CHAPTER VI.THE GUARDIAN OF THE REALM.1716.

Ifthe King were happy at Hanover, no one regretted him in England, least of all the “Guardian of the Realm” and the Princess of Wales, who delighted in the authority and importance which his absence gave to them. They were gracious to every one, kept open house, and lived from morning to night in a round of gaiety, playing the part of king and queen in all but name. In July they moved from St. James’s to Hampton Court, making a progress up the river in state barges hung with crimson and gold, and headed by a band of music. At Hampton Court they remained all the summer, and lived there in almost regal state, holding a splendid court daily. They occupied Queen Anne’s suite of rooms, the best in the palace, but they were not magnificent enough for their Royal Highnesses, so they had them redecorated. The ceiling of their bedchamber was painted by Sir James Thornhill, and was an elaborate work of art, depicting Aurora rising out of the ocean in her golden chariot, drawn by four white horses, and attended by cupids; below wereallegorical figures of Night and Sleep. In the cornice were portraits of George the First, of Caroline, of the Prince of Wales, and of their son Frederick.74

During their brief months of semi-sovereignty at Hampton Court, everything the Prince and Princess did was done on a grand scale. They determined to show how brilliant a Court they could hold, and how gracious they could be; their object being to bring out in sharp contrast the difference between their regency and their father’s reign. They gathered around them a galaxy of wit and beauty; the youngest, wealthiest and most talented among the nobility, the wittiest among men of learning and letters, the fairest and youngest of the women of quality, all came to Hampton Court in addition to the lively and beautiful ladies of the Princess’s household.

The days passed in a prolonged round of gaiety, which reads almost like a fairy tale, and Caroline was the centre and the soul of the festive scene. It was the finest summer England had known for years, and the Court spent much time in the open air. Often on the bright August mornings the Prince and Princess would “take the air upon the river” in barges richly carved and gilt, hung with curtains of crimson silk, and wreathed with flowers. They were rowed by watermen clad in the picturesque royal liveries, and were accompanied by young noblemen about the Court, and a bevy ofladies and maids of honour. So they drifted away the golden hours with flow of laughter, and lively talk, an epigram of Pope’s or a pun of Chesterfield’s enlivening the conversation. Or the oars would be stilled for a while, and they would float idly down the stream to the music of the Prince’s string band. Sometimes they would tarry under the trees, while the lords and ladies sang a glee, or pretty Mary Bellenden obeyed the Princess’s commands and favoured the company with a ballad, or my Lords Hervey and Bath recited some lines they had composed overnight in praise of the Princess, or her ladies.

Every day the Prince and Princess dined in public, that is, in the presence of the whole Court; the royal plate was produced for the occasion, and the banquet served with a splendour which rivalled the far-famed Versailles. Dinner was prolonged well into the afternoon, for dinner was a serious matter in the eighteenth century in England, and the Hanoverian love of eating and drinking had tended to make it a heavier meal still. When dinner was over the Prince would undress and retire to bed for an hour or two, according to German custom; but the Princess, after a brief rest, arose to receive company, and to gather all the information she could from the men of all ranks whom she received. Her reception over, she would retire to write letters, for she kept up a brisk correspondence with many, and especially with that indefatigable letter-writer, Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchessof Orleans, “Madame,” who since the death of the Electress Sophia had bestowed many letters upon Caroline. Their correspondence extended over a number of years, until Madame’s death in 1722. Madame was fond of dwelling on the past, and in her letters to Caroline she recalls much of the gossip of the Court of Louis the Fourteenth, and dwells upon the iniquities of her enemy, Madame de Maintenon, whom she invariably designates “the old toad”. Like Caroline, she was an exile from the fatherland, and condoles with her on the loss of favourite German dishes. “Sausages and ham suit my stomach best,” she writes. And on another occasion she reminds her, “There have been few queens of England who have led happy lives, nor have the kings of that country been particularly fortunate”.

A perspective View of the Pavilions belonging to the Bowling Green at the End of the Terras Walk atHampton Court.(TEMP. GEORGE I.)

A perspective View of the Pavilions belonging to the Bowling Green at the End of the Terras Walk atHampton Court.

(TEMP. GEORGE I.)

