CHAPTER II.

HE one thing that men said to each other, in England and abroad, when they heard the news of the death of George III., was, that never had there been an accession to the throne more merely nominal. The new king had virtually reigned for eight years; his opinions and character, in the office of ruler, were well known; and there would be no change of ministry. There would be a royal funeral, a public mourning, a new parliament, and a new regal title; and that would be all. This saying, which appeared a truism, turned out not to be exactly true.

The king having died on Saturday, January 29, 1820, the meeting of the privy-council took place on Sunday, when the new sovereign declared his accession, and took the oaths; and on Monday he was proclaimed. For some days he had been ill; and almost before his proclamation was over, he was in a state of great danger from inflammation of the lungs. During that week there was an expectation that this would prove the shortest reign in English history-the sharpest lesson ever given as to the nearness of the throne to the grave; but after a struggle of nine days, the disease was overcome, and the business of a new reign proceeded.

The demise of the crown having happened during the parliamentary recess, the two Houses, in obedience to the bidding of the law in such cases, met immediately that is, on the Sunday, when the Lords were sworn in. The Commons had to wait till Monday, for the return to town of the lord highsteward. After the administration of the oaths, both Houses adjourned to the day after the royal funeral, which was to take place on the 16th of February. During this interval, while people in the streets were talking of the singular quietness and absence of change under this new reign, so that the resignation of ministers had been a mere form, those ministers were in daily expectation of being dismissed by their sovereign, while their heads were in hourly danger from Thistlewood and his gang, whose quarrel with them was as holders of the offices which they believed themselves about to vacate.

The king, while yet suspended, as it were, over the grave, was planning to begin life anew. He required peremptorily from his ministers that they should procure him a divorce; and they, unable to endure the idea of such a scandal, positively refused. On the 13th of February, Lord Sidmouth, in a note to Earl Talbot, in apology for not having written sooner, said: 'If you knew how the day was passed, you would not be surprised at the omission. The government is in a very strange, and, I must acknowledge, in a precarious state.' The ministers remained in office by a compromise on this point which afterwards cost them dear. They induced the king to drop the subject by pointing out the advantage of the queen remaining quietly abroad, which she would no doubt do if impunity from

divorce were granted her on that condition; and they readily promised to gratify the king's wishes, if she should return to give any trouble. When they gave this promise, they little understood the woman they had to deal with, or the disposition of the English people to succour and protect the unhappy and oppressed, irrespective of the moral merits or demerits of the sufferer.

No pity can be too deep for the misfortunes of all the parties involved in the unhappy marriage which the king was now bent on having dissolved. In the early days when the young Prince of Wales had a heart which might have expanded and warmed under happy domestic influences, his feelings were cruelly dealt with; he was under the common doom of English princes, forbidden to marry where he loved. He was not gratified in his natural wish to travel abroad, where he might possibly have seen some lady included within the provisions of the Royal Marriage Act whom he might have loved. He knew himself to be disliked by his parents; and it was almost inevitable that he should seek solace in an illicit love, and in extravagant pleasures. He loved Mrs Fitzherbert; and plunged into debt so deep that it caused parliament two months' debate to settle how he should be extricated. By this debate, and some misunderstandings about his debts, his feelings were exasperated; and it was in a spirit of recklessness that he agreed to marry somebody-anybodychosen for him by the king. He looked upon his marriage as a state necessity, and as an unavoidable method of getting his debts paid. The king decided that he should marry the Princess Caroline of Brunswick, the second daughter of the king's sister; and commands were sent to Lord Malmesbury, at Hanover, to repair to Brunswick, to ask the Princess Caroline in marriage for the Prince of Wales. No discretion was allowed to Lord Malmesbury-no time for observation-no opportunity for making any cautionary representations. All was considered settled before the negotiator saw the poor young creature who thought herself the most fortunate of princesses. All the young German princesses had learned English, in hopes of being Princess of Wales.' The tale of this courtship read now, after the event, is truly sad. The gay flights of the young bird before going into the net, and the closing down of her fate upon her, make the heart ache. "The Princess Caroline much embarrassed,' says the Earl of Malmesbury in his diary, on my first being presented to her; pretty face-not expressive of softness-her figure not graceful.. .. Vastly happy with her future expectations. The duchess [the mother] full of nothing else talks incessantly.' If this duchess could, for a single moment, have seen what she had to answer for in her miseducation of her daughter, it might have made her dumb with grief and shame, instead of talkative with triumph; but she was not a woman who could feel responsibility. She was no more able to think and feel on behalf of her daughter, than her brother, the King of England, on behalf of his son; and the wretchedness of their children in marriage was, therefore, assured beforehand. As for the father, the Duke of Brunswick, he entered fully

