Majesty was in the right. The Prince submitted to her counsel, and only writ a very submissive and respectful letter to his Majesty, giving his reasons for what he had done; and this conversation ended, that he hoped that his Majesty would do him the honour to be godfather to his daughter, and that he would be pleased to name who the godmothers would be; and that he left all the directions of the christening entirely to his Majesty’s pleasure. The Queen answered that it would be thought the asking the King to be Godfather was too great a liberty, and advised him not to do it.

National Portrait Gallery.Emery Walker.
SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH.

“When the Prince led the Queen to her coach, which she would not have had him have done, there was a great concourse of people; and notwithstanding all that had passed before, she expressed so much kindness, that she hugged and kissed him with great passion. The King after this sent a[Pg 242] message in writing by my Lord Essex in the following words:

“‘That his Majesty looks upon what the Prince had done in carrying the Princess to London in such a manner, as a deliberate indignity offered to himself and to the Queen, and resented it in the highest degree and forbid him the court.’

“All the sycophants and agents of the Court spread millions of falsities on this occasion, and all the language there was that this was so great a crime that even those that went with the Prince ought to be prosecuted. How this will end nobody yet knows, at least I am sure I don’t.”

Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough to Lord Stair, August, 1737.

A pretty satire written before August 29th, 1737, by Dr. Hollings, who attended the Princess of Wales, concerning the baby Princess, but really directed against the Queen.

It is by comparison, not difficult to see on which side Dr. Hollings’s sympathies were. This writing was found among the papers of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough.

“I am sensible how difficult it really is to be impartial, and how much more difficult it is to seem so, in drawing the characters of persons of the highest path and rank. The praise or the blame which they may justly deserve, is severally ascribed to the interested views or the private resentment of the author. I should therefore not have attempted the[Pg 243] character of this most excellent Princess, could there have been the least room for suspicions of that nature. But having no obligation or disobligation whatsoever to her, I shall speak the truth in the sincerity of my heart, and I likewise call upon all and everyone of those who have the honour to know her as well as I do, to contradict me if they can in any one particular. I have observed her with attention almost from the hour of her birth, and have carefully marked the progressive steps of nature. I have seen her in her most unguarded moments, and have seriously and critically considered whatever fell from her; so that I may, without vanity, assert that nobody is better qualified to tell the truth than myself, though others might be much more capable of adorning it.

“I shall say nothing of the beauty of this incomparable Princess, it is her mind, and not her person, which we intend to delineate. Neither shall I dwell upon her high birth and station any longer than to observe that she seems to be the only person ignorant of that superiority. She has never been heard to give the most remote hint of it, much less has she ever been observed to assume even that degree of state which others, much inferior to her in birth, are so foolishly fond of.

“It would be saying but little in praise of this excellent lady to observe, that she had early acquired many friends; for who in that high station has not, where the power of obliging and doing[Pg 244] good is so extensive, it must be the weakest head, as well as the worst heart, that does not exert it, and make many happy friends. But, what is much more rare in her station, she has not one enemy.

“Equally humane to all who approach her, she neither stoops to meannesses, nor insolently insults, in proportion as she imagines the persons may be useful or useless; for having nothing to fear, ask, or conceal, from any, she behaves herself with unconcern to all.

“She was never known to tell a lie, or even to disguise a truth; uncorrupted nature appears in every motion, and honestly declares the present sentiment. Her smiles are the immediate results of a contented and innocent heart. They are never prostituted to disguise inward rancour and malice, nor insidiously displayed to betray the unwary into a fatal confidence.

“The tears she sometimes sheds are not less sincere; they flow only from justifiable causes, and not from disappointed avarice, ambition or revenge. Nor are they the forced tears of simulated compassion, but real harshness of heart. Moreover she never cries for joy.

“She is a rare instance of liberality and economy; for though her income be but small, she retains no more of it than is absolutely necessary for her subsistence, and properly and privately disposes of the rest; free from the ostentation of little or sordid minds, who by profusion in trifles, hope to conceal[Pg 245] the insatiate avarice and corruption of their hearts.

“Though born and bred in Court, she never engages in the intrigues and whispers of it, nor concerns herself in public matters. Far from retailing or inventing lies, promoting scandal and defamation, and encouraging breach of faith and violation of friendship, one would think of her behaviour that she had never heard of such things.

“Her silence, considering her sex, is not the least admirable of her many qualifications. She never speaks when she has nothing to say, nor graciously tires her company with frivolous, improper and unnecessary tattle.

“She is entirely free from another weakness of her sex, attention to dress. And it is observable, that if she is ever out of humour, it is in those moments when she is obliged to conform to custom in that particular.

“Having thus finished this imperfect sketch of this inimitable character, I shall only add for the information of the curious, that this most incomparable Princess was given to us on the 31st July, 1737. Name indeed she has none. But had ever such a Princess a name? Or can any man name me such a Princess?”

“This paper,” comments the Duchess of Marlborough, “made me laugh, for I think there is a good deal of humour in it, and two very exact characters.”

[Pg 246]

Lord Hailes, who published the Duchess’s papers, comments as follows on this essay of Dr. Hollings:

“It is curious to see the various shapes which party resentment can assume. We have already met with a satire on Queen Caroline, in the form of an inscription to the honour of Queen Anne. And here more virulent satire appears under a quibbling character of the infant daughter of the Prince of Wales.”

If that phenomenon, the soft-hearted old lawyer, Lord Hardwicke, was moved to tears at the Prince’s position, that feeling did not extend to the King and Queen. On the morning of the 13th of September, the day before the Prince was to leave their roof, the following edifying remarks were made by them as they sat at breakfast:

“I hope in God,” piously repeated the Queen several times as she proceeded with her meal, “I shall never see him again.”

“Thank God!” responded the King in the same pious strain—no doubt with his mouth full and talking very quickly, “to-morrow night the Puppy will be out of my house!”

The Queen replied that she thought the Prince would rather like to be made a martyr of; but it was pointed out to her that the ignominy of being turned out of doors obscured any martyr-like attributes in the Prince’s opinion.

This beautiful scene appears to have been a lively one, for the King, getting excited, gave the company his opinion on the companions of his eldest son whom he referred to as “boobies, fools and[Pg 248] madmen,” and their unlikelihood to represent anything to him in its proper light.

The King enumerated a few of the Prince’s household with what he considered appropriate remarks concerning each of them:

“There is my Lord Carnarvon,[50] a hot-headed, passionate, half-witted coxcomb, with no more sense than his master; there is Townshend,[51] a silent, proud, surly, wrong-headed booby; there is my Lord North,[52] a very good poor creature, but a very weak man; there is my Lord Baltimore, who thinks he understands everything and understands nothing, who wants to be well with both Courts and is well at neither, and entre nous is a little mad, and who else of his servants can you name that he listens to, unless it is the stuttering puppy, Johnny Lumley?”[53]

The ejection of the Prince and his family from St. James’s Palace had not been viewed without remonstrance; the Duke of Newcastle had begged the Princess Emily “for God’s sake”; that she would use her influence with her mother to prevent the last message going to the Prince.

But this request being conveyed to the Queen, by the Princess, did the Duke more harm with her than “all the stories his enemies could put together.”

[Pg 249]

So the message went, and the Prince and his family had to turn out on the 14th of September.

But even in this turning out, the little King, with his million a year[54] income, could not behave like a gentleman.

Not only were all foreign Ambassadors notified that it would be agreeable to the King if they kept away from the Prince’s house, but a written message was sent round to all peers, peeresses and privy councillors, stating that whoever waited on the Prince by way of attending his levées should not be received at Court.

The Guard was taken away from the Prince’s house, and, meanest of all, when Sir Robert Walpole, prompted by the Dukes of Newcastle and Grafton, tried to persuade the King and Queen to give the Prince and his wife the furniture of their apartments, the very reasonable request was refused.

The excuse the King made was that he had given the Prince Five thousand pounds out of his own pocket when he married to “set out” with, and, in addition, he had his wife’s fortune, another Five thousand pounds. (It does not seem clear, however, what this had to do with the King.)

“The wedding of the Prince of Wales,” the King added, “had cost him, one way and another, Fifty thousand pounds, and therefore he positively declined to let his son and his wife take any[Pg 250] of their furniture away from their apartments, and he instructed the Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Grafton, to see that none was removed.”

Lord Hervey, who was standing by at the time these orders were given, appears to have remonstrated and to have pointed out that chests and things of that nature could not be regarded as furniture, but were conveniences in which to pack the Prince and Princess’s clothes, otherwise they would have to carry them away in baskets like dirty linen.

“Why not?” broke in the large-minded little King, “a basket is good enough for them.”

Which was a piece of meanness, which would have disgraced a cobbler. The Queen seems to have aided and abetted the King in this mean conduct.

But the Prince and Princess with their Household and the baby, went their way, and in the first place took up their quarters at Kew, the Prince had despatched messengers to the heads of his party, the “Patriots.” Lord Chesterfield was ill of a fever at the time, and Pulteney was shooting in Norfolk; but there appears to have been a meeting of these two eventually with Carteret at Kew, and all three plainly told the Prince that they considered he had made a false step, and that his best course would be to endeavour to patch up a peace with his father and mother, and this he appears to have earnestly tried to do as the two following letters will show.

[Pg 251]

Copy of a letter from Lord Baltimore to Lord Grantham.

This letter caused a considerable flutter at Hampton Court, and a consultation was held as to what was to be done. It was said the Queen was anxious to refuse her son’s letter, but Sir Robert Walpole finished the matter by forbidding her to receive it, or to become mediatrix between the Prince and his father, in which there is no doubt he was simply doing the Queen’s will and taking the blame on his own shoulders.

The following letter was sent in reply to Lord Baltimore’s, and was dictated to Lord Grantham[Pg 252] by Sir Robert Walpole. The Queen was on this occasion most anxious that Lord Grantham, who was a notoriously bad writer, should be carefully watched lest he made mistakes, and she was most desirous that the Prince should quite understand her intentions. This is the letter:

So thus ended the Prince’s further attempt at reconciliation by means of his mother.

He was, however, soon busy in finding a town house for himself and his family, whilst Carlton House—which stood near where the Duke of York’s Column now is—was being decorated and altered.

Carlton House had been purchased by him in 1732, through Lord Chesterfield, from the Countess of Burlington.

[Pg 253]

The house derived its name from Henry Boyle, Lord Carlton who probably built it, and who dying unmarried in 1725, it passed to his nephew, Lord Burlington, who gave it to his mother, from whom the Prince bought it. The Prince must at this time have had some idea of making a home for himself, and again in 1735 when he altered and much enlarged it.

But while Carlton House was being repaired he looked around for a temporary residence, and at first thought of Southampton House, which stood in a court and garden between what are now Bloomsbury and Russell Squares: the site is at the present time covered with houses. This residence was refused him by the owner, the Duke of Bedford, who was afraid to offend the King and Queen.

He then turned his attention to Norfolk House in St. James’s Square, but here again the owner, the Duke of Norfolk, had fears of getting into hot water, and sent the Duchess to Hampton Court to interview the Queen on the subject.

Finding there were no difficulties in the way, the Duke of Norfolk placed his house at the Prince’s disposal, and the latter shortly moved into it with his family. It may here be mentioned that it was in Norfolk House, in an old very ordinary looking bed with green hangings, that George the Third of England was born on the 4th June following, less than eleven months after the birth of his sister.

At Norfolk House the Prince, though he[Pg 254] materially reduced his expenses and “farmed his tables”—i.e., was catered for at so much a head—yet soon gathered around him a Court, small, but brilliant. The Prince’s wit and great amiability, and the beauty and youth of his Princess, very naturally formed an attraction to many, and those principally of the most refined circle of the aristocracy, and their followers, the men of letters.

The King had previously expressed his opinion of his son’s supporters when they had gathered round him at Kew after his expulsion, and had added in anger and some jealousy: “They will soon be tired of the puppy.”

But still the Prince drew around him all the rising young men of the Tory Party and many of the wits of the day.

Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, thus speaks of him at this time:—

“There is a great deal of very good company goes to Norfolk House, but if I were to advise, I would have more play, to make more people easy by sitting down, as it used to be in all the Courts, that ever I knew, either by a basset-table, or at other games, letting people of quality go halves. But they begin, to my thinking, with the same forms the late Queen did, only to leave room to entertain a few of the town ladies, and I think it don’t lessen one’s greatness, but the contrary, to make everybody, one can, easy.”

There was an incident one night at a theatre[Pg 255] which caused the King and Queen much chagrin.

The play was “Cato,” and the Prince of Wales and his party were present; and the lines:

The audience, noting the application, broke out into cheers for the Prince, which he suitably acknowledged and joined in the applause for the actor.

But the most exasperating incident for the King and Queen was when the Prince and Princess of Wales received their good friends the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London at Carlton House, to which mansion they went for the occasion.

The Lord Mayor and Aldermen had, very soon after the birth of the Princess, expressed a hope to the Prince that he would receive them to express their congratulations, and the Prince had characteristically replied that as soon as the Princess was well enough, he would communicate a date to them, when they could both receive them. The date eventually fixed upon was Thursday, the 22nd September, and the place Carlton House, the Duke of Norfolk’s house probably not being sufficiently large to contain such a deputation.

The Prince and Princess were attended on this occasion by Lord Carteret, Lord Chesterfield, the Duke of Marlborough and many others of the Household and Council.

To every member of the City deputation was given a printed copy of the King’s last message to[Pg 256] his son—that originally written by Lord Hervey—turning the Prince and his family out of St. James’s.

The noblemen and gentlemen standing by the Prince, added their comments to the copies of the letter, especially Lord Carteret.

“You see, gentlemen,” he said, “how the Prince is threatened if he does not dismiss us; but we are here still for all that. He is a rock. You may depend upon him, gentlemen. He is sincere. He is firm.”

The Prince was a wordy man, and perhaps more beloved by the City on that account. The citizens had come out to enjoy themselves, and would have gone away disappointed if the Prince had not addressed them at length; besides it was an honour thus to be taken into his confidence over such a private affair.

The Prince did not disappoint them as regards the speech. He explained his great interest in the affairs of the City of London, and gave them a great idea of their importance, which was very acceptable to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. He claimed their friendship, and told them he should never look upon them as beggars.

This last was a terrible blow at Sir Robert Walpole, who in the Excise year had given the greatest offence to the City of London by having been reported to have said “that the citizens were a party of sturdy beggars.”

Even Sir Robert Walpole was angered when the[Pg 257] report of these proceedings reached the Court. The condition of the irate little King and his Queen can best be imagined.

“The Prince is firm, he is a rock,” sneered Sir Robert, “the Prince can never be more firm in maintaining Carteret than I am in my resolution never to have anything to do with him. I am a rock,” he raved, “I am determined in no shape will I ever act with that man.”

But there appeared to be a considerable mystery about the printing of the King’s letter of expulsion, as Lord Hervey states that Sir Robert Walpole had told him fully a week before that he intended to let this message “slip into print.” So that it is possible that Lord Carteret was only carrying out his intentions—for it was Carteret who had the letter printed—but not quite in the way which he intended or wished. About this time there was an amusing little passage between the Princess Caroline and her brother, the Prince of Wales. The two had never been friends.

It was by way of a message delivered by the Princess through the medium of Monsieur Desnoyer, that ubiquitous and much favoured dancing-master, who is continually hopping in and out of the history of this period.

The Princess instructed Desnoyer that when the Prince, who kept the dancing-master in his household, asked what they were saying about him at Hampton Court, concerning his adventure on the[Pg 258] night of his daughter’s birth, Desnoyer was to reply that the Princess Caroline declared that all of them, excepting the Princess, deserved to be hanged.

“I know,” concluded the Princess, “you would tell this again, Monsieur Desnoyer, though I did not give you leave; but I say it with no other design than that you should repeat it.” Monsieur Desnoyer bowed and departed; but the next time he came to give his dancing lesson at Hampton Court the Princess Caroline hastened to ask him like a woman, full of curiosity, if he had delivered her message to the Prince of Wales.

“Yes, Madame,” responded the man of figures.

“And in the same words?” demanded the Princess.

“Yes, Madame, I have said: Monseigneur, do you know what Madame la Princesse Caroline has charged me to tell you? She said, Monseigneur, saving the respect that I bear you, that your Royal Highness ought to be hanged.”

“And what did he answer?” gasped the Princess, in an agony of expectation.

“Madame,” replied the dancing-master, “he spat in the fire, and then presently replied. ‘Ah! you know what Caroline is, she is always like that.’”

“When you see him again,” replied the Princess, bridling, “tell him that his answer is as foolish as his conduct.”

Just like a loving brother and sister!

Thus writes Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, of events at this time, 1737:

[Pg 259]

“They have printed all the letters and messages that have passed between the King, Queen, Prince and Princess. This shows that the Minister thinks he has been in the right; but I don’t find any reasonable body of that opinion. And I observe that they have left out in this printed paper a message from his Majesty to the Prince, which was brought in writing by my Lord Dunmore; in which they judged very well, for it was certainly a very odd one, as I think it is, my Lord Harrington’s and Sir Robert Walpole’s evidence concerning the Prince, some part of which is certainly untrue.

“But upon the whole matter nobody can think that the Prince designed to hurt the Princess or the child, which was of much more consequence to him than it can be to her Majesty, who has so many children of her own. If the Prince had not had good success in what he ventured to do; and if it had been a real crime, the submissions the Prince has made, one would think ought to have been accepted, for the omission of a ceremony that was not natural for the Prince to think of at the time; and especially as he was treated at Court. But I suppose that Sir Robert did not think it a proper thing to say that the true cause of the quarrel was the Prince’s seeming to have a desire to have the whole of the allowance which the public pays for his support; and, indeed, I do think it would not have been becoming to have given that reason for what has been done. But if I may presume to give my[Pg 260] opinion against Sir Robert’s, I should rather in his place have chose to have sent the message to the Prince, that he must leave St. James’s, because the King was dissatisfied with his behaviour in general; and not have given such strange reasons for the quarrel, and then publish a printed account with so many reflections upon the Prince, which no man that has any notion of honour can ever forgive.”

With regard to the publication of these letters, which was a kind of set-off against the Prince’s address to the Lord Mayor, Lord Hervey was employed to translate the Prince’s, and in the midst of his task went off to London. On his return he was greeted by the Queen, who was most anxious about the letters, in the following terms:—

“Where the devil are you, and what have you been doing? You are a pretty man to have the justification of your friends committed to your hands! There are the letters which you have had this week to translate, and they are not yet ready to be dispersed, and only that you must go to London to divert yourself with some of your nasty guenipes[55] instead of doing what you have undertaken.”