As the afternoon wore on, the Prince, having slept off his dinner, arose from bed, and took the Princess out for a walk of two or three hours in the gardens, among the fountains and trim flower beds, beneath the shady chestnuts and limes, or along the side of the canals which Dutch William had made. They were both very fond of outdoor exercise, and these perambulations formed a part of their daily lives. The members of the Court would follow, the maids of honour, as usual, surrounded by a crowd of beaux. By-and-by the company would repair to the bowling-green at the end of the terrace by the river side, and the Prince would play a game of bowls with the gentlemen of the Court, while the Princess and her ladies lookedon from the pavilions. These pavilions, at each corner of the bowling-green, were comfortably furnished, and in them the company would play cards, chat and drink coffee and tea until it was dusk. The Princess, as often as not, would then start off on another walk, attended by one or two of her ladies. One night, when it was very dark, and the rain came on suddenly, the Countess of Buckenburg (sometimes called Pickenbourg), one of the Hanoverian ladies, who was very stout, tripped and sprained her ankle as she was hurrying home, and after that accident the Princess did not stay out so late.

This same Countess of Buckenburg, like the other “Hanoverian rats,” had the bad taste to abuse the English whose hospitality she was enjoying. One night at supper she had the impudence to declare before several of the ladies-in-waiting that, “Englishwomen do not look like women of quality, they make themselves look as pitiful and sneaking as they can; they hold their heads down and look always in a fright, whereas foreigners hold up their heads and hold out their breasts, and make themselves look as great and stately as they can, and more noble and more like quality than you English”. Whereto Lady Deloraine sarcastically replied: “We show our quality by our birth and titles, madam, and not by sticking out our bosoms”.75

Sometimes in the evening the Prince and Princess would sup in public, and after supper there would be music, or cards, or dancing, but moreoften they passed the evening in private, or what was known as private in Court parlance, for they were never alone. Caroline would have little gatherings in her own apartments, to which she would ask a few privileged friends, such as the aged Duchess of Monmouth, “whom the Princess loved mightily,” who would tell her racy tales of the Court of Charles the Second with all the life and zest of youth. Or Dr. Samuel Clarke and a few other learned men would be bidden, and there would be discussions on metaphysics or theology, after the manner of Lützenburg in the old days. Dr. Samuel Clarke, at that time the rector of St. James’s, Westminster, was regarded as the first of English metaphysicians, and was the founder of the so-called “intellectual school”. His writings were widely read by rationalists, both within and without the Church of England, but he gave offence to the extreme men on both sides. He became intimate with Caroline soon after her arrival in England, and she had weekly interviews with him. At her request he entered upon a controversy with Leibniz (who was still at Hanover hoping to come to England) upon the nature of time and space, which Leibniz said were imaginary, but which Clarke maintained were real, and a necessary consequence of the existence of God. They also had a correspondence on free will. These letters of Leibniz and Clarke were read out at Caroline’s reunions, and the Princess, who took the liveliest interest in the controversy, conducted a discussion upon these abstruse questions in which her learned guests tookpart. Her intellectual life was lived wholly apart from her husband. The Prince, too, had his social suppers in private, but no learned men were bidden, nor were there any metaphysics or theology. In fact, on the evenings when the Prince and Princess did not receive in the magnificent Queen’s Gallery, there were little parties going on all over the palace. Mrs. Howard’s pleasant supper parties were often honoured by the Prince. The maids of honour used to speak of her rooms as the “Swiss Cantons,” and of Mrs. Howard as “The Swiss,” on account of the neutral position which she occupied between conflicting interests at Court. Mrs. Howard’s social talents, despite her deafness, were very great, and her goodness of heart and freedom from the spite and jealousy all too common at court made her little parties extremely popular.

This bright summer at Hampton Court was looked back upon in after years by those who had taken part in it as the pleasantest time in their lives: “I wish we were all in the Swiss Cantons again,” sighs Mary Bellenden, after her marriage, and many years later Molly Lepell, then Lady Hervey, fondly recalls Hampton Court, in answering a letter Mrs. Howard had written to her from there: “The place your letter was dated from recalls a thousand agreeable things to my remembrance, which I flatter myself I do not quite forget. I wish 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 petname given to Molly Lepell).... 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?”