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into her future situation-was perfectly aware of the character of the prince, and of the inconveniences which would result, almost with equal ill effect, either from his liking the princess too much or too little. He said of his daughter: "Elle n'est pas bête, mais elle n'a pas de jugement-elle a été élevée sévèrement, et il le falloit."-(She is no fool; but she has no judgment. She has been severely brought up; and it was necessary.) He desired me to advise her never to shew any jealousy of the prince.' As for this severity of training, Lord Malmesbury certainly thought less well of the method than those who had adopted it. He says: 'If her education had been what it ought, she might have turned out excellent; but it was that very nonsensical one that most women receive-one of privation, injunction, and menace.' And how had it issued? Her father observes, 'that his daughter writes very ill, and spells ill, and he was desirous that this should not appear.' 'Princess Caroline very missish at supper. I much fear these habits are irrecoverably rooted in her. She is naturally curious and a gossip; she is quick and observing, and she has a silly pride of finding out everything.' 'Argument with the princess about her toilet. She piques herself on dressing quick; I disapprove this. She maintains her point. I, however, desire Madame Busche to explain to her' what a neat toilet is. 'She neglects it sadly, and is offensive from this neglect.' 'It is remarkable how amazingly, on this point, her education has been neglected, and how much her mother, although an English woman, was inattentive to it.' While such was her training, her natural qualities were good; and if they had had fair scope in private life, would have made her happy and beloved. 'Next to Princess Caroline at table,' says the diarist. 'She improves very much on a closer acquaintance; cheerful, and loves laughing.' On board ship, 'impossible to be more cheerful, more accommodating, more everything that is pleasant, than the princess; no difficulty, no childish fears, all goodhumour.' A pregnant remark in this diary strikes the reader now as the sentence of her doom. 'Walk with Sir B. Boothby. We regret the apparent facility of the Princess Caroline's character, her want of reflection and substance; agree that with a steady man she would do vastly well, but with one of a different description there are great risks.' And while the princess was 'vastly happy with her future expectations,' the King of England was writing to her mother that he hoped his niece would not have too much liveliness, and that she would lead a sedentary and retired life. These words shock the Princess Caroline,' Lord Malmesbury says. She heard of some other things too, which had a sobering effect: It put a curb on her desire for amusement a drawback on her situation, and made her feel that it was not to be all one of roses.'

How wretched it was to be, was too plain in a moment to the only witness of the first interview, Lord Malmesbury. The princess kneeled, as she had been instructed, and the prince raised her gracefully enough.' He instantly left her; and before she had seen any other member of the family,

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vented to the queen his dislike of the young stranger whom he was to make his wife in three days. She, meantime, left thus alone, 'was in a state of astonishment,' and inquired whether the prince was always like this. She had but too much reason to know soon that, to her, he was to be always like this. Meantime, she found him very fat, and not nearly so good-looking as his portrait. Her only friend in England reports, that 'she was disposed to further criticisms on this occasion, which would have embarrassed me very much to answer, if luckily the king had not ordered me to attend him.' A more desolate creature than he left behind him never claimed pity from the lowliest who has any one to love.