Hervey made her a quotation from Shakespeare in reply:—

But now over the squabblings and disagreements of this Royal Family, with their enormous wealth and power, was gathering a dark cloud from which presently descended a greater Power than theirs, the Power which one day touches all, and which the riches of a Palace are as impotent to resist as the poverty of a poor man’s dwelling—the Power of Death.

For some time past the Queen’s health had been steadily failing; possibly the excitement of the last few months, Madame de Walmoden, the King’s danger in the storm, the affair of the Prince’s income, and lastly the émeute at the birth of his child, had been all too much for her, yet her death as will be seen was mainly the result of her own fault, the foolish concealment of a malady.

On Wednesday, the 9th of November, 1737, the Queen was taken ill while superintending the arrangements of her new library attached to St. James’s Palace—the library is now pulled down. She described her complaint as the cholic and suffered great pain, Doctor Tesier, the German Physician to the Household, gave her some of a concoction called “Daffy’s Elixir,” and ordered her to bed.

[Pg 262]

Nevertheless, that being a Drawing Room day, and fearing to disappoint the King, and the company, she rose, dressed and attended the function.

Lord Hervey describes the following conversation with her when he entered the rooms:

“Is it not intolerable,” she said, “at my age to be plagued with a new distemper? Here is that nasty cholic I had at Hampton Court come again.”

She looked extremely ill, and telling him the incidents of the morning Lord Hervey became alarmed.

“For God’s sake, Madam,” he said, “go to your room, what have you to do here?”

She went and talked a little to the people and then came back again to Hervey.

“I am not able to entertain people,” she said.

“Would to God,” he replied, impatiently, “the King would have done talking of the ‘Dragon of Wantley,’ and release you!”

This was a new silly farce, which no doubt just suited the King who was for ever talking about it. It was a burlesque on the Italian Opera, by Henry Carey, and first played at Covent Garden the 26th October, 1737.

At last the King had said his last word on this entertaining subject and left, giving the Queen the chance which both she and Lord Hervey desired, for her to get away.

CAROLINE, QUEEN OF GEORGE II, AND THE YOUNG DUKE OF CUMBERLAND

The King, however, as he passed her, reminded her that she had not spoken to the Duchess of[Pg 263] Norfolk, and she went back and said a few words to her. This was the last person she ever spoke to in public. She retired, went at once to bed, and grew steadily worse.

The King, however, was not at all alarmed, indeed his courageous wife did all she could to reassure him, and he went off in the evening to play cards with Lady Deloraine. When, however, he returned late, the condition of the Queen so alarmed him that he sent off for another physician, Doctor Broxholme, Ranby, the King’s house surgeon, being already there, principally for bleeding purposes apparently.

These learned doctors, who all along regarded her symptoms as those of cholic, could think of nothing better to give her than usquebaugh, i.e., whiskey—which seemed to do her as much good as the many nostrums which were afterwards administered. Having tried such things as Daffy’s Elixir, mint water, usquebaugh, snake root, and “Sir Walter Raleigh’s Cordial”—which appears to have been some remedy of the great explorer’s which had survived to that time—the doctors, in the fashion of the day, decided to bleed the Queen, and the ever-ready Ranby was ordered to draw off twelve ounces of blood.

The King, now thoroughly alarmed, commenced to show great anxiety, and insisted on lying in his night-gown, i.e., dressing gown, outside the Queen’s bed all night, so that he greatly inconvenienced[Pg 264] both her and himself, as he could not sleep, and the poor sufferer could not turn in bed.

The diary of the Queen’s illness may be summarised as follows:

Thursday, November 18th.

The Queen was bled again early in the morning, and lost twelve ounces, which abated her fever. As the King left her to go to his own side of the Palace, she grew very despondent, and told her daughter Caroline that no matter what they did she would die. “Poor Caroline,” she added to her daughter, who was ailing, “you are very ill, too; we shall soon meet again in another place.”

Growing better in the morning the King determined to hold a Levee, and was very particular about having his new lace cuffs sewn on his shirt, as the Foreign Ministers were coming. Sir Robert Walpole was at his country seat, Houghton, in Norfolk, and knew nothing of the Queen’s illness. This day there was some talk of sending for him, and the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hervey both wrote.

This evening the Queen said to her daughter Caroline and Lord Hervey, who was with her—he seems to have hardly left her—“I have an ill which nobody knows of.” No particular significance was however attached to this remark.

This night, two more physicians were called in, Sir Hans Sloan, and Dr. Hulst, who, still treating her for cholic and an internal stoppage, ordered her[Pg 265] blisters and aperients; the latter, like everything else she took, she brought up.

Friday, November 11th.

Early in the morning the Queen was again “blooded” for fever. Her bad symptoms remained the same. This day the Prince of Wales, hearing of his mother’s illness, came to Carlton House in Pall Mall from Kew, and Lord Hervey, hearing of this, became much alarmed lest he should call at the Palace and ask for his mother. He flew to the King to ask for instructions—he was the only Lord of the Court allowed near the King and Queen. These were instructions which no doubt gladdened the heart of Lord Hervey:

The King said:

“If the puppy should, in one of his impertinent, affected, airs of duty and affection, dare to come to St. James’s, I order you to go to the scoundrel and tell him I wonder at his impudence to come here; that he has my orders already and knows my pleasure, and bid him to go about his business.”

Very fatherly conduct under the circumstances!

Shortly afterwards while Lord Hervey was sitting with the Duke of Cumberland drinking tea in the Queen’s outer apartment, Lady Pembroke approached and informed them that Lord North had just been there from the Prince of Wales, who had desired her in the Prince’s name to let the King and Queen know that his Royal Highness was greatly distressed to hear of the Queen’s illness and had[Pg 266] come to London to be near her. The only thing which could alleviate his concern was the favour of being allowed to see her.

The Duke, then seventeen, made the following formal answer:

“I am not a proper person, Madam, to take the charge of this message, but there is Lord Hervey, who is the only one of papa’s servants that sees him at present, and is just going to him; if you will deliver it to him, he will certainly let the King know.”

Accordingly, Lady Pembroke repeated the message to Lord Hervey, who took it to the King.

“This,” raved his Majesty, when he received it, “is like one of the scoundrel’s tricks,” and he forthwith sent the following kind answer to his son’s message—written at the suggestion of Lord Hervey, and probably at his dictation also—per Lord North, to whom Lord Hervey read it from the paper, to prevent any of “Cartouche’s Gang,” as the Queen called her son’s party, from garbling it. The message was as follows:—

“I have acquainted the King with the message sent to Lady Pembroke, and his Majesty has ordered me to say that in the present situation and circumstances his Majesty does not think fit that the Prince should see the Queen, and therefore expects that he should not come to St. James’s.”

This was considered far too mild by the King.

But the state of the Queen’s mind towards her[Pg 267] son, even at this unfortunate time, may be gauged by the following incident:

On this Friday afternoon she asked the King whether “The Griff” had sent to ask to see her. “But sooner or later,” she continued, “I am sure we shall be plagued with some message of that kind, because he will think it will have a good air in the world to ask to see me; and perhaps hopes I shall be fool enough to let him come, and give him the pleasure to see the last breath go out of my body, by which means he would have the joy of knowing I was dead five minutes sooner than he could know it in Pall Mall.”

Fine sentiments these, for a mother on her death bed to hold towards her eldest son!

But the whole of this Friday the Queen grew worse hour by hour. But it was on Saturday that the true nature of her illness was discovered, and this by a hint given to Ranby, the Court Surgeon by the King, who then, for the first time, stated that he believed the Queen was suffering from an umbilical rupture, incurred at the birth of Princess Louisa thirteen years before. Incredible as it appears, there is not a question of a doubt but that the Queen had concealed this rupture for all those years simply and solely because if the knowledge of this ailment was bruited about, it would tend to render her objectionable to the King—though it appears he was aware of it—and that she would have died rather than disclose it.

[Pg 268]

Her motive was plainly jealousy of his mistresses.

However, once the hint was given, Ranby, the Surgeon, would not be denied, and insisted on an examination, which she strove by every means in her power to avoid.

When this had been conducted and Ranby was whispering to the King in a corner, she started up in bed:

“I am sure now, you blockhead,” she cried, “you are telling the King I have a rupture.”

“I am so,” answered Ranby, “and there is no more time to be lost, your Majesty has concealed it too long already, and I beg another surgeon may be called in immediately.”

The Queen did not answer, but, lying down, turned her face to the wall and wept. The only time she shed a tear, as the King stated, during her illness.

As Dr. Ranby stated there was little time to be lost; the King sent at once for Dr. Busier,[56] a French surgeon, eighty years old, in whom they all had great confidence, but he not being found, Ranby was sent out to bring in the first surgeon of note he could find. The celebrated Cheselden, Surgeon to the Queen, appears to have been absent.

Ranby returned however with Shipton, an eminent City surgeon, and shortly after, Busier, the French surgeon, arrived, who advised an immediate operation. This was objected to by the other two, and thus probably the Queen’s last chance went.

[Pg 269]

The following may be taken as an example of the hatred which had grown up in the King’s heart against his eldest son. The ever-ready Hervey whispered a suggestion to him on this day which enraged him.

He told him “that he had heard it mentioned among some lawyers” that Richmond Gardens—the Queen’s private estate—would go to the Prince of Wales if his mother died.

So furious did the King become at this suggestion, that he was not satisfied until the Lord Chancellor had been fetched off the Bench to give an opinion on it, which being against the Prince, he communicated it to the Queen to comfort her.

This Saturday evening an operation of a minor character was performed upon the Queen.

The next day, Sunday, the 13th, was a black day; the Queen’s wound began to mortify and all hope was abandoned.

This day she practically took leave of her favourite son:

“As for you, William,” she said, “you know I have always loved you tenderly and placed my chief hope in you.”

She bade him be a support to the King, and not go against his brother.

But it was on this Sunday afternoon that the celebrated interview took place between the King and Queen, which perhaps was the most extraordinary, valedictory conversation between man and wife the world has ever heard of.

[Pg 270]

The Queen had been taking leave of her family; she turned sadly to her husband and drew from her finger a fine ruby ring he had given her at her coronation, and gave it to him back again.

“This is the last thing I have to give you.” she said. “Naked I came to you, naked I go from you. I had everything I ever possessed from you, and to you whatever I have I return. My will you will find a very short one; I give all I have to you.”

She then very solemnly repeated to him advice which she had often given him before; that he should marry again.

The King had been sobbing before; this advice brought on a passion of weeping, amidst which he made this remarkable and most characteristic response:

“Non, j’aurai des maîtresses.”

One would have thought that, King as he was, some one would have hushed him down, but the Queen seems to have very calmly answered:

“Mon Dieu! cela n’empêche pas.”

What can one say of a man and wife who talked thus over a death bed?

The Queen was thought to be dying that day, but she lingered on. On Monday morning, Sir Robert Walpole arrived post haste from Houghton; he had only heard of the Queen’s illness on the previous day owing to the Duke of Newcastle’s neglect in sending the messenger round to the Duke of Grafton first.

[Pg 271]

All Sir Robert’s enemies seemed to have concluded that his power would wane, when the Queen, his patroness and friend, was dead; they did their best to keep him from her at the last. But he arrived long before the Queen died, and one of his first remarks on the situation to Lord Hervey was the following: “Oh, my Lord!” cried Sir Robert, greatly distressed, “if this woman should die what a scene of confusion will here be! Who can tell into what hands the King will fall? or who will have the management of him? I defy the ablest person in this kingdom to foresee what will be the consequence of this great event.”

There was a particularly scandalous rumour prevalent at the Court during this sad time concerning the Prince, which emanated, as usual, from Lord Hervey, who said he heard it from the Duke of Marlborough through one of his—Lord Hervey’s—particular friends, Harry Fox.

The rumour was that the Prince used to sit up half the night at Carlton House, sending messengers continually to the Palace to make enquiries, and eagerly awaiting his mother’s death with remarks like the following:—

“Well, sure, we shall soon have good news; she cannot hold out much longer!”

It may be said at once that Mr. Hamilton, one of the Prince’s Household, contradicted these reports immediately he heard them, and added that the Prince was in the greatest concern for his mother,[Pg 272] which seems by far the more natural and likely state for him to be in.

He was irritated, there can be no doubt, and no wonder at it; the very fact of his being excluded, not only from his mother’s death bed, but from the Palace itself, and every one belonging to his household as well, was calculated to fill him with the bitterest thoughts. The contemplation of the fact that all her other children were there, and that Lord Hervey, his bitterest enemy, was occupying his place by his mother’s pillow, was not likely to bring much calm to his feelings. The only wonder is that he did not insist upon forcing himself into her room.

When Lady Archibald Hamilton was consulted as to the above rumours concerning the Prince’s behaviour, her answer was, “he is very decent.”

But a question was raised—by Lord Hervey again—about the members of the Prince’s Household coming even to the Palace to inquire and remain in the general ante-room in which all inquirers waited for news. The King was at last moved to send a message, by Lord Hervey, to Sir Robert Walpole to ask what was to be done about these messages from the Prince.

Lord Hervey, eager for an additional insult to those the Prince had recently received, was strongly in favour of their being excluded from the Palace. He maintained that they were evading the King’s order not to come into his presence.

[Pg 273]

Sir Robert, however, was far too wise to interfere with them, and sagely advised that they should be left alone.

All through that Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, the Queen grew worse and worse, until, among the people, questions were continually being asked as to whether she had seen a clergyman.

The echoes of these questions reached the Palace, and those about the Queen’s bed began to consider what was to be done. The King in his character of head of the church, had deputed his duties in regard to the appointment of the Bishops to the Queen; he took no interest in such things. Indeed his opinion of Bishops in general, which he freely expressed, was not a high one. He strongly objected to their incomes, which he stated were inconsistent with their preaching.

It appears therefore that the Queen, Sir Robert Walpole—who had no religious convictions whatever—and Mrs. Clayton—Lady Sundon—did most of the appointing of the Spiritual Peers. The Queen herself is described as a Protestant of very broad views.

When then the question began to be canvassed between the King, Sir Robert Walpole, and Lord Hervey as to what was to be done to provide the Queen with a spiritual adviser to see her comfortably out of the world, neither seemed very well prepared to give an opinion on the point, though[Pg 274] all three clearly saw that something must be done to satisfy public opinion and prejudice.

Sir Robert Walpole, however, summed up the matter in the following directions to Princess Amelia:—

“Pray, Madam, let this farce be played: the Archbishop will act it very well. You may bid him be as short as you will. It will do the Queen no hurt, no more than any good; and it will satisfy all the wise and good fools, who will call us all atheists if we don’t pretend to be as great fools as they are.”

So much for Sir Robert’s opinion of the consolations of religion. As for the King, he never waited to see Archbishop Potter, the Primate, but fled hastily from the Queen’s chamber when he heard he was approaching. The observances for which the Bishop was responsible, conveyed nothing to his mind whatever. Potter attended the Queen, night and morning after this Wednesday, but what passed between them is not known.

There was a great deal of inquiry as to whether the Queen would receive the sacrament, “some fools,” according to Lord Hervey, “said the Queen had not religion enough to ask to receive the sacrament.”

The Archbishop maintained a discreet silence on the point, when asked as he came from the sick chamber:

“Has the Queen received?” he parried the[Pg 275] question by replying: “Gentlemen, Her Majesty is in a most heavenly frame of mind.”

But that the visit of the Archbishop had resulted in any reconciliation between the Queen and the Prince of Wales, there is not a trace of evidence, indeed the testimony is all the other way. She could not bear at this time to think that even the gentlemen of his household were in her ante-room, and at last had it cleared of all strangers.

“Will nobody turn these ravens out of the house!” she cried, “who are only there to watch my death, and would gladly tear me to pieces whilst I am alive!”

No, there was, unhappily, no forgiveness nor wish for reconciliation there.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday passed in much the same way as the preceding sad days except that the Queen grew steadily weaker. The King distinguished himself by a mixture of brutality and tenderness towards the dying woman. He scarcely ever left her room, night or day, except when the Archbishop came to offer spiritual consolation.

“How the devil should you sleep when you will never lie still a moment!” he exclaimed on one occasion, when her continual shifting in bed, owing to her ailment and her wound, worried him. But he was equally annoyed when she would lie quite still; looking straight before her as sick persons will at nothing: “Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed irritably, exasperated at her quietness. “What[Pg 276] are you looking at? What makes you fix your eyes like that? Your eyes look like a calf’s when it is going to have its throat cut!”

All this, of course, was very suitable to the decorum of the death-bed of a Queen, but perhaps after all the little man was worn out with the continuous watching.

Then came Sunday, and each hour the Queen grew weaker, so that it came to be a wonder that she had survived the last; but she lingered on until the evening, and then asked Dr. Tesier, her physician:

“How long can this last?”

“I think,” he replied, “that your Majesty will soon be relieved from suffering.”

“The sooner the better,” she answered.

Lord Hervey thus describes the last scene:

“About ten o’clock on Sunday night—the King being in bed and asleep on the floor at the foot of the Queen’s bed, and the Princess Emily in a couch-bed in a corner of the room—the Queen began to rattle in her throat; and Mrs. Purcel, giving the alarm that she was expiring, all in the room started up, Princess Caroline was sent for and Lord Hervey, but before the last arrived the Queen was just dead. All she said before she died was:

“I have now got an asthma. Open the window.” Then she added:

“Pray.”

[Pg 277]

Upon which the Princess Emily began to read some prayers, of which she scarcely repeated ten words when the Queen expired. The Princess Caroline held a looking-glass to her lips, and, finding there was not the least damp upon it, cried: “’Tis over!”

The King kissed the face and hands of the lifeless body several times, but in a few minutes left the Queen’s apartment.

Thus died Caroline, by some called “The Illustrious,” by some even “The Great,” but whose character was such a mixture of great and little things that it is most difficult to give an accurate estimate of its virtues or vices.

That she began well as a young girl cannot be doubted; she was beautiful and brilliant, and entered life with the very best intentions. Indeed, not one word has ever been said against her character as a wife.

Perhaps the very greatest misfortune which ever happened to her was to have married George Augustus, Electorial Prince of Hanover, and therefore in due course to have become Queen of England.

Perhaps as the consort of the Prince of some petty German State she might have shone as a wife and mother, and brought up her children with good honest affection.