Nothing could be happier than the long golden days at Hampton Court, but there was a serpent even in this paradise, and that was Bothmar, who was there nearly all the time, playing the spy and reporting the growing popularity of the Prince and Princess to the King in Hanover. George the First had told him to keep his eye on the Prince, “to keep all things in order, and to give an account of everything that was doing”. Politics, too, intruded to break the harmony. The Prince and Princess seemed determined to be of no party—or rather to create one of their own. They received malcontent Whigs, Tories, and even suspected Jacobites at Hampton Court; and Argyll, though dismissed from his offices by the King’s command, still stood high in their favour. Townshend and Walpole, the two most powerful Ministers, complained greatly at first: “Bysome things that daily drop from him” (the Prince), wrote Walpole to Stanhope in Hanover, “he seems to be preparing to keep up an interest of his own in Parliament, independent of the King’s.... We are here chained to the oar, working like slaves, and are looked upon as no other.”76It was felt that something must be done by the Government to gain the Prince’s confidence and to counteract Argyll’s influence, and therefore Townshend determined to go oftener to Hampton Court and ingratiate himself with the Prince. At first he made the mistake of leaving the Princess out of his calculations, “even to showing her all the contempt in the world,” while he paid a good deal of attention to Mrs. Howard. As he got to know the Prince’s household better, he discovered that the Prince told everything to the Princess, and she, without seeming to do so, influenced him as she wished. Lady Cowper says that she and her husband, the Lord Chancellor, pointed out to Townshend “how wrong his usage of the Princess was, and how much it was for his interest and advantage to get her on their side”. But Lady Cowper was apt to claim credit to herself when it was not due. Townshend was sufficiently astute to find out for himself the way the wind blew, and to trim his sails accordingly. Before long he stood high in the favour of the Prince and Princess, and had anxious discussions with them, for the King at Hanover had begun his favourite game of trying to drag England into war for the benefit of theelectorate. Townshend, knowing how unpopular this would be, and dreading its effect upon the dynasty, opposed it with such vigour that he incurred the resentment of the King, more especially as he frequently quoted the Prince of Wales as being at one with the Government in this matter. The friction became so great that Lord Sunderland, who was a favourite of the King, was despatched to Hanover by the Government to confer with Stanhope.

Sunderland, knowing the King’s sentiments towards Caroline, had also treated her with scant courtesy. Before setting out for Hanover, he came to Hampton Court to take his leave. The Princess received him in the Queen’s Gallery, a magnificent room with seven large windows looking on to the Great Fountain Garden.77During the interview some political question arose, probably to do with the message to be sent to the King at Hanover. The Princess gave her opinion freely, and Sunderland answered her as freely. They became so excited that they paced up and down the gallery, and the conversation grew so loud and heated that the Princess desired Sunderland to speak lower, or the people in the garden would hear. Whereupon he rudely answered: “Let ’em hear”. The Princess replied: “Well, if you have a mind, let ’em; but you shall walk next the windows, for in the humour we both are, one of us must certainly jump out of thewindow, and I am resolved it shan’t be me”. This is the first instance we have of Caroline’s openly taking a hand in politics, though she had long done so secretly, always upholding her husband against the King.

Late in October the Prince and Princess of Wales left Hampton Court for St. James’s Palace, returning by water in state barges in the way they had come. “The day was wonderfully fine, and nothing in the world could be pleasanter than the passage, nor give one a better idea of the riches and happiness of this kingdom,” writes Lady Cowper. The brief vice-reign was nearing its end. A few days after they returned from Hampton Court the Princess fell ill in labour, and her danger was increased by a quarrel between her English ladies and the German midwife. “The midwife had refused to touch the Princess unless she and the Prince would stand by her against the English ‘Frows,’ who, she said, were ‘high dames,’ and had threatened to hang her if the Princess miscarried. This put the Prince in such a passion that he swore he would fling out of window whoever had said so, or pretended to meddle. The Duchesses of St. Albans and Bolton happened to come into the room, and were saluted with these expressions.”78The courtiers’ mood then changed, and they all made love to the midwife, including the Prime Minister, Townshend, who “ran and shook and squeezed her by the hand, and made kind faces at her, for she understood nolanguage but German”. The upshot of this dispute was that the poor Princess, after being in great danger for some hours, gave birth to a dead Prince.

As soon as the Princess had recovered, the Prince set out on a progress through Kent, Sussex and Hampshire, though without his consort, who was too weak to accompany him. His progress was a royal one, and he played the part of a king, receiving and answering addresses from Jacobites and others, and being greeted everywhere by the acclamation of the people, who lit bonfires, held holiday, and gave themselves up to feastings and merriment wherever he appeared. He also increased his popularity by several acts of grace, such as dispensing with passports between Dover and Calais.79All this coming to the King’s ears made him determined to end it.