The marriage-ceremony took place three days after. Lord Malmesbury records that the prince was very civil and gracious; but I thought I could perceive he was not quite sincere, and certainly unhappy; and as a proof of it, he had manifestly had recourse to wine or spirits.'

Such was the marriage which the husband desired, as soon as he became king, to have dissolved. From the beginning he had attached his wife by no conjugal qualities; he had never respected her rights, or considered her feelings; and it was, doubtless, a great relief to both when she went abroad to live-a step which she had taken some years before, in 1814. Careless as he had been of her rights and her feelings, he watched her conduct; and when rumours spread of infidelity on her side, he sent abroad, in 1818, a commission to collect evidence, and to observe her proceedings. It is not to be wondered at, if one who could not be made to understand anything of feminine reserve or royal dignity while yet in her father's house, should lay herself open to the criticism, both of enemies and ordinary observers, when her womanly feelings had, for a course of years, been outraged, and her genial affections repressed; when she had been long deserted by her husband, and separated from her child. Abroad, she escaped from the heartless set among whom she was doomed to dwell at home; and she enjoyed, the more by contrast, the freedom of continental manners. Whatever might be the truth about the extent of her indiscretions, her freedom was certainly more than her chief enemy, her husband, chose to permit. Their only child was dead, and now he was eager to render himself free for another marriage.

The wife was not unprepared for the persecution which now awaited her; for she had had more than one taste of it already. She had been sent to reside at Blackheath, in her early marriage-days, in a sort of court banishment; and there her most trivial proceedings were watched, and, at length, her servants were brought up before the Lords charged with the 'delicate investigation,' and closely examined, without any previous warning to their mistress or themselves. She was declared innocent of all serious offence; and the king, her father-in-law, would have invited her to court: but her husband would not hear of such an atonement. According to all the testimony of the time, she conducted herself extremely well under these trying circumstances.

Mr Perceval was her adviser at that time; and at that time he made a mistake very injurious to her and to himself. He collected and had printed all the documents connected with the 'delicate investigation,' probably in the hope of damaging the prince and his friends; but he presently perceived that the step would injure no one more than the woman whose name had already been so cruelly abused. A copy of 'the book,' as it was called, was stolen off his table one day; and he had to pay bribes to the amount of £10,000 before he could be sure of its being suppressed. The wisest thing the princess could now have done, would have been to remain on the spot where she had been justified. But her life was intolerably irksome to her; and she went abroad in 1814, against the advice of her friends, in the hope of breathing more freely. But a watch was set on her there too. Sir John Leach, first lawadviser to the prince, declared that in order to prepare for a divorce suit, certain competent persons should be sent to Italy, to collect evidence there against the princess; and a commission was accordingly appointed, under the sanction of Lords Eldon and Liverpool, to carry on another delicate investigation-but this time without the knowledge of the accused. It was this Milan commission which supplied the evidence on which, at last, the prosecution proceeded; evidence which was scouted by the common sense and decency of all England.

As the time approached when the princess was likely to become Queen of England, indications were given of the treatment she would receive at that crisis. Our ambassadors abroad were instructed to prevent her admission at foreign courts, by refusing to countenance any such admission. They were not to afford her any official reception, or recognition whatever; and at home, the last insult was offered her, by the omission of her name from the liturgy, when that of her husband took its place there as king. But for this, she might probably have remained abroad, and given no further trouble. The ministers consented to this omission; and thereby destroyed the effect of their compromise with the king. Their object was to avoid the scandal of a public prosecution, which they were aware would bring the crown into contempt; and yet to avoid recognising her as a queen who could preside over a court. They did not know the spirit of the English people, or they would have seen that the crown could not be more degraded than by the persecution of a woman, by excluding her from the public prayers of the nation. By this act, they at once created that peculiar interest which is beautifully indicated by the saying of Mr Denman, that if she had her place in the prayer-book at all, it was in the prayer for 'all that are desolate and oppressed.' The news of this insult reached her in Italy; and she immediately wrote to Lord Liverpool, to demand the insertion of her name in the liturgy, and announce her intention of returning to England.