As it was, she early fell under the influence of such men as Sir Robert Walpole—soulless, godless. No, not godless, because their God was Ambition,[Pg 278] before which no sacrifice was too great, Honour, Truth, or even the lives of men.

Surely poor Caroline must have fallen far, when she adopted as her constant companion, such a man as Lord Hervey.

But whatever good there was in her—and there was much—seems to have been choked and hidden by her greed for Power, which even led her to pander to her little contemptible husband’s vices.

Her conduct to her eldest son was without excuse, unless her separation of fourteen years from him can be regarded in that light; but it is much more likely that the arrival of the handsome boy, Prince William, had more to do with her forgetfulness.

Unhappily, there is very little doubt that she died unreconciled to Frederick, and that moreover she desired no reconciliation. Had there been any such reconciliation, it would have been made public at the time when such verses as the following were floating about.

Lord Chesterfield wrote an epitaph to the Queen in these words:—

The above bitter lines, in exceedingly bad taste, are only valuable as regards the two last, which clearly state—and Lord Chesterfield was in a position to know—that she did not forgive her son at the last.

Pope, too, who seems, like the majority, to have been on the side of the Prince, concludes another poem on the subject in the following ironical words:

These are sage Sarah of Marlborough’s reflexions, none too charitable, on the Queen’s death:

“1737. Our Bishops are now about to employ hands to write the finest character that ever was heard of—Queen Caroline; who, as it is no treason, I freely own that I am glad she is dead. For to get money, that has proved of no manner of use to her, and to support Sir Robert in all his arbitrary injustice, she brought this nation on the very brink of ruin, and has endangered the succession of her own family, by raising so high a dissatisfaction in the whole nation, as there is to them all, and by giving so much power to France, whenever they[Pg 280] think fit to make use of it, who will have no mercy upon England.

“1737. His Majesty thinks he has lost the greatest politician that ever was born, and one that did him the greatest service that was possible. Though everybody else that knows the truth must acknowledge that it was quite the contrary. For my own part it is demonstration to me, that nothing could have put this nation and family in danger but the measures of the Queen and Sir Robert. To my knowledge, most of the weeping ladies that went to the King, have expressed the same opinion of the Queen formerly that I have described.

“1737-8. Upon her great understanding and goodness there comes out nauseous panegyrics every day, that make one sick, so full of nonsense and lies, that there is one very remarkable from a Dr. Clarke, in order to have the first bishoprick that falls, and I daresay he will have it, though there is something extremely ridiculous in the panegyric; for after he has given her the most perfect character that ever any woman had or can have, he allows that:

“‘She had sacrificed her reputation to the great and the many, to show her duty to the King, and her love to her country.’ These are the clergyman’s words exactly, which allows she did wrong things, but it was to please the King; which is condemning him. I suppose he must mean some good she did to her own country, for I know of none[Pg 281] she did in England, unless raking from the public deserves a panegyric.

“1737-8. It seems to me as if her ghost did everything by their saying, whatever is to be done, was the Queen’s opinion should be so; and everything is compassed by that means by Sir Robert, without any trouble at all; but if ——[57] should happen to have an opinion of any person that is living, perhaps they may get the better of the ghost.”

Caroline was buried with great pomp in a new vault in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel, in Westminster Abbey, on Saturday, the 17th of December, 1737. By her side when his time came was also laid George the Second. An interesting incident in this connection was related to the Right Honourable J. Wilson, compiler of “Hervey’s Memoirs,” by a Mr. Milman, Prebendary of Westminster.

“George the Second, as the last proof of his attachment,” he said, “gave directions that his remains and those of Queen Caroline should be mingled together. Accordingly the two coffins were placed in a large stone sarcophagus, and one side of each of the wooden coffins withdrawn. This was a tradition at Westminster Abbey, of which I myself have seen the confirmation, in my opinion conclusive; and as the Royal vault in Westminster Abbey may never be again opened, it may be curious to preserve the record.

“On the occasion of the removal, in 1837, of a stillborn child of the Duke of Cumberland (King of Hanover) to Windsor, a Secretary of State’s Warrant (which is necessary) arrived empowering the Dean and Chapter to open the vault. I was[Pg 283] requested by the Dean to superintend the business, which took place by night.

“In the middle of the vault, towards the farther end, stands the large stone sarcophagus, and against the wall are still standing the two sides of the coffins which were withdrawn. I saw and examined them closely, and have no doubt of the fact. The vault contains only the family of George the Second.” H. H. Milman.

The King seems to have shown the utmost grief for his wife, and at first to a great extent to have secluded himself. A weird incident in connection with this period is related by Wentworth in a letter to Lord Strafford after the Queen’s funeral.

“Saturday night, between one and two o’clock, the King waked out of a dream, very uneasy, and ordered the vault, where the Queen is, to be broken open immediately, and have the coffin also opened; and went in a hackney chair through the Horse Guards to Westminster Abbey and back again to bed. I think it is the strangest thing that could be.”

He speaks of it again in another letter.

“The story about the King was true, for Mr. Wallop heard of one who saw him go through the Horse Guards on Saturday night, with ten footmen before the chair. They went afterwards to Westminster Abbey.”

There is no doubt whatever from the above account that the King was suffering from that awful visitation which comes so often to persons[Pg 284] who have recently lost a dear one by death; the terrible fear that the beloved has been buried alive. Only those who have been victims to this haunting fear—which is far more common than is imagined—can give an adequate description of its terrors.

Morbid as the thought is, the outcome no doubt of an exhausted nervous system, where deep grief has followed perhaps the wearing anxiety of watching a long illness, still it is not by any means restricted to those of an imaginative tendency, but comes to all temperaments alike. It would be perhaps quite safe to say that this was what made King George undertake his midnight journey, and give the order for the opening of the Queen’s tomb.

But deep as his sorrow was for his wife, it did not keep him from his old ways. In a very short time Walmoden was brought over, and pending her arrival Lady Deloraine acted the part of understudy. “People must wear old gloves until they can get new ones,” was Sir Robert Walpole’s comment to the Princesses on this arrangement, to which he had not only given his hearty approval, but as far as Madame Walmoden was concerned, strongly urged upon the King, as a duty he owed to his people to save his health breaking down under his grief, to bring her over.

To Lord Hervey Sir Robert expressed himself more fully on this subject. “I’ll bring Madame Walmoden over,” he said, “and I’ll have nothing to do with your girls,” i.e., the Princesses. “I was[Pg 285] for the wife against the mistress, but I’ll be for the mistress against the daughters.”

It is needless to say that after this remark Lord Hervey and Sir Robert Walpole fell out.

Meanwhile the Prince of Wales appears to have remained in his position of ostracism, and apparently took no part in his mother’s funeral ceremonies. The Princess Amelia acted as chief mourner, and the King did not appear at all.

With the Princess, Frederick seems to have lived at Norfolk House very comfortably, coming over to Carlton House for any occasion of ceremony.

The popularity of the Prince seemed to grow, as he lost favour with his father, and it is not at all to be wondered at, as he possessed a natural geniality which endeared him to all. A story is related of him in connection with a Lord Mayor’s Show, which is very typical.

Waiting to see the pageant—which was the occasion probably which occurred during the year of mourning—the Prince of Wales went among the crowd in Cheapside to see the procession return to the Guildhall. Being recognised by some members of the Saddlers’ Company, he was invited into their stand hard by, and there made himself so agreeable that he was, there and then, elected their Master for the year; an honour which he accepted with much pleasure.

This period of mourning was, however, after a time relieved of much of its tristness as far as the[Pg 286] King was concerned, by the lively society of his mistresses, with whom the Princesses appeared to have associated in perfect harmony.

One night at Kensington Palace, just as Lady Deloraine was about to sit down to cards with the King, one of the Princesses pulled her chair away and she came down with a bump on the floor.

It was bad enough to be laughed at by the Princesses, but far worse to have little George guffawing at her with the knowledge in her mind that she was only playing second fiddle to the Walmoden.

Lady Deloraine waited her opportunity, and later, when the King was about to sit down, pulled his chair away, with the view of getting her own back again. The result, however, was not at all what she expected; the sacred person of his Majesty is said to have been much bruised, and so far from regarding the performance as a joke, he excluded Lady Deloraine from his Court from that time forth, and the Walmoden, now created Countess of Yarmouth, reigned henceforth supreme till the King’s death many years after. Many will recollect a similar anecdote in similar circumstances in our own day.

The next event, however, in the life of the Prince of Wales, following quickly on the death of his mother, was the birth of his eldest son, afterwards to fill the throne of England as George the Third. This took place at Norfolk House, St. James’s, on[Pg 287] the 4th of June (new style), 1738, while Carlton House was still under repair.

The birth was premature, and the child very frail, so much so that he was baptized on the day of his birth.

The Poet Laureate seized this opportunity of the birth of a Prince in the direct line of succession to the throne to become drivelling. He congratulated Nature that she had first amused herself by sketching a girl—Princess Augusta—by which bit of practice she had enabled herself to produce the wonderful baby George!

Truly this Laureate was a person of some imagination!

The Corporation of London appear to have gone to the King direct and in a talented address pointed out to him the fact—which perhaps otherwise might have been overlooked—that this joyful occasion was the result of the alliance of the baby’s parents!

The Bath Municipality seem to have also done something in this way to distinguish themselves, by congratulating the Prince of Wales on his own birth, to which they owed the sight of the royal presence in which they stood.

It may be mentioned here that on his first birthday little Prince George was the object of a curious attention.

Sixty of the children of the aristocracy, dressed as little soldiers with drums beating and colours flying, entered the Palace and “elected their little Prince[Pg 288] as their Colonel.” This important event concluded, they kissed the baby’s hand and departed.

The Prince and his wife—to whom he was devoted—seem to have had a variety of residences. Norfolk House, Leicester House—formerly the residence of his father when Prince of Wales—situated in Leicester Square on a site very near where the Empire Theatre now stands; Carlton House in Pall Mall, a house at Kew, and a Palace at Cliefden, built by Villiers, situated on a terrace overlooking the River Thames.

Here at this latter house the Prince seems to have lived the life of a country squire, and a lover of the river. He distributed prizes at rowing matches, and mixed freely with the people of the part. His dignity did not prevent him stopping to chat with a labourer at his cottage door, or even to enter in, and do what few Princes would condescend to do, sit down and share the cottager’s plain meal with him.

He would play cricket on the lawn at Cliefden with his children, when they were old enough, or stroll along the banks of the river of which he was very fond, and his companions were not always of the exalted order one would expect.

He was devoted to art, and loved talent wherever he found it.

“Lord Sir,” exclaimed a simple country servant to his master one day at Maidenhead, “I have seen the Prince of Wales accompanied by his nobles.”

[Pg 289]

The “nobles” in question were two Scottish authors, Thompson and Mallett, neither of them distinguished by the neatness of their attire.

It was alas! on the lawn at Cliefden, that Frederick received a blow, some say from a cricket ball, others while at a game of tennis, which was the indirect cause of his death some years after.

Here at Cliefden, and at his other residences, were to be seen his boon companions; the Earl of Chesterfield, courtier, politician, satirist and mimic. Lady Huntingdon, who left his world for Whitfield’s, and whose name may be seen in almost every town in England on Dissenting Chapels to the present day; Bathurst, Queensberry, the clever Pulteney, Cobham, Pitt, the Granvilles, Lyttleton, the prig Bubb Doddington, whose one aim in life was to be a lord. There were the two Hedges—(Charles, who wrote epigrams)—erratic Lord Baltimore and peevish Lord Carnarvon, Townshend, whom George the Second much objected to, and his wife as well—the Townshends seem to have been very staunch to the Prince—chatty Lord North, the Earl of Middlesex, who allowed his wife’s name to be coupled with the Prince’s, although the lady’s descriptions “short and dark, like a winter’s day,” and “as yellow as a November’s morning,” were hardly those to fascinate an artistic nature such as Frederick’s. Yet she certainly took part in the “Judgment of Paris” in 1745 as one of the Graces. Last of all to be mentioned, there was that “stuttering[Pg 290] puppy,” as George the Second called him, Johnny Lumley, brother of the Earl of Scarborough.

The maids of honour in attendance on the Princess of Wales, however, must have been very different to that charming trio, “the Swiss,” “Belladine,” and the “Schatz,” who waited upon Queen Caroline when Princess of Wales.

They do not appear to have been popular in the Prince’s household at any rate, for his head coachman made a most curious will concerning them, in which he left his considerable savings to his son, on condition that he never married a maid of honour! A compliment to those ladies which they no doubt appreciated.

Among the many amusements with which the Prince and Princess delighted their friends, private theatricals had their place, Cato being played on one occasion at Leicester House, when the young Prince George Frederick had grown sufficiently into boyhood to take the part of Portius, in which he was coached by Quin, who boasted he “had taught the boy to speak”; the boy who was afterwards to be George the Third.

For the little theatre at Cliefden, Thompson, a pensioner of Frederick’s—and he had many—wrote his play “Alfred.”

The Prince’s children came quickly, and Frederick showed himself to be a tender father. There had been that sad episode years before, when he had grieved so deeply—so deeply that his mother and sisters had[Pg 291] said they had not believed him capable of such sorrow—over the death of that little child who had no right to have been there at all, Anne Vane’s and his son.

That sad note had struck the one most tender chord in the despised Prince’s nature, the depths of which his mother and sisters could not sound; the love of little children. When his own grew up around him, that great fount of love welled up and covered many of his sins, as we know that love will do.

This is what is said of him at that time:

“Notwithstanding this, he played the father and husband well. He loved to have his children with him, always appeared most happy when in the bosom of his family, left them with regret, and met them again with smiles, kisses and tears.”

And this was the nature which Queen Caroline could not understand; was it not one full of love to shower on some one? Had he but had the chance of a mother’s full love in those cold years of his childhood spent in Hanover, is it not reasonable to think that his whole nature would have been altered, and that he might have so wound himself around Caroline’s heart that even her handsome younger son could never have loosened those tendrils of affection.

But alas! there were those fourteen years of separation, when the boy was left practically to his own resources to grow up without the tenderness of a mother’s love to guide him.

[Pg 292]

How different was his conduct as a father to that of his own father, who candidly admitted that he could not bear to have his children playing about in the same room with him.

But in this happy time of a young father’s life, there were black clouds gathering over the Prince’s household and this is how the old Duchess of Marlborough speaks of them in her matter of fact way:

“They have found a way in the City to borrow thirty thousand pounds for the Prince at ten per cent. interest to pay his crying debts to trades-people. But I doubt that sum won’t go very far. But they have got it though great pains was taken to hinder it.

“The salaries in the Prince’s family are twenty-five thousand pounds a year, besides a good deal of expense at Cliefden in building and furniture. And the Prince and Princess’s allowance for their clothes is six thousand pounds a year each. I wish his Royal Highness so well that I am sorry there is such an increase of expense more than in former times, where there was more money a great deal, and really I think it would have been more for the Prince’s interest, if his counsellers had thought it proper to have advised him to live only like a great man, and to give the reasons for it; and in doing so he would have made a better figure, and have been safer; for nobody that does not get by it themselves can possibly think the contrary method a right one.” The Duchess of Marlborough to Lord Stair, 1738.

[Pg 293]

But though the pall of debt hung heavy over the Prince, yet there was hope ahead, for even as far back as 1737—it must have been the very end of the year—Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, writes to Lord Stair:—

“The courtiers talk much of a reconciliation. If there is any design to compass that, surely it was as ill-judged as everything else to publish such a character of the King’s son all over England.”[58]

From a wall of an alcove in the Prince of Wales’s garden at Cliefden, Bucks.

M.L.
Nov. 2nd, 1749.

It has been said that Frederick possessed artistic tastes and loved to gather round him men of talent and wit. He was also devoted to music, and gave frequent private concerts at Leicester House in which he himself took part.

One of Frederick’s favourites, a man devoted to music like himself, was Horace Walpole’s brother, Edward—afterwards Sir Edward—who frequently performed with him at these concerts. The Prince, however, made the mistake of introducing politics at these meetings, and on one occasion while walking about the room with his arm round Edward Walpole’s shoulder, he endeavoured to persuade him to keep from the House of Commons when a certain Army Bill was under discussion, this being a measure the Prince’s party wished to defeat. Walpole, however, declined to give the required promise, and when the Prince pressed him for his motive answered:—

“You will forgive me, sir, if I give you my reasons?”

“I will,” replied the Prince with an oath, according to the prevailing fashion.

“Sir, you will not,” replied Walpole with another[Pg 295] oath, “yet I will tell you. I will not stay away because your father and mine are for the question.”

This was just the answer the Prince might have expected from a son of the man who, perhaps, was one of his greatest enemies. Nevertheless, he flung away from Walpole, while one of the Princesses who was at the harpsichord cried out: “Bravo, Mr. Walpole.”

This made matters worse, and the Prince was thoroughly incensed. Nevertheless, Mr. Edward Walpole duly appeared at the next concert with his violoncello, but the Prince had not apparently forgiven him. At any rate, no doubt, by way of a joke, he affected to regard him as one of the hired musicians at the concert.

Edward Walpole, however, did not take the matter as a joke, but rushed to the bell and ordered his servants to be called to take away his violoncello. He would be slighted, he remarked, by no man.

The Prince, seeing that he had gone too far, tried to pacify him, but Walpole would listen neither to him nor to the peers and commoners who tried to bring him back.

As might be expected, the Prince apologised, and Walpole was at last persuaded to bring his violoncello to the concerts.

But the house, of course, reeked with the politics of the Opposition, and in a very short time Edward Walpole was again solicited by some follower of the[Pg 296] Prince to join his party. Edward Walpole then wrote his well-known letter to the Prince in which he asks him, how he would wish him to behave when he himself was King? In the same manner would he behave while George the Second reigned.

“He is an honest man,” the Prince commented as he read it, “I will keep this letter.”

He did keep it, and it was given many years after to George the Third by his mother.

The Princess of Wales, it cannot be doubted, was very much beloved by her husband. He had quite forgotten that early love affair with his cousin, Wilhelmina, and it is said was never tired of appearing in public with Augusta, that the people might frequently see and admire her; and admire her they certainly did.

Even sharp-tongued old Sarah of Marlborough had a kind word for her.

