III. after the Queen's trial, about restoring her name to the СНАР. liturgy, and about making a provision for her support, in which he took a leading part and successfully assailed the A.D. 1821. proceedings of the government. He was often taunted about the mysterious part he had acted in the negotiations for the status of the unhappy Caroline at the close of the last reign and the beginning of the present; but so bold had he become that he considered it enough to assert, with an air of defiance and of triumph, that without her authority he had made the offer, when she was Princess of Wales, for her to remain abroad for life, without assuming the title of Queen, in consideration of an allowance of 35,000l. a year; that he had not communicated to her Lord Liverpool's proposal, after she became Queen, to allow her 50,000l. a year on the same conditions; that his reason for this omission was because it was not convenient to him to go to Geneva in person; that there was no medium through which the proposal could be transmitted to her before the interview at St. Omer; and that he then considered himself superseded as a negotiator by Lord Hutchinson. In spite of the suspicions secretly entertained or whispered against him, he was now listened to in public with attention, deference, and admiration, and he held a position in the House of Commons equal to that of any Member of it either in office or in opposition. The session of 1821 having been brought to a close, the agitation in favour of Queen Caroline was continued by her claim to be crowned along with her husband. An intimation being given that no preparations were to be made for her to take a part in the ceremony, she petitioned that she might be heard by her Attorney General before the Privy Council in support of her right, and he argued at great length that, although the King must give the order for the Queen's coronation, he was as much bound by law to do so as to issue a writ to an hereditary peer to sit in Parliament. succeeded in showing that in a great majority of cases the Queens Consort of England had been crowned along with the King; but, unfortunately, it turned out that in five instances the King had been crowned alone, with a wife living and He Queen's claim to be crowned. CHAP. then in England. Brougham was so hard pressed as to be obliged to argue that although there was no proof that A.D. 1821. Henrietta Maria was crowned along with Charles I., the event might have happened without being noticed by heralds or historians, and that the explanations of her absence given by contemporary writers-from the difficulty of conducting the ceremony, she being a Roman Catholic-were wholly to be disregarded. Uniform usage failing, he was driven to such arguments as these:— "Doubts may exist as to the validity of a King's marriage, and as celebrating the coronation of the Consort tends to make the testimony of it public and perpetual, so omitting it, and, still more, the withholding that solemnity, has a tendency to raise suspicions against the marriage, and to cast imputations upon the legitimacy of the issue, contrary to the genius and policy of the law. The Queen Consort's coronation is not so much a right in herself as in the realm; or rather it is a right given to her for the benefit of the realm, in like manner as the King's rights are conferred upon him for the common weal; and hence is derived an answer to the objection that the Queen has always enjoyed it by favour of her Consort, who directs her to be crowned as a matter of grace. The law and constitution of this country are utterly repugnant to any such doctrine as grace or favour from the crown regulating the enjoyment of public rights. The people of these realms hold their privileges and immunities by the same title of law whereby the King holds his crown, with this difference, that the crown itself is only holden for the better maintaining those privileges and immunities." The claim was unanimously rejected by the Privy Council, and the manner in which it was urged rather turned public opinion against the Queen, for although it might be very fit that she should be prayed for, whatever her character and conduct might have been, the notion of her being exhibited before the people in Westminster Hall by the side of her husband, and that they should be jointly consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury with the holy oil, shocked the common sense and right feeling of all. In making the claim she acted by the indiscreet advice of her Attorney General; but she injured herself still more 19th July. by attempting, contrary to his earnest remonstrances, to CHAP. III. force her way into Westminster Abbey on the day of the Coronation. She was repulsed amidst the hisses, instead of the plaudits, of the mob, and the mortification she A.D. 1821. suffered was supposed to have brought on the disorder which, Queen's death. very soon afterwards, suddenly put an end to her melancholy 7th Aug. career. (See Appendix). CHAPTER IV. СНАР. gown and to don his stuff. FROM THE DEATH OF QUEEN CAROLINE TILL HE BECOMES THE death of Queen Caroline was a heavy blow to Brougham. He not only was lowered in political consequence by losing A.D. 1821. an instrument of annoyance which he could wield with effect, Brougham but it touched him very closely in his profession; for, losing obliged to his office of Attorney General to the Queen, he was obliged doff his silk to doff his silk gown and full-bottom wig, and attiring himself again in bombazin and a common tie, to "take his place in court without the bar accordingly." George IV. had the pusillanimity to make a personal affair between himself and Brougham and Denman of what had passed during the Queen's trial. Out of revenge for having been compared by them to Nero, he expressed a determined resolution that neither of them should be admitted into the number of his "counsel learned in the law," and that they should be depressed as long and as much as it was in his power to depress them. This resolution, to which he long adhered, till it was finally overcome by the manly representations of the Duke of Wellington, at first annoyed Brougham very much; but the ex-Attorney soon found that, for a time at least, his consequence was rather enhanced by being considered the victim of royal animosity because he had courageously done his duty. His speech against Blacow. Now he conducted to a successful termination two prosecutions connected with the late Queen, which had been commenced in her lifetime. The first was a criminal information granted by the Court of King's Bench against the Rev. Mr. Blacow for a libellous sermon delivered by him from the pulpit the Sunday after the Queen's procession to St. Paul's to return thanks for her victory over all her enemies. The defendant addressed his congregation in the following terms: "After compassing sea and land with her guilty paramour to gratify to the full her impure desires, and even polluting the Holy Sepulchre itself with her presence-to which she was carried in mock majesty astride upon an ass-she returned to this hallowed soil so hardened in sin, so bronzed with infamy, so callous to every feeling of decency or shame, as to go on Sunday last, clothed in the mantle of adultery, to kneel down at the altar of that God who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity,' when she ought rather to have stood barefooted in the aisle, covered with a shirt as white as 'unsunned snow,' doing penance for her sins. Till this had been done, I would never have defiled my hands by placing the sacred symbols in hers; and this she would have been compelled to do in those good old days when Church discipline was in pristine vigour and activity." The rule for the criminal information was granted in the Queen's lifetime on the application of her Attorney General, without an affidavit (as is usually required) denying the truth of the imputations. He says she was eager to make such an affidavit, but that he would not permit her to do so, because on searching for precedents it was found that a Queen, on account of her dignity and supposed impeccability, was entitled to the protection of the Court against calumny, without any declaration of innocence, and it was thought that to make an affidavit in this instance would have been to derogate from the Reginal prerogative : "During the interval between the information being obtained and tried," says Lord Brougham, "an event happened which gave a peculiarly mournful interest to the proceeding the death of this great Princess, who fell a sacrifice to the unwearied and unrelenting persecution of her enemies. A circumstance well fitted to disarm any malignity merely human seemed only to inspire fresh bitterness and new fury into the breast of the ferocious priest." * The trial came on before Mr. Justice Holroyd at Lancaster, when the defendant, as his own counsel, reiterated and aggravated all the criminatory charges in the libel. The late Queen's Attorney General, now a simple outer barrister, conducted the prosecution with great good taste. Having read the above passage from the sermon, and made a few simple comments upon it, he thus concluded: CHAP. IV. A.D. 1821. |