She came. The ministers were bound by their promise to the king to obtain a divorce. 'Her promptitude and courage,' observes Mr Ward, 'confounded her opponents, and gained her the favour of the people. Whatever one may think of her

conduct in other respects, it is impossible not to give her credit for these qualities.' There seemed to be nothing left for her to do but to throw herself upon the hearts of the people of England, unless she chose to acquiesce in an imputation of infamy. In Rome, the guard of honour appropriated to her as Queen of England, was refused to her by Cardinal Gonsalvi, on the ground of her non-recognition at home. The Emperor of Austria had before declined receiving any kind of visit from her; and she found herself an outcast wherever any intercourse with the British court existed. She had no course but to admit herself guilty, or come home, and meet the consequences.

His

The first queenly honours she received were from the garrison of Dover, whose commandant, having been served with no orders to the contrary, of course offered the customary salute. Her landing took place on Tuesday, the 6th of June. An immense multitude, in holiday-dress, received her with acclamations, when she set foot on English ground, after an absence of six years. An address was presented to her by the inhabitants of Dover, that evening; and her reply, which pleased them, flew over the country, which was eager to catch her first words. She declared herself happy to find herself again in the bosom of a noble and generous nation; and expressed her hope that the time would come when she should be permitted to do what she could to promote the happiness of her husband's subjects. Her journey to London, and her progress through the streets, were one continued triumph; and the shouts of the multitude who thronged Pall Mall must have been heard through every corner of the palace where her husband sat meditating his plans for her degradation. mind could not have been more full of the contemplation than was that of almost every subject in his kingdom. "This scandalous history,' writes Mr Ward, just after that time, 'holds entire possession of men's minds, to the discredit, as well as the disadvantage of the country. Brougham's proposition, yesterday, seems a reasonable one, that certain days should be set apart for transacting the real business of the country.' The 'discredit,' the immoral influence, the obstruction to the public business, are imputable to the king, and those who had pledged themselves to support his proceedings, and who had driven a desolate creature so hard that she could not but turn to meet her pursuers. Lord Eldon talked of his conscience, as usual; while its operation seemed rather extraordinary to observers like Lord Dudley, in whose letters we find a remark on 'the example of the present lord chancellor, who, having kept her conscience then, keeps her offended husband's now-and all for the public good!'

From the moment of the announcement of the queen's approach, the cabinet-councils had been frequent and protracted. The ministers met twice in a day, and remained in consultation for hours. While the multitude on the beach at Dover were shouting their welcome, the king was going in ståte to the House of Lords, which was unusually crowded, to give the royal assent to several bills already passed by his new parliament; and, after he had withdrawn, the expected communication from him was read by

not be interpreted as an act of quailing or retreat. The commissioners met, and agreed on the basis of their negotiation-that the queen should not be held to admit, nor the king to retract, anything. Of course, the failure of the negotiation was included in the very terms of this basis. The queen was willing to live abroad; and the king would agree to drop all proceedings against her: but she required two things which the king's commissioners refused to grant-the insertion of her name in the liturgy, or some equivalent which would save her honour; and a reception at foreign courts beseeming her rank. She would even have been satisfied with such a reception at some one foreign court, where she would fix her abode. On the king's part, it was offered that at some one foreign court it should be officially notified that she was legally Queen of England; leaving the question of her reception or exclusion to the pleasure of that court. As all the world knew that she was legally Queen of England, and as her exclusion from all foreign courts would inevitably follow from the discountenance at home, this proposal was naturally regarded by herself and her advisers as a mockery; and the negotiation was, on the 19th of June, announced to parliament to have failed.