“The Princess speaks English much better than any of the family that have been here so long,” she wrote to her confidant, Lord Stair, “appears good-natured and civil to everybody: never saying anything to offend, as the late Queen did perpetually, notwithstanding her great understanding and goodness.”[59]

Among other artistic accomplishments Frederick wrote poetry, and the following verses addressed to his wife under the name of “Sylvia” could only have been written by a very devoted husband and lover:—

[Pg 297]

SONG.

The Charms of Sylvia.[60]

By the Prince of Wales on the Princess.

[Pg 298]

The following song, according to Horace Walpole, was written immediately after the Battle of Fontenoy, and was addressed to Lady Catherine Hanmer, Lady Falconberg, and Lady Middlesex, who were to act the three goddesses with Frederick, Prince of Wales, in Congreve’s mask “The Judgment of Paris,” whom he was to represent, and Prince Lobkowitz, Mercury.

SONG.

By Frederick, Prince of Wales.

1.

2.

3.

[Pg 299]

4.

5.

It may here be stated that in the year 1735 there appeared in Paris a silly book which was attributed—by his enemies—to Prince Frederick, or said to be “inspired” by him, if that term could be applied to a children’s fairy tale, for so it was regarded for many years in France. It was translated into English and published under the title of “The Adventures of Prince Titi,” and was supposed to be a travestie of the King and Queen.

As, however, no evidence exists to connect it with the Prince of Wales, it deserves no further comment.

As an example of the way in which Prince Frederick has been misrepresented in history, Dr. Doran’s comment on the latter of the two above songs in his “Queens of the House of Hanover”[Pg 300] will be instructive; he says with reference to the French song addressed by the Prince to the ladies with whom he was going to act in “The Judgment of Paris”:

“It was full of praise of late and deep drinking, of intercourse with the fair,” an expression liable to be misunderstood, “of stoical contempt for misfortune, of expressed indifference, whether Europe had one or many tyrants, and of a pococurantism for all things and forms, except his chère Sylvie, by whom he was good-naturedly supposed to mean his wife.”

Now Horace Walpole records the fact that “Sylvie” was the Princess of Wales, and he certainly cannot be credited with an abundance of good-natured feeling towards the Prince.

If Dr. Doran thought all he wrote, then—Dr. Doran’s knowledge of French—at least the Prince’s French—could not have been perfect.

The English verses are not good; he was bred abroad; but it is quite clear that the object of the Prince’s love-rhapsodies in the French song is his wife, though those rhapsodies are expressed in the language of the time, none too delicately. Still for a Prince to fall into passionate verse over the delightful attractions of his wife is not a matter to be jeered at; as far as we are permitted to search into the private doings of such exalted personages, history certainly conveys the impressions in divers places, that their habit was usually to fall into[Pg 301] passionate rhapsodies over somebody else’s wife, a custom which has not been without honour in our own time.

As regards our unfortunate Prince, nobody appears to have thought him of sufficient importance to write any sort of connected history about him. When he had to be mentioned, the faithful historian appears to have dived either into Hervey’s “Memoirs” or those of Horace Walpole, and to have taken all he found there as Gospel truth without waiting to consider that both those gentlemen were reckoned among the Prince’s enemies; enemies who were not sufficiently gentlemen to treat him with common fairness.

We have but to read the satires and pamphlets of the time, many of them written or inspired by at any rate one of the above staunch adherents of the Prince’s parents, to see how much of fairness and “noblesse” was meted out to a political enemy in those days even by men of education and supposed refinement.

Under the date of 1748-9, Sarah Duchess of Marlborough writes as follows to Lord Stair:—

“The Prince of Wales has done, I think, a very right thing, for he has declared to everybody that though he did design to bring the business of his revenue into the House, he is now resolved not to do it, it being but a trifle, and what could not succeed after losing a question of so much consequence for the preservation of the nation.[63]

[Pg 302]

“But I think all this prudence will be of no use to prevent France settling this country as that King pleases, after we are still made poorer by what Sir Robert has done, and will do further.”

It is much more likely that the Prince gave up the idea of appealing to Parliament concerning his income, because he had come to, or was about to come to, some agreement with his father on this much worried subject.

The Duchess writes again to Lord Stair in 1739 about the Prince: “I hear some people find fault with the Prince’s having voted in the House of Lords with the minority; but I can see no reason for that. For surely he was as much at liberty to do it as any other Peer; and I can’t comprehend why he should not give his vote in anything that so manifestly was for the good of England.”

This apparently concerned the Convention with Spain.

The following is a word picture of the Prince at the period of 1740, which appears a very vivid one. It was contributed anonymously about the year 1830 to the New European Magazine, and was evidently culled from some older publication. It depicts the Prince during a visit to old “Bartlemy Fair” in Smithfield.

“The multitude behind was impelled violently forwards, and a broad blaze of red light, issuing from a score of flambeaux, streamed into the air. Several voices were loudly shouting “Room there[Pg 303] for Prince Frederick! make way for the Prince!” And there was that long sweep heard to pass over the ground which indicates the approach of a grand and ceremonious train. Presently the pressure became much greater, the voices louder, the light stronger, and as the train came onward, it might be seen that it consisted firstly of a party of the Yeomen of the Guard, clearing the way; then several more of them bearing flambeaux, and flanking the procession; while in the midst of all appeared a tall, fair, and handsome young man, having something of a plump foreign visage, seemingly about four and thirty years of age, dressed in a ruby-coloured frock coat, very richly guarded with gold lace, and having his long flowing hair curiously curled over his forehead and at the sides, and finished with a very large bag and courtly queue behind. The air of dignity with which he walked; the blue ribbon and Star and Garter with which he was decorated; the small, three cornered, silk court-hat which he wore while all around him were uncovered; the numerous suite as well of gentlemen as of guards, which marshalled him along; the obsequious attention of a short stout person who, by his flourishing manner, seemed to be a player; all these particulars indicated that the amiable Frederick, Prince of Wales, was visiting Bartholomew Fair by torchlight, and that Manager Rich was introducing his royal guest to all the amusements of the place.”

[Pg 304]

To turn to another subject, it will be interesting at the present time to note the strength of the British Navy in this year 1740. Also those of France and Spain. The information is contained in “Minutes of the Cabinet” volume 4 of Lord Hervey’s Memoirs, page 552 (Edition 1848).

An Account of the present Naval Strength of England.

With Mr. Haddock[64] in the Mediterranean thirty-two ships—twenty-two of the line, five twenty-gun ships, three fire ships, two bomb vessels. All these are at present with Haddock to defend Minorca except four left at Gibraltar with Captain William Hervey, brother to Lord Hervey, which properly belong to (Sir Challoner) Ogle’s squadron of ten, who went with the other six to join Haddock. Balchen and Maine had ten to cruise on the north-west of Spain, near Cape Finisterre and Ferrol; but Maine’s five are returning home to refit.

At home there are thirty ships for the Channel, to guard our own coasts and protect this country; but twenty only being manned, one third of the nominal strength is absolutely useless.

In the West Indies there are now with Vernon nine ships of the line, five fire ships, and two bomb vessels; and dispersed in the West Indies about sixteen ships more of different sizes.

[Pg 305]

SPANISH STRENGTH IN EUROPE.

At Carthagena five ships of the line, commanded by Clavijo, who commanded the Cales (Cadiz) squadron last year. The Cales squadron, nine ships of the line, three frigates, commanded by Pintada.

The Ferrol Squadron, six ships of the line, and the three Assogne ships refitting, and sixteen thousand men in Galicia.[65]

On the Catalonia side of Spain several transport ships, three men of war, seven thousand men in Majorca; and another body of troops, commanded by Count Celemis, in Catalonia, ready for an embarcation at Barcelona, which Spain dare not hazard for fear of Haddock’s Squadron ready in those seas to intercept them. Their strength, or rather their weakness in Spain, uncertain.

FRENCH STRENGTH IN EUROPE.

France has at Brest, ready to sail, commanded by Monsieur D’Antin, a squadron of twenty-two ships; the lowest accounts say eighteen; and at Toulon twelve, all great ships from fifty-four to seventy-four guns.

In 1741 the antagonism between the Prince and his father had not subsided and party spirit was strong, the followers of the King, such as Hervey and others, did not scruple, as they had never scrupled, to malign the Prince. There were, in theory, two Courts, the King’s and the Prince’s, the followers of both using the term “going to Court” in speaking of their visits to their respective masters. Walpole tells a story which bears upon the point.

“Somebody who belonged to the Prince of Wales said he was going to Court. It was objected, that he ought to say ‘going to Carlton House’: that the only Court is where the King resides. Lady Pomfret, with her paltry air of learning and absurdity, said: ‘Oh, Lord! is there no Court in England but the King’s? sure there are many more! There is the Court of Chancery, the Court of Exchequer, the Court of King’s Bench, etc.’ ‘Don’t you love her? Lord Lincoln does her daughter.’”

He refers to Lord Lincoln, one of the King’s party, and a nephew of the Duke of Newcastle, one of the Ministers.

[Pg 307]

“Not only his uncle-duke,” continues Horace Walpole, speaking of Lord Lincoln, “but even his Majesty is fallen in love with him. He talked to the King at his levée without being spoken to. That was always thought high treason, but I don’t know how the gruff gentleman liked it.”

The “gruff” gentleman was of course the King.

The faction fever between the King’s party and that of his son reached its height, however, in the year 1742, when the Prince’s party combined with other opponents of the Government and overthrew the great Sir Robert Walpole after his many years of office. So Queen Caroline’s trusted minister and adviser fell at last.

He was succeeded by Lord Wilmington, who practically carried on the same policy as his predecessor.

In this year died Lady Sundon, who had been Mistress of the Robes to Queen Caroline and one of her confidantes.

“Lord Sundon is in great grief,” writes Horace Walpole. “I am surprised, for she has had fits of madness ever since her ambition met such a check by the death of the Queen. She had great power with her, though the Queen affected to despise her, but had unluckily told her, or fallen into her power, by some secret. I was saying to Lady Pomfret ‘to be sure she is dead very rich,’ she replied with some warmth, ‘She never took money.’ When I came home I mentioned this to Sir Robert. ‘No,’ said[Pg 308] he, ‘but she took jewels. Lord Pomfret’s place of Master of the Horse to the Queen was bought of her for a pair of diamond earrings, of fourteen hundred pounds value.’

“One day she wore them at a visit at old Marlboro’s; as soon as she was gone, the duchess said to Lady Mary Wortley, ‘How can that woman have the impudence to go about in that bribe?’

“‘Madam,’ said Lady Mary, ‘how would you have people know where wine is to be sold unless there is a sign hung out?’

“Sir Robert told me that in the enthusiasm of her vanity, Lady Sundon had proposed to him to unite with her and govern the kingdom together; he bowed, begged her patronage, but, he said, he thought nobody fit to govern the kingdom but the King and Queen.”

About the period of 1742 rumours of a fresh Stuart rebellion began to permeate the country, and it was probably this fact, together with the Prince of Wales’s popularity with the public, which decided the King to come to a reconciliation with him. There was, however, now no Sir Robert to apply his wonderful statesmanship in bringing about the matter with the finesse and forethought he always displayed in cases of this sort, though it must be admitted that his arts had always been directed against the Prince.

However, the matter was done, though clumsily. It was commenced by a gentle hint given to the[Pg 309] Prince that a letter from him to his father would be acceptable.

This proposition does not appear to have met at first with the Prince’s favour, he, possibly, thinking that the King owed him some reparation, and that the first step should come from him. But he eventually put his feelings in his pocket and wrote his father the desired letter.

This letter reached the King late at night, and he lost no time in responding to it; he expressed his wish to receive the Prince on the following day.

Frederick repaired to St. James’s as desired, attended by five of his suite. He was received by his father in one of the drawing-rooms, and the interview must have been an exceedingly interesting one for the onlookers from its importance, but its duration was bound within the limits of the strictest formality.

“How does the Princess do? I hope she is well,” was the sole scrap of conversation which passed King George’s lips, if chroniclers of the time can be credited. The Prince kissed his father’s hand, answered the question concerning his wife’s health, and—withdrew.

There appears, however, to have been a little burying of the hatchet on both sides. The King spoke to one or two of the Prince’s followers. The Prince unbent, and addressed a few courtesies to his father’s attending Ministers, and the thing was over.

[Pg 310]

The reconciliation, however, appears to have been universally regarded as an accomplished fact, and the Gentleman’s Magazine, in its next issue, thus records it:—

Wednesday, February 17th, 1742.

“Several messages having passed yesterday between his Majesty and the Prince of Wales, his Royal Highness waited on his Majesty at St. James’s about one o’clock this day, and met with a most gracious reception. Great joy was shown in all parts of the kingdom upon this happy reconciliation.”

This reconciliation is said to have been worth an additional fifty thousand pounds a year to the Prince, and Horace Walpole remarks on it.

“He will have money now to tune Glover and Thompson and Dodsley again, et spes et ratio studiorum in Cæsare tantum.”

The whole of the Royal Family went after this together to the Duchess of Norfolk’s—the old house by the river, no doubt—the streets being “illuminated and bonfired.” There were pageants and reviews to celebrate the reconciliation, and the Prince and Princess made a sort of triumphal progress through the city to show themselves to their good friends the Corporation; then entering their barges at the Tower steps they finished up the day in a very sensible manner by dining at Greenwich, where they no doubt partook of whitebait and turtle.

Those processions of gilded barges on the Thames, accompanied as they generally were by music, must[Pg 311] have been stately sights for the citizens to view, and much missed when the river became too crowded and dirty to be used as a royal highway.

In 1743 died Schulemberg, the mistress of George the First, whom he created Duchess of Kendal. The Emperor of Germany had also for some unstated reason conferred on her the dignity of Princess of Eberstein.

She died at the age of eighty-five, possessed of great wealth, which she bequeathed to Lady Walsingham, generally supposed to be her daughter by George the First.

Lady Walsingham had previously married Lord Chesterfield.

“But, I believe,” remarks Horace Walpole, “that he will get nothing by the Duchess’s death but his wife. She lived in the house with the Duchess”—next door in Grosvenor Square, “where he had played away all his credit.”

But at this time war clouds were hanging over Europe, and King George had espoused the cause of Queen Maria Theresa of Hungary. Very soon his attention was drawn from his eldest son to be centred in this cause, in which his favourite son William took a part.

On the 21st of April, 1743, King George prorogued Parliament, and almost immediately hastened over to Hanover accompanied by his son, William, Duke of Cumberland, and Lord Carteret as Secretary of State, in attendance. The object of this departure was to aid Queen Maria Theresa of Hungary in her struggle against the French and Bavarians, and in so doing to gratify an ambition long cherished by King George to place himself at the head of an allied army. For whatever failings the little King is credited with, and we know he had many—those foiblesses of which we have been so frequently reminded—he was certainly a soldier, and a brave one.

Probably also he had a great desire to establish a reputation as a soldier for his favourite son William, also, that young man having at a very early period displayed a considerable penchant for the military art.

This preference for his brother was very far from gratifying to the Prince of Wales, who would have much liked to have gone to the wars himself, although his training had never been in that direction.

[Pg 313]

But to give him a command was about the last thing that King George would have thought of doing. Such an act would have given his eldest son fresh popularity, which he was far from desiring.

Not only was Frederick denied a command, but he was also excluded from the regency which his father left behind him. Sir Robert Walpole remarked as follows upon it:

“I think the Prince might have been of it, when Lord Gower is. I don’t think the latter more Jacobite than his Royal Highness.” So once more, as far as any active participation in the affairs of the state were concerned, the Prince of Wales was left in the galling position of being on the shelf.

Meanwhile the British troops under the Earl of Stair, had commenced their march towards the end of February into Germany, but appear to have moved with incredible slowness as it was the middle of May before they crossed the Rhine.

Lord Stair—the celebrated correspondent of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough,—appears to have been a very poor sort of a general, and in addition was hampered for want of a proper commissariat, which was not understood in those days.

There appeared to be the same happy-go-lucky state of affairs—which seems to be national and chronic—to which the great Marlborough referred in 1702, by calling his native country: “England that is famous for negligence.”[Pg 314][66] Lord Stair’s army, however, struggled onward, and was joined on the way by some sixteen thousand Hanoverians in British pay, who had been in winter quarters in Liège, and by a few Austrian regiments. Eventually they all arrived at Hochst, between Mayence and Frankfort, and here Lord Stair’s command numbered about forty thousand men.

Meanwhile, the French commander-in-chief, the Maréchal de Noailles, with sixty-thousand men, crossed the Rhine and approached the Southern bank of the River Maine, the northern bank of which was occupied by the British.

It is an extraordinary thing that although these two armies stood facing one another, prepared for battle—a battle which came off very soon—their respective countries had not broken off diplomatic relations with one another.

Horace Walpole refers to it as follows:

“A ridiculous situation! we have the name of War with Spain without the thing, and War with France without the name.”

Lord Stair appears to have entirely lost his head under these circumstances and to have made a series of imbecile marches and countermarches, which thoroughly tired out his horses and men and left him and his army at their conclusion in a worse position than they were before, with the addition that they were exceeding short of food and forage. The French General had entirely out-manœuvred Stair.

At this juncture—19th July, 1743—King George[Pg 315] and his son, the Duke of Cumberland, joined the English army, which was at that time hemmed in in a narrow valley extending from Aschaffenberg to the considerable village of Dettingen on the north bank of the River Maine.

Here, after several counsels of War, it was decided to fall back on Hanau, a town where a magazine of provisions had been established. At this period the horses had but two days’ rations of forage left, all other supplies being cut off by the French.

The difficult retreat was commenced in face of the enemy—on the other bank of the River Maine—who immediately, as might have been expected from such a celebrated General as de Noailles, pontooned the river, and sent twenty-three thousand men across, under his nephew the Duc de Grammont to stop the retreat of the British and their allies at the defile of Dettingen, through which they must pass to reach their supplies at Hanau, sixteen miles further on.

So that the battle of Dettingen may be referred to as a “bread-and-butter” fight on the part of the British, who fought possibly all the better on that account.

The march of the English on Dettingen began before daylight on the 27th of June, the King at first commanding the rear guard, which was considered through ignorance of the movements of the French, to be the point of danger.

When, however, the advance guard was driven in[Pg 316] at Dettingen and French troops came pouring across the river, King George and his son rode along the column to the front, where they appear to have taken supreme command at once.

Now the British Army was in a very tight corner indeed; no sooner had they marched than the Marquis de Noailles, perfectly alive to the situation, sent twelve thousand men to occupy Aschaffenberg in their rear; thus with twenty-three thousand men in a strong entrenched position in their front between them and their stores of food, the river on their left, and a force of twelve thousand in their rear, the position of the British looked pretty hopeless, hemmed in as they were in addition by hills on the right. Across the river a strong force of artillery was posted, which commenced a heavy fire into the left flank of our regiments, mowing down whole ranks. It was a position which at any moment might have been turned into a panic. That it was not turned into a panic and a rout is entirely owing to the courage and military skill of George the Second.

As far as courage was concerned, he was ably seconded by his son the Duke of Cumberland, but as this was his first fight, his military knowledge was nil, and it never shone particularly at any time after.

With all his faults and frailties and “foiblesses,” little King George on this day showed himself to be a skilled soldier, and a brave man. His previous[Pg 317] reputation gained at Oudenarde had not been forgotten by our own poets when he came to England and became Prince of Wales; one of them had thus addressed him on a birthday:—

He had then a well-established reputation for courage, which was no doubt well known to the men he commanded.

The King and his son rode from their station in the rear to the front, and there the former at once deployed the columns into line with the left resting on the river and the right on the slopes of the hills at the other side of the valley. The infantry were in front with the half-starved cavalry in reserve.

The British Army was in presence of perhaps the most accomplished general of his time, Maréchal Noailles, and he had selected his position before Dettingen—an old post village—with consummate judgment.

It had a ravine, the course of a small rivulet running across its front, while its right flank rested on a morass and the river. The only mistake the Maréchal had made was in placing his hot-headed nephew the Duc de Grammont in command of it. This circumstance led to a big stroke of luck in[Pg 318] King George’s favour at the very commencement of the action.

The Duc de Grammont committed the common and deadly error of despising his enemy; believing the advancing force to be but a part of the British Army, he left his entrenchments with the object apparently, of crushing it before its main body came up, but it was in fact the main body, which he had to engage. This advance had a double effect in favour of King George; the French guns across the river, which had been making fearful play on the English ranks, had to cease fire, as the French very soon came in close proximity to their foes, and were as likely to be hit by their own gunners as the English. Therefore our men were relieved from this demoralizing flank fire. This movement of the Duc de Grammont rendered the excellent dispositions of his uncle valueless.

But an untoward incident, at the very commencement, delayed for a time the fruits of this error being gathered and very nearly deprived the British Army of its royal commander; King George’s horse ran away with him in the direction of the enemy.

This was a paralysing spectacle for our own men!

Fortunately, however, the King succeeded in pulling him round before he got close enough for the French to grab him, and he returned in safety if not in triumph to his own lines. This incident,[Pg 319] however, determined the brave little man to take a certain course; he got off his horse.

“I vill go on my legs,” he remarked cheerfully, “dey cannot run away with me!”

But the enemy’s cavalry, composed of the élite of the French Army, were now advancing; the King drew his sword and placed himself at the head of his Grenadiers. Waving his sword, he cheered them on, the last King of England who led his soldiers into battle.

“Now boys,” he cried, “now for the honour of England; fire and behave bravely, and the French will soon run!”

All this was very fine, but the French did not run, at first; they came on in a wild charge and considerably shook our infantry, so much so, that it required all the energy of the King and his son—who, with the rank of Major-General, led the left wing—to get them steady again. The father and son certainly did not spare themselves on this day; even when the Duke was wounded in the leg he refused to leave the field. No wonder that poor Frederick at home was boiling with jealousy.

Maréchal Noailles from the other side of the river, where he was organizing a supporting movement, saw his nephew’s error, and hastened back to Dettingen; but he arrived too late.

King George, at the head of a brigade of infantry, had swept the French from their position and cleared the road to Hanau and the much needed[Pg 320] food and stores. The French loss in the retreat was frightfully heavy, and the French Maréchal very wisely drew off the remainder of his troops to the other side of the river, with a list of killed and wounded which totalled up to six thousand men.

Thus ended the Battle of Dettingen, concerning King George’s part in which, Justin McCarthy in his “Four Georges,” makes the following comment:—

“George behaved with a great courage and spirit. If the poor, stupid, puffy, plucky little man did but know what a strange, picturesque, memorable figure he was as he stood up against the enemy at the Battle of Dettingen! The last King of England who ever appeared with his army in the battlefield. There, as he gets down off his unruly horse, determined to trust to his own stout legs—because as he says, they will not run away—there is the last successor of the Williams, and the Edwards, and the Henrys; the last successor of the Conqueror, and Edward the First, and the Black Prince, and Henry the Fourth, and Henry of Agincourt, and William of Nassau; the last English King who faces a foe in battle.”

King George returned to England covered with glory in September, 1743, and finding himself popular took that opportunity of snubbing once more the Prince of Wales, and ignoring his presence as heretofore. This was particularly ungracious, as the Princess was at the time lying ill.

The King must have sadly missed his Minister, and trusty adviser of twenty-one years, Sir Robert Walpole, now created Earl of Orford, Viscount Walpole and Baron of Houghton, but none the less “Sir Robert Walpole” to the people and posterity. Though the great statesman—the peaceful statesman, despite his other faults—had retired immediately on his fall in February, 1742, to his estate at Houghton, yet it is perfectly clear that his old master frequently consulted him, on the many points of trouble which were now arising around him, and that meetings took place between them, notwithstanding the fact that determined efforts were being made to impeach the Earl; attempts which signally failed. There is no doubt that in responding to a call from the King to come and advise him on some knotty point—the coming Scottish rebellion it may be—Walpole met his[Pg 322] death. The house of a Mr. Fowler, a Commissioner of Excise, in Golden Square, was the rendezvous where Walpole received the King’s messages.

For there had long been unrest in the North, and rumours of the coming of the Pretender’s son.

It was in answer to such a summons from King George that Walpole left Houghton for London, though suffering from a painful malady, and greatly increased it by the journey. So great was his pain that he had to be kept under the influence of opium for the greater part of the day, but it is said that during the few hours that his mind was clear, his conversation had all the life and brilliancy of former times, which during his retirement to Norfolk, a lonely old man, had entirely left him. However, these moments were but the last expiring flashes of his great intellect. He died on the 18th March, 1745, just at the time when he was most needed by the King, at the commencement of that fateful year for England, when Bonnie Prince Charlie came over the water, raised an army in Scotland, and made a victorious march on air, almost to London itself.

Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir, son of the Old Pretender, James Stuart, and his wife Clementine Sobieski—granddaughter of John Sobieski, King of Poland—and grandson of James the Second of England, was born in Rome in 1720, consequently when he started on his expedition to Scotland he was about twenty-five.

Lord Mahon describes him as follows:—

[Pg 323]

“The person of Charles (I begin with this for the sake of female readers) was tall and well formed; his limbs athletic and active. He excelled in all manly exercises, and was inured to every kind of toil, especially long marches on foot, having applied himself to field sports in Italy, and become an excellent walker.

“His face was strikingly handsome, of a perfect oval and a fair complexion; his eyes light blue; his features high and noble. Contrary to the custom of the time which prescribed perukes, his own fair hair usually fell in long ringlets on his neck.[67] This goodly person was enhanced by his graceful manners; frequently condescending to the most familiar kindness, yet always shielded by a regal dignity; he had a peculiar talent to please and to persuade, and never failed to adapt his conversation to the taste, or to the station of those whom he addressed.”

(At the age of thirteen, Pope Innocent the XII pronounced Prince Charlie, dressed in a little bright cuirass and a rich point lace cravat, “truly an angel.”)

Such was the man who came secretly from France in August, 1745, with but two ships, to challenge Frederick’s right to the title of Prince of Wales.

The two aforesaid vessels of Prince Charlie being chased by men-of-war and somewhat roughly handled, they had to separate, so that it was simply an unconvoyed little merchant ship which at last[Pg 324] brought the Stuart to the western isles. There at first he passed as a young English clergyman come to see the Highlands; but on the 19th of that month of August, he threw off his clerical garb and raising his standard at Glenfinnan called the clans to assemble round it.

Here he was joined by six hundred of the Camerons under their chief Lochiel, Keppoch with three hundred of his men, and many other smaller parties.

With a war chest of but four thousand louis d’or, which he had brought with him, and a very varied collection of arms, Prince Charlie the next morning commenced a march which ended only at Derby, one hundred and twenty miles from London, and which, if persevered in, would have led him in all probability, to the steps of the English throne.

At this time King George the Second was in Hanover, but so alarming were the reports which reached him of the Stuart Prince’s doings, that he set out at once, and on the 31st of August reached London.

This absence of the King in Hanover, is pretty strong evidence that the movements of the young invader had been conducted in absolute secrecy.

The King on his arrival found, however, that the Regency—which apparently did not include the Prince of Wales—had not been idle. Warrants had been issued against the Duke of Perth and Sir Hector Maclean, but the former escaped.

[Pg 325]

The Dutch had also been called upon to supply six thousand auxiliaries according to contract, a decision had been come to to recall some of the regiments from Flanders, the nucleus of an army was being formed at Newcastle under Marshal Wade, and some of the militia had been called out.

The spirit of the people, however, remained perfectly passive; probably they looked upon the incursion of Prince Charlie as a sort of filibustering expedition similar to that of his father in 1715, which would soon fizzle out.

Henry Fox, who was at the time a member of the Government, thus records this apathy on the part of the public in confidential letters to Sir C. H. Williams. He writes on September 5th, 1745:

“England, Wade says, and I believe, is for the first comer; and if you can tell whether the six thousand Dutch and the ten battalions of English, or five thousand French or Spaniards will be there first, you will know our fate....”

He continues on September 19th:

“God be thanked! But had five thousand landed on any part of this island a week ago, I verily believe the entire conquest would not have cost them a battle.”

The King, however, was persuaded that the affair was of no importance, and promptly snubbed the Prince of Wales when he asked for a command. Even a regiment was denied him, while his younger[Pg 326] brother was given a brigade straight away in Flanders two years before!

Frederick upon this stood apart as it were, with his arms folded, and contemplated the preparations cynically.

Matters stood in this wise until well on into September, when news arrived of the total defeat of Sir John Cope’s army at Preston Pans on September 20th.

What was more surprising than this, however, was the news of the Prince’s exceeding moderation and kindness to the vanquished.

He showed himself on this occasion of victory, as indeed he did at all times in the campaign, a kind-hearted and honourable gentleman, who could have taken his place among the knights in the days of chivalry.

Had Charles been able to pursue his victory, and to have made a forced march into England, he might soon have ended the matter, but most of his Highlanders disappeared for the time to put their share of the spoil of the battle in safe places in the mountains.

However, within six weeks he had an army of six thousand men again round his standard at Holyrood, and with these he presently set forth again towards England.

To his credit be it said that his army was an orderly one; all irregularities he repressed with a firm hand. True it might have happened sometimes[Pg 327] that his Highlanders would stop some prosperous looking traveller on the road and level their firelocks at him, but when the trembling victim inquired what they wanted the answer generally was “a baubee,” i.e., a halfpenny.[68]

But the march to England was an exceedingly unpopular one with the Highlanders, and many of them deserted during the first few days and went home; the remainder were difficult to deal with, and it is said that one morning Prince Charles had to argue with them for an hour and a half before he could get them to march at all.

However, they reached Kelso and there halted for two days. In the accounts of this extraordinary march what strikes one particularly is the wonderfully good generalship displayed by Lord George Murray, who commanded the first division, and who, time after time, out-manœuvred the best of King George’s generals, evading and misleading them with the greatest ease, until he finally placed the mobile little army which he commanded between the King’s forces and London.

From Kelso Lord George made the first of his excellent feints. He sent forward messengers to prepare quarters for his troops at Wooler; this was to deceive Marshal Wade, and draw off his attention from Carlisle, which was really the object of Murray’s attack.

Wade fell into the trap, while the Prince’s forces[Pg 328] made a forced march down Liddisdale and entered Cumberland and laid siege to Carlisle.

This important frontier fortress was in a bad state. The garrison of the Castle consisted of about a company of invalid soldiers, while the defences of the town itself were old and mouldering. Nevertheless there was here a large body of Cumberland militia raised for King George, while the attacking force had only a few four-pounder cannon to bring against it. But in five days, though the Mayor began by a good show of resistance, the town and Castle surrendered to Prince Charles, providing him with an abundance of arms and ammunition.

With regard to this siege of Carlisle, a great deal has been made by the enemies of Frederick, Prince of Wales, of an incident which occurred concerning it at this time.

It so happened that a representation of the Castle of Carlisle—in pastry—was served up at the Prince’s table—it must be remembered that his table was supplied by a caterer—no doubt it was intended by the cook as a surprise, such as cooks are very fond of preparing for their masters.

Great exception has been taken to the fact that the Prince and the Maids of Honour—these Maids of Honour seemed prone to evil—bombarded the sham castle with sugar plums! What else could be expected from a parcel of Maids of Honour and a lighthearted Prince who rolled Bubb Doddington, in all his priggish solemnity, down a flight of[Pg 329] stairs in a blanket? Yet the Prince’s traducers endeavoured to give the incident a political significance as a sign of the Prince’s indifference to the sufferings of the besieged!

As a matter of fact it was a most bloodless siege, and only lasted five days, the garrison marching out and going home unmolested.

From Carlisle, with four thousand five hundred men, Prince Charlie marched by Shaw, Kendal and Lancaster to Preston, where he arrived on November 27th. Very different marching this to the progress of our army under Lord Stair, when moving from Flanders to the banks of the Maine in 1743, which progress took, as we have seen, four months!

Preston was regarded by the Highlanders as a fatal barrier, beyond which they could not pass, as the Duke of Hamilton had been defeated there in the Civil Wars, and Brigadier Macintosh surrendered at the same spot in 1715.

To break this tradition Lord George Murray marched across and beyond the Ribble bridge.

From Preston, Prince Charlie pushed on to Wigan and Manchester, still unopposed, for the aged Marshal Wade had withdrawn to Newcastle on finding the mountain roads around him blocked with snow.

The following is a description of Charles’s entry into Manchester, given in the letter of a spy stationed there and sent to the Duke of Cumberland:

[Pg 330]

“28th November.

“Just now are come in two of the Pretender’s men, a sergeant, a drummer, and a woman with them. I have seen them; the sergeant is a Scotchman, the drummer is a Halifax man, and they are now going to beat up. These two men and the woman, without any others, came into the town amidst thousands of spectators. I doubt not we shall have more to-night. They say we’re to have the Pretender to-morrow. They are dressed in plaids and bonnets. The sergeant has a target.”

“29th November.

“The two Highlanders who came in yesterday and beat up for volunteers for him they called His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Wales, offered five guineas advance; many took on; each received one shilling to have the rest when the Prince came.

“They do not appear to be such terrible fellows as has been represented. Many of the foot are diminutive creatures, but many clever men among them. The Guards and officers are all in a Highland dress, a long sword and stuck with pistols; their horses all sizes and colours.

“The bellman went to order all persons charged with excise, and innkeepers forthwith to appear, and bring their last acquittance, and as much ready cash as that contains on pain of military execution. It is my opinion they will make all haste possible through Derbyshire to evade fighting Ligonier. I do not see that we have any person in town to give[Pg 331] intelligence to the King’s forces as all our men of fashion are fled, and all officers under the government. A party came in at ten this morning, and have been examining the best houses, and have fixed upon Mr. Dicconson’s for the Prince’s quarters. Several thousands came in at two o’clock; they ordered the bells to ring, and the bellman has been ordering us to illuminate our houses to-night, which must be done. The Chevalier marched by my door in a Highland dress, on foot, at three o’clock, surrounded by a Highland guard; no music but a pair of bagpipes.

“Those that came in last night demanded quarters for ten thousand men to-day.”[69]

Prince Charlie, however, did not beat up many recruits in Manchester, and altogether the military outlook began to appear very ominous.

This was the position in which the invading Army found itself. On their rear, Marshal Wade was slowly crawling after them through Yorkshire. In front was the Duke of Cumberland with eight thousand men, his head-quarters at Lichfield. Outside London, at Finchley, was another army, which although it contained the Royal Guards, was composed chiefly of newly raised troops. This, it was said, was to be commanded by the King in person. Chester was held by Lord Cholmondeley, its neighbour Liverpool by the citizens for King George; and the bridges over the Mersey were[Pg 332] broken down. Admiral Vernon cruised with a strong Fleet in the Channel to prevent a French invasion or landing of supplies, whilst Admiral Byng was off the East coast of Scotland with a squadron with the like intention.

Despite, however, all these obstacles to his success, Prince Charlie was for going on to London, and in this intention he was to a certain extent supported by Lord George Murray, who in his usual consummate way, hoodwinked the enemy and picked his way through them with the greatest ease to Derby, where he was joined by the Prince with his division on the 4th of December. Here the advance into England came to a dead stop, even Lord George Murray advised a retreat into Scotland again, whence news had just arrived that Lord John Drummond had landed at Montrose with the Regiment of the Royal Scots and other supports and supplies.

It is a moot question still whether, if Prince Charlie had had his own way—which he insisted pretty strongly upon for some time, and marched straight on London where he had mostly new levies of militia to deal with, he might not have attained his object.

He was but one hundred and twenty-seven miles from London, and the state of affairs in the capital can best be judged by the following account of a loyal writer who was in London at the time:

“When the Highlanders, by a most incredible[Pg 333] march, got between the Duke’s army and the metropolis, they struck a terror into it scarcely to be credited.”[70]

An immediate rush was made upon the Bank of England which only escaped bankruptcy by paying in sixpences to gain time. Shops were shut and business suspended. The Duke of Newcastle, the Minister who occupied Sir Robert Walpole’s place, “stood trembling and amazed.” It is also stated that King George had some of his “most precious effects—did these include the Walmoden?”—removed on board his yachts, which were ordered to remain at the Tower Quay ready to sail at a moment’s notice. It is not thought likely that he offered the Prince of Wales a passage in either of these, neither is Frederick mentioned at this time although no doubt he was with the troops at Finchley.

But all these fears in London were groundless. Prince Charles’s officers had determined among themselves to retreat from Derby back to Scotland, and the broken-hearted Prince at last reluctantly consented.

By the same road they returned, hotly pursued a part of the way by the Duke of Cumberland with some thousands of horse; but after a rear-guard action at the village of Clifton, near Penrith, in which he lost a hundred men, killed and wounded, the Duke drew off leaving the Chevalier to retreat[Pg 334] in peace to Glasgow, which he reached on the 26th of December, concluding this marvellous winter’s march of eight hundred and eighty-two miles in fifty-six days, some of which were of course resting days.