It was now clear that the investigation must proceed. Some attempts were made by the House of Commons, on the motion of Mr Wilberforce, to stop it, by entreating the queen, under the assurance of the protection of her honour by the Commons, to yield the point of the insertion of her name in the liturgy; but the deputation who waited on her for the purpose of presenting the entreaty were groaned at by the crowds in the street, and the queen's courteous refusal was acceptable to the people, These proceedings were of benefit to her cause, and her position was now much improved. Her recognition as Queen of England was avowed by the transactions of the commission; and next, the protection of the House of Commons had been tendered to her, in lieu of justice, and had been declined. She was now, in the eyes of the whole world, a queen, a claimant for justice, as well as an accused woman, summoned to trial. On the motion of Lord Castlereagh, the House of Commons, on Monday, June 26th, adjourned the business of the green bag and the royal message to Friday, July 7th, that it might be seen whether the Lords would in the meantime institute any proceedings. It would be indecent and inconvenient if the two Houses should be pursuing the same investigation at the same time. The Upper House was the fitter one for the business; and the Commons were anxious to avoid meddling with it till they should be called upon to consider any bill sent down to them by the Lords.

The secret committee of the Lords made its report on the 4th of July. The report declared that the evidence affecting the honour of the queen was such as to require, for 'the dignity of the crown, and the moral feeling and honour of the country,' a 'solemn inquiry,' which might be best effected in the course of a legislative proceeding, the necessity of which,' the committee declared, 'they cannot but most

deeply deplore.' The queen the next day declared, by petition to the Lords, her readiness to defend herself, and prayed to be heard by counsel, in order to detail some weighty matters, which it was necessary to state in preparation for the inquiry. Her petition was refused; and Lord Liverpool proceeded to propose the Bill of Pains and Penalties, which is the everlasting disgrace of his administration. The bill was entitled: An Act to deprive Her Majesty, Queen Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, of the title, prerogatives, rights, privileges, and exemptions of Queenconsort of this realm, and to dissolve the marriage between His Majesty and the said Caroline Amelia Elizabeth.' It charged the queen with improper and degrading conduct generally, during her residence abroad, and particularly with an adulterous connection with a menial servant, named Bartolomeo Bergami; and provided for her degradation and divorce. It was read a first time, and copies were ordered to be sent to the queen, and to her attorney and solicitor general. The next day, her majesty offered to the House of Lords her protest, and a renewed prayer to be heard by counsel. Her counsel were called in, and instructed to confine themselves to the subject of the mode of procedure under the bill. The substance of their demand was that the whole business, if not dropped, should be proceeded with, without any delay, to a final issue. Mr Brougham declared that her majesty 'was clamorous' for this.

The second reading of the bill was fixed for the 17th of August; and it was at this stage that the attorney-general adduced the charges on the part of the crown, and followed them up by the testimony of witnesses. From this day to the 8th of September, the House of Lords was occupied with the testimony offered on behalf of the bill. And it was not only that House that was thus occupied. Nothing else was heard of throughout the country-one might almost say throughout Europe. From day to day, indecent tales were told by a party of Italian domestics-tales such as, at other times, are only whispered by the dissolute in private, and are never offered to the eye or ear of the moral and modest who compose the bulk of the English nation. These tales were now translated by interpreters at the bar of the House of Lords, given in full in the newspapers, and spread through every town, hamlet, and lone house within the four seas. The advisers of the king said much of what the queen had done for the tainting of public morals and the degradation of the dignity of the crown; but it was plain to most people then, and is to every one now, that nothing that it was in her power to do, if she had been all that her prosecutors declared, could have so injured public morals and degraded the crown as the king's conduct in pursuit of his divorce. If he had obtained it, it would have been at the cost of a responsibility towards his people, the weight of which could have been borne by no man worthy to occupy a throne.

That such a responsibility was duly felt by the sovereign we have no evidence. That his ministers were truly wretched at this time, we know from the correspondence of some of them which has since been published to the world; but they ascribed their