From this time forward the struggle was really one between the Prince and the Duke of Cumberland as the aged Marshal Wade was superseded, and Henry Hawley, one of the Duke of Cumberland’s generals, took his place. Prince Charles, however, having been reinforced by Lord Strathallan and Lord John Drummond, easily defeated General Hawley at Falkirk, on the 17th January, 1746, taking many prisoners, one of whom, probably an Irishman, is recorded to have remarked:

“By my soul, if Charlie goes on in this way, Prince Frederick will never be King George.”

The authorities in London were soon thoroughly aroused by this victory of the Highlanders, and determined upon sending the Duke of Cumberland to take supreme command in Scotland, all danger of an invasion of England being over. Thus began that memorable campaign of Cumberland’s, which culminated in Culloden, and—from his savage cruelty to the wounded at that place—covered his name for evermore with infamy.

William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland at this time, was only in his twenty-fifth year, having been born on April 15th, 1721, and was just four months younger than Prince Charlie.

[Pg 335]

He possessed, however, none of the graces of person of his Stuart cousin. Though not yet twenty-five, he was exceedingly corpulent and unwieldy, and had a rough uncouth manner and a savage temper; in fact he looked exactly what he was afterwards called, “The Butcher.” It was into such a man as this, that the handsome idolized son of Caroline had grown.

There could not possibly have been a greater contrast between any two persons than between these two young men who were destined to fight to a finish this contest for the throne of England.

Despite the fact that Cumberland had lost the battle of Fontenoy, the military authorities seemed to feel sufficient confidence in him to send him to Scotland to take the supreme command at such a critical period. Certainly his father believed in his military talents such as they were.

He received his appointment very soon after the arrival in London of the news of the defeat of Falkirk, and left, as he was requested to do, without delay, and travelled night and day, arriving unexpectedly at Holyrood on the 31st of January; here he chose the very bed in which Prince Charlie had slept.

In Edinburgh he found his favourite, General Hawley, busily engaged in hanging his own men, right and left, for having run away from the Highlanders at Falkirk. He had prepared the gallows for the Prince’s followers, and was using it for his own.

[Pg 336]

These executions Cumberland at once stopped.

An incident, which occurred in Flanders, will give an idea of the nature of this brute Hawley, a very fit second-in-command, for such a man as Cumberland afterwards proved himself to be. During the campaign in the Low Countries when Hawley commanded a regiment, one of his own men, a deserter, had been hanged before his windows. So pleasant a sight did he find it, that when the surgeons came to beg the body for dissection he was very loth to part with it.

“At least,” he said at last, “you shall give me the skeleton to hang up in the guard-room!”

Fancy a spruce Colonel of a line-battalion of our own day ordering a guard-room to be decorated in this fashion! Cumberland remained little more than twenty-four hours in Edinburgh, then moved out to find the Prince’s army, which he understood lay at Falkirk; his men appeared to have advanced with every confidence in him.

Charles had, however, much against his will, commenced a retreat towards the Highlands, where his generals had persuaded him with much difficulty to pass the remainder of the winter.

This retreat appears to have been conducted with carelessness and disorder, and much baggage was lost to the pursuing English troops. However, Crieff was reached, and here the two divisions marched by different roads towards Inverness.

It seems pitiable to contrast the position of the[Pg 337] Prince’s army from this time forth, sown with dissension, wandering about in the cold northern winter and spring among barren mountains from which it was impossible to break forth, without food or money.

Charles at this period was reduced to his last five hundred louis d’or and had to pay his troops in meal, which course ended as might have been expected, in many desertions.

Meanwhile, the Duke of Cumberland’s army was well fed and clothed and reinforced by five thousand Hessians, who had been hired by the government. These troops, however, did not take part in the subsequent battle, but held the line of communications.

But the end came at last. Cumberland having fixed his Headquarters at Aberdeen, moved out of that place on the 8th of April, 1746, with about eight thousand infantry, and nine hundred cavalry and marched via Banff and the river Spey on Nairn, which town he entered on the 14th April.

That night, Charles, who had come up with his Guards, slept at Culloden House, the seat of President Forbes, one of his principal enemies, his men to the number of about five thousand bivouacing on the moor using the heath during the bitter night both for bed and fuel.

There seems to have been an excellent project formed in the Prince’s Council, by Lord George Murray, to make a night attack upon Cumberland,[Pg 338] which would have stood a good chance of success as the 15th April, being the Duke’s birthday, his soldiers had spent it in drink and carousing, supplies being plentiful, as a fleet laden with provisions followed them along the coast.

The night march, however, from a proper want of direction, proved a lamentable failure, and only served to further exhaust the half-starved Highlanders, who returned worn out, to Drummossie or Culloden Moor.

There, on the 16th, with the ration of one biscuit per man, they stood up to meet the well-fed, well-equipped army of Cumberland twice their number. The result is not to be wondered at.

Their ranks, ploughed by the superior artillery of the English, with a storm of snow and hail blowing full in their faces, the starved Highland men endured their position without a murmur, until the order was given by Lord George Murray to charge.

The Clan of the Macdonalds refused the order; but the right and centre in one wild rush, swept down on Cumberland’s men and broke through the first line, capturing two guns.

But there were two lines beyond, and these closing up, and standing three deep, poured such a volley into the Highlanders that their charge was shattered by it. That ended the matter; the Prince’s army, which had never before suffered defeat, broke and fled.

[Pg 339]

Had the Macdonalds taken part in the charge, the battle might have ended differently; but after one volley, they remained spectators of the action, sulking because they were not placed on the right wing.

No sooner was the charge of the Highlanders broken than the English regiments closed in upon them with the bayonet. Cumberland had with some skill, instructed his men not to use their bayonets on the adversaries immediately in front of them in a melée, who were protected by their small shields, but to stab sideways at the assailants of their right hand men; what was to become of the unfortunate man on the extreme left of the line apparently was not stated in the Duke’s order. Against the solid press of the well-fed English soldiers, at least two to one, the broken half-starved Highlanders could make no way, and for the first time in the whole campaign fell back before them; the Macdonalds on the left wing being the only part of the line which retreated in anything like order. So far the battle had been fairly fought, and the Scots fairly beaten; had the Duke of Cumberland treated them with the ordinary humanity of civilized war, even as civilized war was understood in those brutal days, not one word would have been said against him, and he might have handed a clean name down to posterity. As it was, he preferred to give full[Pg 340] play to the most brutal instincts that a man was ever cursed with.

The chief charge against the Duke of Cumberland, and the charge is fully substantiated by undeniable testimony—is that in cold blood he ordered the enemy’s wounded to be butchered.

Nay that a barn into which twenty poor wounded Highland men had crept was deliberately set on fire, adding to the agony of their wounds the intolerable pain of death by fire.

That he allowed no sort of attention to be given to the wounded Scots, but, returning to the field two days after from the pursuit, and finding still some poor wounded wretches lying where they had fallen, he fiendishly ordered them to be put to death, some by the bullet, some by the bayonet, some by the clubbed musket.

It is said that he ordered General Wolfe, then a young officer, to kill a wounded man, but that Wolfe told him, to his credit, that he would sooner resign his commission.

And this was the man for whom King George and his Queen, Caroline, wished to put aside their first-born son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, whose greatest fault in their eyes perhaps was his gentleness of nature; his kindness to the poor and needy!

For this great bloated Butcher, Frederick was exiled from his family, insulted in public and in private, and his character assailed in such a way that his name has been handed down in history as[Pg 341] one to be scoffed at; though this latter injustice is mainly the work of one man, Lord Hervey, perhaps after all his bitterest enemy; certainly the meanest and most contemptible.

But the details of Cumberland’s inhuman cruelty did not come out for years after, and meanwhile on his return to London, he was fêted, received the thanks of Parliament, and was given a pension of twenty-five thousand pounds per annum for himself and his heirs, but fortunately he had none. Truly the wicked flourish in this world like the bay tree!

But truth will out, magna est veritas et prevalebit; little by little came to England the evidence of eye witnesses, to the savage cruelty of this royal Prince of five-and-twenty to the poor, half-starved, maimed Scots; bit by bit the reputation of the “Butcher” was built up, and it will stand while the memory of Culloden lasts.

As for Prince Charlie, he was forced from the field, whilst trying to charge with the remnant of his men, by an Irish officer in the French service, named O’Sullivan; he fled to Gortuleg, where that ancient sinner, Lord Lovat, was residing at the time, and who gave him but a cold welcome so that they parted in anger, the Prince not even receiving a meal.

On to Glengarry’s Castle of Invergarry, rode Charles through the night with the last few of his followers, arriving before dawn, only after a brief rest, to go on and on, with the shadow of the axe[Pg 342] ever hanging over him, till, five months after, he was taken off by a French ship at Lochnenuagh, the very same spot where he had landed over a year before.

But it would not be possible to conclude even this imperfect sketch of the Prince’s campaign without paying a tribute to Flora Macdonald, “a name,” says Dr. Johnson, “which will ever live in history.” The “little woman of genteel appearance, and uncommonly well bred.”[71]

When Charles was being run down on Long Island with a price of thirty thousand pounds upon his head, did not this noble young lady, at the risk of her life, obtain a pass from her stepfather, a captain in King George’s militia, for herself, a manservant and a maid, and did she not smuggle away the Prince under the very eyes of his pursuers in the character of the latter, dressed in petticoats? An achievement on Charles’s part which called forth from old Macdonald of Kingsburgh the following dry remark when he saw him crossing a brook and in difficulties with his petticoats:

“Your enemies call you a Pretender, but if you be, you are the worst of your trade I ever saw!”

It is a pleasure to know that when Flora Macdonald paid the penalty of her heroic act, and was brought a prisoner to London, our Prince Frederick obtained her release.[72]

[Pg 343]

What a different disposition to his brother, the Butcher’s!

“And would not you, Madam,” asked Frederick of his wife, who had spoken against Flora in the fashion of the time, “would not you in like circumstances have done the same? I hope—I am sure you would.”

It is pleasant to think that Flora Macdonald went home from London with a present of fifteen hundred pounds from the Jacobite ladies of that place in her pocket.

All fear of the Pretender being dispelled, the Court turned to gaiety again, and the principal social event of the year 1746 was the marriage of the Princess Mary, the King’s second daughter, to the Prince of Hesse.

To celebrate this event there were a series of Royal entertainments, concerning one of which Horace Walpole relates a humorous incident. “A most ridiculous tumble t’other night at the Opera. They had not pegged up his,”—the Prince of Hesse’s, “box tight after the Ridotto, and down he came on all fours. George Selwyn says he carried it off with unembarrassed countenance.”

The marriage, however, proved a sad one for poor Princess Mary. She was back again in England in a year, under the excuse of having to drink the Bath waters, but really to escape from the cruelty of her husband. She was glad enough to get back to her favourite brother and sister, the Duke of Cumberland and the Princess Caroline; the former just in the full enjoyment of his new title, “the Butcher.” So common had this sobriquet become among the public, that when the Duke lost his[Pg 345] sword one night at the opera, the people remarked: “The Butcher has lost his knife!”

However, the troubles of his newly-married daughter did not much affect the King. He was particularly annoyed about this time—1747—by a new opposition created by the Prince of Wales, which it was declared was to last until he ascended the throne. Father and son, despite their fussy reconciliation, were as far apart as ever, and the reception given by the King to the Duke of Cumberland after his bloody errand in the North, had not tended to mend matters.

Horace Walpole thus comments on the Prince’s new opposition:—

“He began it pretty handsomely the other day,” he remarks, “with one hundred and forty-three to one hundred and eighty-four, which has frightened the Ministry like a bomb. This new Party wants nothing but heads,” he continues, “though not having any, to be sure, the struggle is fairer.”

The Party was led by Lord Baltimore, “a man with a good deal of fumbled knowledge.”

An anecdote is related of the Prince of Wales’s second son, Edward Duke of York, whom Horace Walpole describes as “a very plain boy with strange loose eyes, but was much the favourite. He is a sayer of things.”

This is one of the “things” recorded of him:—

Baron Steinberg, one of the King’s Hanoverians, was sent by His Majesty to inform him of the[Pg 346] progress of the Princes George and Edward in their studies.

Prince Edward showed considerable knowledge of his Latin Grammar, but Steinberg told him that it would please the King if he made himself more proficient in German.

“German, German,” repeated Edward, “any dull child can learn that.” Saying which he squinted with his “loose” eyes at the German Baron, who no doubt went back to the grandfather with a very unfavourable report.

But the old man was fond of his grandchildren—as far as it was in his nature to be—and determined to distinguish his heir at an early age, by conferring upon him the Order of the Garter; this was done in 1749, privately in the Palace.

The fact of the Prince of Wales having united his Party with that of the Jacobites in opposition to the Government did not interfere with King George bestowing this honour on his son. Perhaps the old man was softening a little, and becoming kinder at any rate to his grandchildren.

The relations existing between the King and the Prince of Wales at this time are very clearly shown by the manner in which the Order of the Garter was conferred on Prince George. The Prince of Wales carried the child, he was then eleven, in his arms to the door of the King’s Chamber; there he was taken in the arms of the Duke of Dorset and carried within the chamber to the King, the Prince[Pg 347] of Wales remaining where he was, outside the door, which was half open.

National Portrait Gallery.Emery Walker.
PRINCE GEORGE (afterwards George III) AND PRINCE EDWARD, HIS BROTHER, SONS OF PRINCE FREDERICK, WITH THEIR TUTOR, DR. AYSCOUGH.

The child Prince, arriving in the presence of the King, commenced to repeat a speech which had been taught him by his tutor. Dr. Ayscough, Dean of Bristol. No sooner did the Prince of Wales hear his son commence his oration than he called out loudly, “No! No!”

The boy stumbled and stopped and then after an effort went on again, but his father for some reason would have none of it, and this time a more determined “No” stopped little Prince George altogether, and his fine speech was wasted.

But nevertheless he was duly invested with the Garter, an honour the magnitude of which it is doubtful whether he appreciated at that age.

Here is an extract from the Gentleman’s Magazine recording an event about the same time.

Thursday, 25th May, 1749 (O.S.).

“Being the birthday of H.R.H. Prince George, who entered into his twelfth year, the nobility and gentry paid their compliments at Leicester House. About seven in the evening the silver cup, value twenty-five guineas, given by the Prince, was rowed for by seven pairs of oars, from Whitehall to Putney. Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, with the nobility, were rowed in their barges ahead of the wager-men, followed by Prince George, the young Princesses, etc., in a magnificent new barge, after the Venetian manner,[Pg 348] and the watermen dressed in Chinese habits, which, with the number of galleys attending, rowed by young gentlemen in neat uniforms, made a splendid appearance.

“The Prince has also given a plate to be sailed for by six or seven yachts, or pleasure boats, to the Nore, and back again.”

This last prize was sailed for on Tuesday, 1st August, 1749, and was won by the “Princess Augusta” belonging to George Bellas, Esq., a “register” of Doctor’s Commons.

The Prince of Wales attended in his Venetian-Chinese barge (the rowers in Chinese habits) being greatly cheered by the people, “at which he pulled off his hat.”

Turning to other matters, there was an accident at Kensington Palace which occurred when Lady Yarmouth—our old acquaintance Madame Walmoden—took up her quarters there, very nearly causing the demolition of the building, which would have been an event much to be regretted from the point of view of picturesqueness.

The Walmoden was installed in the same rooms which the King’s former mistress the Countess of Suffolk occupied, and they were exceedingly damp, a drawback which apparently was not heeded by Lady Suffolk. The Walmoden, however, was a chilly person, and contracted ague, which was rather to be wondered at on such a well-known gravel soil.

However, to counteract this complaint, she made[Pg 349] up such huge fires that the woodwork of the building caught and the palace was nearly burnt down.

There were plenty of other less damp rooms, but the King would not allow them to be used, and commenting on this Horace Walpole remarks:

“The King hoards all he can, and has locked up half the Palace since the Queen’s death, so he does at St. James’s, and I believe would put the rooms out at interest if he could get a closet a year for them.”

But as the King grew older, there were no further signs of a rapprochement between himself and his eldest son, and no doubt the latter’s lavish expenditure—on such things as Venetian barges with Chinese crews—tended to set the father as he grew more avaricious, more against the son. But the riches hoarded by King George did not endure, but were swallowed up in that disastrous Hanoverian campaign, which also swallowed up the military reputation of the Duke of Cumberland, and put a final period to his war experiences.

The following extracts from the Gentleman’s Magazine, for the year 1750, are pathetic when read by the light of an event which followed but too quickly.

They represent the Prince, in fine summer weather, with his wife and children, happily making a “Progress” and visiting certain English country towns. There is a holiday air of peace and[Pg 350] relaxation about them all, and the Prince is shown in those circumstances in which he loved best to live, with a devoted and beautiful wife, for whom without doubt he had a tender affection, by his side, and a bevy of loving children surrounding them both.

So in the balmy summer air, rent by the plaudits of the people who loved him also, it is better to leave him so depicted in the last public scene in which he appears in these pages, for that happy summer of 1750 was the last he spent on earth.

Wednesday, July 11th, 1750.

Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, and Lady Augusta, eldest daughter of their Royal Highnesses, arrived at Bath, attended by the Lords Bathurst, Middlesex, Bute and Inchiquin, and four or five gentlemen and ladies. The Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council of Bath waited on their Royal Highnesses, to congratulate them on their arrival; when Mr. Clutterbuck, Deputy Town Clerk, made the following speech:

“May it please your Royal Highnesses to permit us the Mayor, aldermen and citizens of this city to approach your Royal Highnesses with hearts full of joy on your safe arrival here, an addition of your many favours to us, of which we retain the most grateful sense. It gives us the greater satisfaction when we consider that this indulgent visit is not on the occasion of your Royal Highnesses’ health, and that it affords us this happy opportunity of congratulating you on the birth of another Prince, an[Pg 351] increase of his Majesty’s family. We beg leave to assure your Royal Highnesses that the power we enjoy as magistrates shall, on this and all other occasions, be exercised in strict loyalty and obedience to his Majesty and his family.”

To which his Royal Highness returned the following answer:

“I and the Princess thank you for this mark of duty to the King and regard to us; the city of Bath may always depend on my good wishes.”

Friday, July 13th.

Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, with the Princess Augusta and some of the nobility, went on wherries about four miles down the river from Bath to Salford, and dined in publick under two tents in a large mead, where abundance of the country people resorted, and to whom his Highness gave several hogsheads of beer. A band of musicians attended the whole time.

Letter from Gosport, August 17th, 1750.

On the 15th, in the afternoon, their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, with the Princes William and Henry and Princess Augusta, arrived in the harbour in the Commissioner’s yacht. Before they went on shore they did Sir Edward Hawke the honour of a visit on board the “Monarch” man-of-war; from thence they went on shore to the Commissioner’s house, where they lodged that night.

Next morning his Royal Highness surveyed the[Pg 352] dock and yard, then went on board the guard-ships, which were all made clear to receive him; there the exercise of the great guns was performed in his presence, at which he expressed much satisfaction.

His Highness afterwards landed at the Sally Port of Portsmouth, and walked round the fortifications, attended by one of the engineers with a plan of them. From whence he went in the Commissioner’s coach, attended by Sir Edward Hawke, the Commissioner and engineer, to see Cumberland Fort, and about three o’clock he embarked on board the yacht at Southsea Castle. Words cannot express the joy and pleasure all ranks and degrees of people expressed at his presence amongst us.

Saturday, 18th August, 1750.

The Prince and Princess of Wales arrived in the Isle of Wight, and after viewing Carisbrooke Castle, came to Newport, and were met by the Mayor and Corporation in their formalities, and conducted with great acclamations to the Guildhall, where his Royal Highness did the Corporation the honour to accept the freedom of the town, and at five in the evening departed for Southampton.

Southampton, August 18th.

About nine in the evening their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess landed at our Key. Our Mayor being confined to his bed by sickness, they were met by his deputy, Robert Sadlier, Esquire, and the rest of the Corporation, in their scarlet robes, and by Mrs. Mayoress, and several ladies of the[Pg 353] town, and conducted to the Council Chamber, where a collation of sweetmeats and wines of divers kinds were prepared, preceded by the town trumpets, and the sergeants bearing the maces and silver oar, attended with flambeaux and torches, in the midst of loud acclamations of the populace, the bells in every church ringing, and the houses being illuminated all the time of their continuing in the town.

On their Royal Highnesses’ arrival in the Council Chamber the Prince saluted the ladies present, and the Corporation and gentlemen had the honour of kissing their hands (sic); and afterwards, their Royal Highnesses having taken their seats, Mr. Godfrey, the Town Clerk, in the name of the Corporation, made a speech to them, concluding with a humble request that his Royal Highness would accept the freedom of the town; with which he complied, assuring them that he should be always ready to promote the happiness of the town. His Royal Highness also upon his being solicited that the Princes present should be made free, not only consented thereto, but also directed his two eldest sons, the Princes George and Edward, to be enrolled with them. Their Royal Highnesses then set out for the seat of William Midford, Esquire; where the two Princes reside for the benefit of the salt water.

The Duke of Queensberry was also presented with his freedom and took the usual oath.

Under the date of March 6th, 1751, Bubb Doddington—who had entered the Prince’s household in July, 1749—writes in his Diary:

“Went to Leicester House where the Prince told me he had catched cold the day before at Kew, and had been blooded.”[73]

The full history of the catching of the cold was as follows:—

It seems that at the commencement of this year the Prince had had an attack of pleurisy from which he had not entirely recovered. Nevertheless he was most careless of his health, a habit he had derived from his father, who on one occasion, when he refused to nurse himself was asked by Walpole:

“Sir, do you know what your father died of? Thinking he could not die!”

Frederick in this way certainly partook of this attribute of George the Second.

In addition to the attack of pleurisy, the Prince had during the previous year had a severe fall from his horse, which had left him ailing. It cannot be doubted that his constitution had been showing[Pg 355] signs of breaking down for some months before the attack of pleurisy in the winter.

However, on the 5th of March, 1751, he attended at the House of Lords to hear his father give his sanction to some Acts of Parliament.

This ceremony concluded, the Prince left the hot Chamber, no doubt overcrowded and stuffy, and came out into the cold March wind, proceeding to Carlton House in his chair with the windows down. In other words sitting in a thorough draught. This was not sufficient; at Carlton House he took off his heavy ceremonial suit, and replaced it by light unaired clothing. He appears then to have hurried off to Kew, and there walked about the Gardens in a cold wind for three hours. Returning to Carlton House he lay upon a couch in a room without a fire, with the windows open.

It appears that the Earl of Egmont, who was a member of his household, came into the room, and finding him there reasoned with him on the risk he was running, no doubt knowing full well that the Prince was in a weak state of health.

Frederick simply laughed at the idea of danger, and finally went over to Leicester House.

It is not surprising that when Mr. Doddington called there the next day, he found him very ill.

But not so ill as to warrant him calling there again the day following.

He went, however, on March 8th, and this is the entry he made of the visit in his diary:

[Pg 356]

“March 8th. The Prince not recovered. Our passing the next week at Kew put off.”

Doddington did not consider the Prince ill enough for a visit on the 9th, but he went there again on the 10th.

“At Leicester House. The Prince was better and saw company.”

Incredible as it may appear, the Prince seems to have gone out to supper at Carlton House on the 12th, and relapsed of course.

Doddington did not go again until the 13th, and then he recorded the following:—

“At Leicester House. The Prince did not appear, having a return of a pain in his side.” And no wonder!

This pain in his side was the worst symptom of the Prince’s illness, had the doctors but known it; but the diagnosis of a case in those days must have been a very rough and ready affair.

It has been mentioned that some years before Frederick had received a blow on the chest from a cricket ball—some say a tennis ball—while playing on the lawn at Cliefden. It had caused him some pain, but, as usual, he had neglected it, and some trouble had formed there; trouble perhaps, fostered by the abundance of the bons-pères the Prince was in the habit of drinking in the custom of the time. Now on the 13th of March Doddington records that the Prince had a return of a pain in his side. This was doubtless the old spot injured by the cricket ball.

[Pg 357]

Doddington was evidently now getting alarmed—and he had reason for it, for all his hopes and many ambitions were centred in the Prince—he went to Leicester House the next day and writes down carefully the result of his visit.

“14. At Leicester House. The Prince asleep—twice blooded, and with a blister on his back, as also on both legs, that night.”

He was there again on the 15th.

“The Prince ... and was out of all danger.”

“16. The Prince without pain or fever.”

It is told that in this painless interval, Frederick did that, which perhaps he had been longing to do in those weary days and nights of suffering. He sent for his eldest son George. Then when the boy came, in his state of weakness, his mind seemed to revert to the unkindness of his own father and the bitterness that unkindness had mingled with his life. With his arms round the child he dearly loved, and with the boy’s fair head drawn down to his own, he said these touching words:—

“Come, George, let us be good friends while we are permitted to be so.”

He had evidently, in his mind, the fear that his father would sooner or later come between him and his boy.

The Prince is said to have had three physicians in attendance on him, of whom Dr. Lee was one, and two surgeons, Wilmot and Hawkins, to do the[Pg 358] copious blood letting, which doubtless drained away his strength.

But of these five doctors not one saw the imminent danger he was in.

Doddington, however, was still anxious, and was at the Prince’s again on the 17th.

“Went twice to Leicester House. The Prince had a bad night, till one this morning, then was better, and continued so.”

He was there again on the 18th.

“The Prince better and sat up half an hour.”

The general impression then was that Frederick was recovering, and Doddington did not call again the next day at all. Cards were indulged in by the members of the Prince’s family and some of the household in an adjacent room, and Frederick’s faithful follower Desnoyers, the French dancing-master and violinist, was admitted to soothe the invalid with his beautiful music. He sat by the bed and played to him with that wonderful touch for which he was celebrated.

It is not difficult to reconstruct that scene on the evening of the 20th of March. Doddington had called at Leicester House at three o’clock in the afternoon, and had been told that the Prince was much better and had slept eight hours the night before. Doddington had gone off quite satisfied to the House of Commons.

But now it is evening, late evening, past nine o’clock, the Prince is lying thoughtful in his high[Pg 359] four-post bedstead. The room is lighted by wax candles, their glare shaded from his eyes by the curtains of the bed; by his bedside is the old French dancing-master, violin in hand playing some soft melody which Frederick loves; this soft strain is broken occasionally by the voices of the card players in an adjoining room.

Stealing about the large room with soft tread are the pompous doctors, the ignorant doctors, who declared their patient to be getting well.

Stately bewigged powdered men these, with silver topped canes carried almost as wands of office; ready at a moment’s notice to draw the lifeblood from their patient, or to order their dispensers in attendance on them in a room hard by to pound up a nauseous drug, in a great mortar, to be administered crude in a revolting draught without any attempt to conceal its horrid taste, for medicine was not administered in those days, in attractive tinctures, with every bitterness covered by some subtle flavouring; it was taken usually in the form of a gritty, stringy draught which turned the stomach of the patient.

But around the sick chamber flitted the young wife of Frederick; she was only thirty-two then, and the mother of eight children, which number was very soon to be increased to nine. She was a most devoted wife and scarcely left him, it is said, during his illness.

There Frederick lay thinking, with the soft notes[Pg 360] of the violin floating around him, and the jarring laughter of the card players breaking in upon him at times. Perhaps he was thinking of his boy George as the music moved him, as it will an artistic nature.

“Come, George, let us be good friends while we are permitted to be so!”

A clock has just struck the half hour after nine; perhaps the last thought in Frederick’s mind, as he is lying there listening to Desnoyer’s music, is of the God he is so soon to meet. The hand of the clock creeps on to the quarter; it is nearly a quarter to ten.

Suddenly the music stops. Frederick is taken with a violent fit of coughing; when it ceases, Dr. Wilmot comes to the bedside.

“I trust Your Royal Highness will be better now, and pass a quiet night.”

The Princess comes to the foot of the bed and leans over it; Dr. Hawkins approaches the Prince with a candle and gazes anxiously at him; at last he sees something which alarms him, the cough breaks out again with increased violence, Desnoyer places his arms round the Prince and raises him in the bed to relieve him, as he does so the Prince shivers and cries out:—

“Je sens la mort!” (I feel death.)

Desnoyers alarmed, cries out to the Princess at the foot of the bed:—

“Madame, the Prince is going.”[Pg 361] She rushes round to the head of the bed and bends over her husband.

It is over; he is dead.

And from the next room comes a burst of laughter from the card players.

Under this date of March 20th, Doddington continues his entry in his diary:—

“I suppose the mortification was forming, for he died this evening a quarter before ten o’clock, as I found by a letter from Mr. Breton at six o’clock the following morning.”

Doddington continues on the 21st:—

“I came immediately to town,” he lived at Hammersmith, “and learned from Mr. Breton, who was at Leicester House when the Prince died, that for half an hour before he was very cheerful, asked to see some of his friends, ate some bread and butter, and drank coffee; he had spit for some days, and was at once seized with a fit of coughing and spitting, which last was so violent that it suffocated him. Lord North was sent to the King. This morning the King ordered the body to be opened—an abscess was found in his side, the breaking of which destroyed him.

“His physicians, Wilmot and Lee, knew nothing of his distemper, as they declared half an hour before he died ‘that his pulse was like a man’s in perfect health.’ They either would not see or did not know the consequences of the black thrush[Pg 363] which appeared in his mouth and quite down into his throat. Their ignorance, or their knowledge of his disorder, renders them equally inexcusable for not calling in other assistance.”

Augusta, his wife, remained by his corpse for four hours, steadfastly refusing to believe that he was dead. Her position was pitiable, as she was about to become the mother of her ninth child, and felt all the desolation of a woman in her condition at being left to battle with her trouble alone.

“It was six in the morning before her ladies could persuade her to go to bed, and even then she remained there but two hours. Some long ago exacted promise given to her dead husband seems to have disturbed her mind; she rose and went back into Frederick’s chamber, and there burnt the whole of the Prince’s papers.

“So it was given out, but it is possible that she retained some, and that they had a bearing upon certain events which occurred later, and which will be spoken of in their place.”

Doran comments on this fact as follows:—

“By this action the world lost some rare supplementary chapters to a Chronique Scandaleuse.”

That might have been so, or not.

“When Lord North arrived at Kensington Palace with the news of the death of the Prince, he[Pg 364] found the King looking over a card table at which sat his daughter, the Princess Amelia, the Duchess of Dorset, the Duke of Grafton, and the Countess of Yarmouth—the Walmoden; the Georges seemed fond of giving Norfolk titles to their improper belongings—vide Walsingham. Lord North entered quietly and stood beside the King; in a whisper he told him of his son’s death.

“‘Dead, is he?’ he remarked turning to the messenger, ‘why, they told me he was better.’ Then he went round and leant over his mistress’s shoulder:

“‘Countess,’ he said very casually, ‘Fred is gone.’

That was all!

“Father of Mercy! Thy hand that wounds alone can save!” wails poor Doddington in his diary, on the 21st; and he appears to have been genuinely grief-stricken at the death of his patron.

“I went to Leicester House,” he continues on the 22nd. “The Princess afflicted, but well. Went to Council at night, which was very full. The common prayer altered, but Prince George left as he now stands. The physicians made a report and delivered a paper, being an account of the body when opened—I have a copy of it—ordered the bowels to be put into a box covered with red velvet, and carried in one of the Prince’s coaches by such attendants as his Groom of the Stole should appoint, and buried in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel. Ordered[Pg 365] a Committee to settle the ceremonies of the funeral.”

On the 27th he made another entry concerning his dead master:—

“Went to Council. Orders to the Lord Steward and Chamberlain to issue orders for black cloth, wax lights, etc., for the rooms at Westminster where the body is to be laid, etc. To the Groom of the Stole and master of the horse to his late Royal Highness to regulate the march of the servants, etc. Orders to the Earl Marshal to direct the Heralds to prepare, for the consideration of the Council, a ceremonial for the funeral of his Royal Highness, upon the plan of those of the Duke of Gloucester and of Prince George of Denmark, which were formed upon the plan of the funeral of Charles the Second.”

April 3rd:—

“At Council about the funeral, ceremonial from the Heralds read—their orders were to form it on the plan of the Duke of Gloucester’s and Prince George’s of Denmark. But they had different orders privately, which then I did not know. I thought there was very little ceremony, and therefore said that I supposed that they had complied with the orders which their lordships gave about the plans on which the funeral was to be formed. The lords said: ‘To be sure’; and none seemed to have any doubts, or concerned themselves about it; so I said no more, though I am satisfied[Pg 366] that it is far short of any funeral of any son of a King. After the Council was up, I asked the Lord Chancellor about it, who said that he supposed the Heralds had complied with their orders, but he knew nothing of it, and had never seen any of the plans. I told him that I mentioned it, because if it should appear that any mark of respect to the deceased should be wanting in this funeral, it would certainly give great distaste. I think the plan must be altered.”

Doddington was not aware of the meanness of the King and Court party towards the Prince’s memory, but he had a good opportunity of realising it a little later on.

April 4th:

“The King was at Leicester House”

George seems to have shown some kindness to the widowed Princess, and to have done what he could to comfort her as far as it was in his nature, but no doubt her greatest comfort was in her children, especially the eldest boy.

When George heard of the death of his father—to whom he was devoted—he very naturally turned white and sick.

“I am afraid, sir, you are not well,” pompously remarked his tutor, Ayscough, who was present when the news was broken, instead of comforting the boy.

“I feel,” answered George, with his hand on his heart, “I feel something here, just as I did when I[Pg 367] saw the two workmen fall from the scaffold at Kew.”

And no doubt the poor fellow did feel a pain at his heartstrings, for he loved his father.

Doddington’s diary is almost a chronicle of the events which followed:

April 13th. “Lord Limerick consulted with me about walking at the funeral. By the Earl Marshal’s order, published in the common newspaper of the day (which with the ceremonial not published till ten o’clock I keep by me), neither he as an Irish peer nor I as a Privy Councillor, could walk. He expressed a strong resolution to pay his last duty to his royal friend, if practicable. I begged him to stay till I could get the ceremonial; he did, and we there found in a note that we might walk. Which note, published seven or eight hours before, the attendance required was all the notice that lords, their sons, and Privy Councillors had (except those appointed to particular functions) that they would be admitted to walk.”

April 13th. “At seven o’clock I went, according to the order, to the House of Lords. The many slights that the poor remains of a much-loved master and friend had met with, and was now preparing the last trouble he could give his enemies, sunk me so low, that for the first hour I was incapable of making any observation.

“The procession began, and (except the lords appointed to hold the pall and attend the chief[Pg 368] mourner, and those of his own domestics) when the attendants were called in their ranks, there was not one English lord, not one bishop, and only one Irish lord (Limerick), two sons of dukes (Earl of Drumlanrig and Lord Robert Bertie), one Baron’s son (Mr. Edgecumbe), and two Privy Councillors (Sir John Rushout and myself), out of these great bodies to make a show of duty to a prince, so great in rank and expectation.

“While we were in the House of Lords it rained very hard, as it has done all the season; when we came into Palace Yard, the way to the Abbey was lined with soldiers, but the managers had not afforded the slightest covering over our heads; but, by good fortune, while we were from under cover, it held up. We went into the south-east door, and turned short into Henry the Seventh’s Chapel. The service was performed without either anthem or organ. So ended the sad day. Quem semper acerbum—semper honoratum.

“The corpse and bowels were removed last night to the Prince’s lodgings at the House of Lords; the whole Bedchamber were ordered to attend them from ten in the morning till the enterrement. There was not the attention to order the Green-Cloth to provide them a bit of bread; and these gentlemen, of the first rank and distinction, in discharge of their last sad duty to a loved and a loving master, were forced to bespeak a great cold dinner from a common tavern in the neighbourhood. At three o’clock,[Pg 369] indeed, they vouchsafed to think of a dinner, and ordered one—but the disgrace was complete; the tavern dinner was paid for and given to the poor.

BUBB DODDINGTON.
Lord Melcombe.

“N.B.—The Duke of Somerset was Chief Mourner, notwithstanding the flourishing state of the Royal Family.”

So ends Bubb Doddington’s account of the Prince’s illness, death and burial, and it will be seen from his description of the latter that King George the Second’s hatred for his eldest son did not cease with death, but that his petty animosity went beyond it to the grave, and touched those who stood around it.

On such a nature it would be vain to waste good English words, his own reflections on the events of this year are the best comment and explanation of it, and it is a sort of pleasure to think that these words suggest some ring of sorrow in them for his actions past.

Touched by the death of his daughter, the Queen of Denmark, George the Second made the following soliloquy.

“This (1751) has been a fatal year to my family,” he said “I have lost my eldest son, but I was glad of it. Then the Prince of Orange died and left everything in confusion. Poor little Edward has been cut open for an imposthume in his side, and now the Queen of Denmark is gone! I know I did not love my children when they were young. I hated to have them coming into the[Pg 370] room. But now I love them as well as most fathers.”[74]

After a long description of the sepulture of the viscera of the Prince, which appears to have been attended with almost as much ceremony as his funeral, and seems to have attracted a ghoulish interest, the Gentleman’s Magazine for April, 1751, proceeds as follows, with an account of the latter function.

The procession began half-an-hour after eight at night, and passed through the old Palace Yard to the south-west door of Westminster Abbey, and so directly to the steps leading to Henry the Seventh’s Chapel.

The Ceremonial was as follows:

Knight Marshals, men, with black staves, two and two.
Gentlemen Servants to his Royal Highness.
two and two, viz.:—
Pages of the Preference.
Gentlemen ushers, quarter waiters, two and two.
Pages of Honour.
Gentlemen ushers, daily waiters.
Physicians: Dr. Wilmot and Dr. Lee.
Household Chaplains.
Clerk of the Closet: Rev. Dr. Ayscough.
Equerries, two and two.
Clerk of the Household or Green Cloth:
James Douglas, Esq., and Sir John Cust, Bart.
Master of the Household: Lord Gage.
Solicitor-General: Auditor: and Attorney General:
Paul Joddrel, Esq., Charles Montague, Esq.,
the Hon. Henry Bathurst.
Secretary: Henry Drax, Esq.[Pg 371]
Comptroller and Treasurer to his Royal Highness:
Robert Nugent, Esq., and the Earl of Scarborough,
with their white staves.
Steward and Chamberlain to his Royal Highness
with their white staves.
Chancellor to H.R.H. Sir Thomas Bootle:
An Officer of Arms.
The Master of the Horse to his Royal Highness:
The Earl of Middlesex.
Clarencieux King-at-Arms:

escutcheons and under a canopy of black velvet,

borne by Eight of his

Royal Highness’s Gentlemen.

Assistants to the Chief Mourner.
Marquis of Tweeddale, Marquis of Lothian, Earls of
Berkeley, Peterborough, Northampton, Cardigan,
Winchester, Carlisle, Murray and Norton.[Pg 372]
The Gentleman Usher of his Royal Highness’s
Private Chamber: Edmund Bramston, Esquire.
The Groom of the Stole to His Royal Highness:
Duke of Chandos.
The Lords of the Bedchamber to His Royal Highness:
Lord North and Guildford, Duke of Queensberry, Earl of
Inchiquin, Earl of Egmont, Lord Robert Sutton,
Earl of Bute, two and two.
The Master of the Robes to His Royal Highness:
John Schütz, Esq.
The Grooms of the Bedchamber to His Royal Highness:
John Evelyn, Esq., Samuel Masham, Esq., Thomas
Bludworth, Esq., Sir Edmund Thomas, Bart., Daniel
Boone, Esq., William Bretton, Esq., Martin Madden,
Esq., William Trevanion, Esq., Colonel Powlet,
two and two.
Yeomen of the Guard to close the Procession.

The corpse of His Royal Highness was met at the Church door by the Dean and Prebendaries attended by the gentlemen of the Choir and King’s Scholars, who fell into the Procession immediately before the Officer of Arms, with wax tapers in their hands and properly habited, and began the Common Burial Service (no Anthem being composed on this occasion) two drums beating a Dead March during the service.

Upon entering the Chapel, the Royal body was placed on trestles, the crown and cushion at the head, and the canopy held over, the supporters of the pall standing by; the chief mourner and his two supporters seated in chairs at the head of the corpse; the Lords Assistants, Master of the Horse,[Pg 373] Groom of the Stole, and Lords of the Bedchamber on both sides; the four white staff officers at the feet, the others seating themselves in the stalls on each side the chapel.

The Bishop of Rochester, Dean of Westminster, then read the first part of the Burial Service, after which the corpse was carried to the vault, preceded by the white staff Officers, the Master of the Horse, Chief Mourner, his supporters and Assistants, Garter King of Arms going before them.

When they had placed themselves near the vault, the corpse being laid upon a machine even with the pavement of the Chapel, was by degrees let down into the vault when the Bishop of Rochester went on with the service; which being ended, Garter proclaimed his late Royal Highness’s titles in the following:—

“Thus it hath pleased Almighty God to take out of this transitory life to His Divine Mercy, the illustrious Frederick, Prince of Wales,” etc., etc.

The nobility and attendants returned in the same order as they proceeded, at half-an-hour after nine; so that the whole ceremony lasted an hour.

There was the utmost decorum observed, and, what is remarkable, though the populace were extremely noisy before the procession began, there was during the whole a silence that, if possible, added to the solemnity of so awful a sight.

The Guards, who each of them held two lighted flambeaux during the whole time, behaved so well,[Pg 374] that we do not hear of any accident happening among the spectators that are remarkable. As soon as the procession began to move, two rockets were fired off in Old Palace Yard, as a signal to the guns in the Park to fire, which was followed by those of the Tower, during which time the great bells of Westminster and St. Paul’s Cathedral tolled, as did those of most of the churches in London.

The soldiers were kept on guard all Saturday night, and on Sunday, at the South Door of the Abbey, and on the scaffolding in Palace Yard. And yesterday the workmen began to take down the scaffolding.

The following inscription was engraved on a silver plate, and affixed to the coffin of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

Depositum.

Illustrissimi Principis Frederici Indovici Principes Walliæ,
Principis Electoralis Hereditarii Brunvici et Lunenbergi,
Ducis Cornubiæ Rothsaye et Edinburgu, Marchionis Insulæ
de Ely, Comitis Cestriæ Carrick et Eltham Voce Comitis
Launceston, Baronis Renfrew et Snowdon, Domini Insularum,
Senechalli Scotiæ, Nobillimini Ordinis Pericelidis Equites,
et a Sanctoribus Conciliis Majistati Regiæ, Academiæ
Dubliencis Cancellarii Filii primogeniti Cessissimi Polentissimi
et Excellentissimi Monarchæ Georgii Secundi, Dei Gratia
Magnii Britanniæ Franciæ et Hiberniæ Britanniæ Regis
Fidei Defensoris obiit Vicessimod ie Martu Anno. MDCCL.
Eatatis suæ XLV.

So was poor Frederick borne into that Church in which his little son by Anne Vane already lay.

[Pg 375]

The following rough sketch of the arrangements for the Prince’s funeral was found in the State Paper Office and differs somewhat from the actual ceremony.

It was probably curtailed by George the Second.

State Papers—1751. Bundle 116. No. 34.

Supporters of the Pall:

Right side—to carry the Canopy,
Mr. Scott, Mr. Ridley, Mr. Pennant, Hon. Mr. Cornwallis, Mr. Hawley.

Left Side—to carry the Canopy,
Mr. Palmer, Mr. Legrand, Mr. Durell, Mr. Philpot.
Supporters of the Pall:
Earl Fitzwilliam.Earl of Macclesfield.
Earl Stanhope.BODY.Earl of Bristol.
Earl of Portmore.Early of Moray.
Mr. Wentworth. Garter.[Pg 376]

Supporter: Duke of Rutland.Chief Mourner: Duke of Somerset.Supporter: Duke of Devonshire.
Bart. to support the Train.

Ten Assistants:
Marquis of Lothian.
Marquis of Tweeddale.
Earl of Peterborough.
Earl of Northampton.
Earl of Cardigan.
Earl of Winchelsea.
Earl of Berkeley.
Earl of Carlisle.
Earl of Moretown.
Earl of Jersey.

Gent. Usher of the Privy Chamber:
Mr. Bramston.

Groom of the Stole:
Duke of Chandos.
Lords of the Bedchamber:

Duke of Queensberry.
Lord North and Guildford.
Earl of Egmont.
Earl of Inchiquin.
Earl of Bute.
Lord Robert Sutton.

Master of the Robes:
Coll. Schütz.

Grooms of the Bedchamber:
Mr. Evelyn (alone).
Mr. Bludworth.
Mr. Masham.
Mr. Boone.
Mr. Edmund Thomas.
Mr. Madden.
Mr. Bretton.
Coll. Powlett.
Mr. Trevanion.

Yeomen of the Guard to close the Ceremony.

Knights of the Bath:
Sir John Savill.
Sir John Mordaunt.
Sir Charles Powlett.
Sir Charles Howard.
Sir Ed. Hawke.
Sir Peter Warren.
Sir Chas. Williams.
Sir Wm. Morden Harbord
Sir H. Calthorpe.
Sir Thomas Whitmore.
Lord Fitzwilliam.
Sir John Ligonier, P.C.
Sir John Cape.
Sir Ph. Honywood.
P.C. Sir Tho. Robinson.[Pg 377]
Visc. Tyrconnell.
P.C. Sir Wm. Younge.
Sir R. Clifton.
P.C. Sir P. Methuen.
P.C. Sir Conyers Darcy are to go before.

Privy Councillors not Peers:
Arthur Onslow, Esq.
Henry Legg.
Sir Conyers Darcy.
Sir Tho. Robinson.
Wm. Finch.
Hen. Pelham, Esq.
Sir Wm. Lee, Chief Justice.
Judges before.
Sir John Strange, M. of R.
Knights of the Bath.
Sir John Willia, Ch. J.C.P.C.
Sir Paul Methuen.
Horatio Walpole.
Sir Wm. Younge.
Sir John Rushout.
George Doddington.
Wm. Pitt, Esq., Paymaster-General.
Henry Fox, Secretary of War.
Sir John Ligonier. General of Companie (?).

And for the rest, what remains? What flotsam did this apparently wasted existence leave upon the surface of the tide of life as it sank beneath it?

Indeed, it is little; little that is reliable, little that can be trusted as unbiased testimony of his virtues or his vices.

Horace Walpole and Lord Hervey are the leaders of his vilifiers, both King’s men, both hating him.

What does Walpole say?

“Thus died Frederick, Prince of Wales, having resembled his pattern the Black Prince in nothing but in dying before his father.”

“His chief passion was women....”

“He was really childish, affectedly a protector of arts and sciences, fond of displaying what he knew; a mimic, the Lord knows what a mimic—of the celebrated Duke of Orleans, in imitation of whom he wrote two or three silly French songs. His best quality was generosity; his worst, insincerity and indifference to truth, which appeared so early that Earl Stanhope wrote to Lord Sunderland from Hanover, what I shall conclude his character with, ‘He has his father’s head and his mother’s heart.’”

[Pg 379]

No great compliment either to his father or mother if this latter assertion be true!

Lord Hervey, in summing up the Prince’s character, goes much farther than this, so much farther indeed that his assertions take the colour of a very bitter display of personal animosity and spite. These are his words:

“And when I have mentioned his (the Prince’s) temper, it is the single ray of light I can throw on his character to gild the otherwise universal blackness that belongs to it, and it is surprising how any character made up of so many contradictions should never have the good fortune to have stumbled (par contre-coup at least) upon any one virtue; but as every vice has its opposite vice as well as its opposite virtue, so this heap of iniquity to complete at once its uniformity in vice in general, as well as its contradiction in particular vices like variety of poisons—whether hot or cold, sweet or bitter—was still poison, and had never an antidote.”

These stilted passages of Lord Hervey seem to have been put together with a double object; first to show his hatred for Prince Frederick; secondly to display his own learning. Though succeeding admirably in one, he seems to have failed in the other. No man of learning would ever commit himself to assertions which he was not in a position to substantiate, and Lord Hervey was certainly never in a position to prove any of the assertions he put forward against the Prince, or he most assuredly would have done so.

[Pg 380]

He was no more able to prove these vague charges—they were always vague, even to the cowardly hints which he gave in his Memoirs that he knew something; something very detrimental to the Prince’s character—than he was able to prove his boastful assertion to Sir Robert Walpole that he was the father of Anne Vane’s child, the child which had been acknowledged by the Prince as his own.

He stated in his Memoirs that he was aware of certain facts very damaging to the Prince of Wales, which accounted for the King and Queen’s hatred of him. If so then he must have been acquainted with some crime committed in Frederick’s childhood, say at the age of seven, for that was about the time when his father and mother began to hate him.

But what are Lord Hervey’s and Horace Walpole’s charges against the Prince?

Hervey says he was vicious; Hervey of whom Sarah of Marlborough remarked:—

“He has certainly parts and wit, but is the most wretched profligate man that ever was born....”

If Frederick possessed vices, where is there any record of them in history?

Lord Hervey’s are very thinly veiled, vide Pope’s verses on him.

It is acknowledged that Frederick made a fool of himself with women when he was a young unmarried man, and that this foolishness began over in Hanover, where he was left a mere boy to his own[Pg 381] resources in an atmosphere permeated with the vices of his father and grandfather.

There was the Vane episode; true, and he behaved as honourably as a man could under such circumstances.

Then there was the affair of Lady Archibald Hamilton, and that is exceedingly doubtful; doubtful in the extreme whether there was any guilt between this young man of seven and twenty and the plain lady of thirty-five, mother of ten children. The more one reads of his inner life, the more one doubts it.

He was certainly vain, and fond of having women about him, clever women especially, but there cannot be a scintilla of a doubt that he loved his wife devotedly, and, moreover, that she possessed the feminine attribute of attracting him through his senses, and holding him. The surest way of holding a husband.

If, therefore, he was devotedly in love with his pretty wife, and she satisfied him in every way, as he admits in his verses to her, that she did, what attraction would two plain women—Lady Archibald Hamilton and Lady Middlesex have for him, one eight years older than himself and the mother of ten children; the other “short and dark like a winter’s day,” and as “yellow as a November morning?”

“Ah, yes,” remarks one of his enemies, “beauty in the case of mistresses was never a necessity in the Prince’s family!”

[Pg 382]

This assertion is quite wrong; George the Second’s mistresses, Mrs. Howard, Lady Deloraine, the Walmoden, were all exceedingly pretty, the little man, though coarse and vulgar, had a great eye for beauty, and if he could have got her—but he could not, she was a pure woman—he would have had one of the most beautiful girls in England, Mary Bellenden.

In the Prince’s case, Miss Vane, the only mistress he was known to have had, was described as a very pretty girl, therefore he was not unacquainted with beauty.

That Lady Archibald, and Lady Middlesex were bright, clever, witty women, useful to have in the Household can be understood; but to say that the Prince had turned his house into a seraglio as his grandfather George the First had done, is absurd.

He was not the same kind of person; his tastes, his disposition, his feelings were utterly different.

He lived in loose immoral times, and in all probability was not immaculate, but to say that he kept two plain mistresses in the same house as the pretty wife to whom he was absolutely devoted, and among the children he adored, is a vile calumny which emanated from persons who hated him for other reasons, and either could not, or would not, understand his nature.

Walpole accuses him of lying, but as usual gives no proof. Where are the lies? We know his father[Pg 383] lied; it can be traced in history, but where are Frederick’s lies?

In the numerous letters he wrote and which have appeared in these pages, especially those excusing the removal of his wife from Hampton Court, surely there would have been traceable some of these gross falsehoods of which he is accused.

But there are none. Excuses, fencing apologies—and we can guess the reason—yes; but lies; no.

Let us now turn to the other side, and hear what the impartial witnesses of his life say about him:

Here is an extract from a letter written by the Duchess of Somerset to Dr. Doddridge:

“Providence seems to have directed the blow where we thought ourselves the most secure; for among the many schemes of hopes and fears which people were laying down to themselves, this was never mentioned as a supposable event. The harmony which appears to subsist between His Majesty and the Princess of Wales, is the best support for the spirits of the nation under their present concern and astonishment. He died in the forty-fifth year of his age, and is generally allowed to have been a prince of amiable and generous disposition, of elegant manners and considerable talent.”

“When the Rambler appeared, he so enjoyed its stately wisdom,” says Dr. Doran, “that he sought after the author in order to serve him if he needed[Pg 384] service. His method of serving an author was not mere lip compliment. Pope indeed might be satisfied with receiving from him a complimentary visit at Twickenham. The poet there was on equal terms with the Prince; and when the latter asked him how it was that the author who hurled his shafts against kings could be so friendly towards the son of a King, Pope somewhat pertly answered, that he who dreaded the lion, might safely enough fondle the cub. But Frederick could really be princely to authors, and what is even more, he could do a good action gracefully, an immense point where there is a good action to be done.

“Thus to Tindal he sent a gold medal worth forty guineas; and to dry and dusty Glover, for whose ‘Leonidas’ he had much respect, he sent a note for five hundred pounds, when the poet was in difficulties. This handsome gift, too, was sent unasked. The son of song was honoured, and not humiliated, by the gift.

“It does not matter whether Lyttelton or any one else taught him to be the patron of literature and literary men; it is to his credit that he recognised them, acknowledged their services, and saw them with pleasure at his little court, often giving them precedence over those whose greatness was the mere result of accident of birth.”

And this little anecdote of Lady Huntingdon.

He missed her from his circle one day, and asked Lady Charlotte Edwin where she was.

[Pg 385]

“Oh! I dare say,” exclaimed Lady Charlotte, who was not pious then, but became so after, “I dare say she is praying with her beggars!”

Frederick the “childish,” “whose passion was women,” turned and looked at her.

“Lady Charlotte,” he answered, “when I am dying I think I shall be happy to seize the skirt of Lady Huntingdon’s mantle to lift me up to Heaven!”

Finally, listen to what Dr. Doran says of him a hundred years after, summing up his character.

“He walked the streets unattended to the great delight of the people;[75] was the presiding Apollo at great festivals, conferred the prizes at rowings and racings, and talked familiarly with Thames fishermen on the mysteries of their craft. He would enter the cottages of the poor, listen with patience to their twice-told tales, and partake with relish of the humble fare presented to him. So did the old soldier find in him a ready listener to the story of his campaigns and the subject of his petitions; and never did the illustrous maimed appeal to him in vain. He was a man to be loved in spite of all his vices. He would have been adored had his virtues been more, or more real.”

And had he any other quality which perhaps has been forgotten? Some memory of a kindly, tender feeling, which, maybe, has covered many of[Pg 386] his sins? Let us think, who have read these pages. Yes; there was one quality; one which can come only from the heart of a good man or woman, and which he possessed in great fulness; a quality much despised in those days and in these,

HE LOVED LITTLE CHILDREN.

THE END.