The King’s differences with his English Ministers, and especially with Townshend, had now reached an acute stage. The cession of Bremen and Verden by the King of Denmark to Hanover, on condition that England should join the coalition against Sweden and pay the sum of £150,000, was a matter of certain benefit to Hanover, which had for years been casting covetous eyes on these provinces, but could be by no possibility of service to England. But the King and his Hanoverian Junta had set their hearts on it, and were ready to drag England into war with Sweden and Russia, and waste Englishblood and treasure. The English Government had so far yielded to the King’s wishes as to despatch a squadron the previous year to the Baltic, ostensibly to protect English trade, but really to compel Sweden to forego her claims to Bremen and Verden. But Sweden found a powerful ally in Peter the Great. George at Hanover strongly resented the Tsar’s interference, and sent Bernstorff to Stanhope with a plan “to crush the Tsar immediately, to seize his troops, his ships, and even to seize his person, to be kept till his troops shall have evacuated Denmark and Germany”. These were brave words, but easier said than acted upon, for Russia was a great and a rising power, and however much George and his Hanoverians might bluster and threaten, they could do nothing without the English Government. Stanhope wisely referred the matter to his colleagues in England.

When Stanhope’s despatch reached London it gave great uneasiness to the Cabinet. Townshend was determined not to declare war, and speaking in the name not only of the other Ministers but of the Prince of Wales, he strongly represented to the King the dangers of his policy, and insisted that peace ought to be made with Sweden, even at some sacrifice, and a rupture with Russia avoided. This made the King very angry, especially when he learned from Bothmar of the friendship between the Prime Minister and the Prince of Wales. He was convinced that they were in league against him, Townshend unwittingly lent colour to this in anotherdespatch, wherein he asked the King to fix a date for his return from Hanover, or, if he could not return, to grant a discretionary power to the Prince of Wales to open Parliament. This was the last straw. Reluctant though the King was to leave Hanover, he was determined that the Prince of Wales should have no increase of power. He peremptorily dismissed Townshend, and made Stanhope Prime Minister in his place, a hasty action which he soon after modified by appointing Townshend Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

The fall of Townshend was in part due to the treachery of Stanhope and Sunderland, but was chiefly the work of the Hanoverian Ministers and mistresses. Bothmar and Bernstorff were anxious to obtain English peerages and sit in the House of Lords, which would involve a repeal of the Act of Settlement, for that act would not allow aliens, even if naturalised, to become peers. This Townshend refused, as well as Schulemburg’s demand to become an English peeress. He had also earned the Hanoverians’ hatred by repeatedly complaining of the scandal attending the sale of offices. Loudly therefore did they rejoice at his downfall, but they gained little by the change. Stanhope had neither the power, nor the will, to repeal the Act of Settlement, but he was so far complaisant as to permit the King to make Schulemburg a peeress of Ireland with the titles of Baroness of Dundalk, Countess of Dungannon and Duchess of Munster. This did not satisfy the lady, who wished to become a peeressof Great Britain, but the King pacified her by saying that in these things it was necessary to proceed by degrees. Kielmansegge also requested to be created a peeress, but for the present she was left out in the cold. The remaining mistress, Platen, was quieted by a large grant from the King’s privy purse (English money of course), and as she had no wish to meddle in English politics, she was content to stay in Hanover, and await the King’s comings and goings, which he assured her would be more frequent henceforth.

Leibniz, another suppliant for the royal favour, was not so fortunate. On this, the King’s first visit to Hanover after his accession, he renewed his prayers to be allowed to come to England. Caroline had held out hope to him, and it had formed the subject of many letters between them. But Leibniz could not have chosen a worse moment to approach the King. George was furious with the Prince and Princess, and he remembered that Leibniz had aided them and the Electress Sophia to cabal against him in the old days. He was determined that they should not have so able an advocate in England, so he repulsed Leibniz with brutal rudeness, and turned his back upon him at a levée at Herrenhausen. This treatment broke the old man’s heart; he went back to his house in Hanover, and never left it again. He died a few weeks later, neglected and alone. The King took no notice of his death, the courtiers followed suit, and only his secretary followed him to his grave. “He was buried,” said an eye-witness,“more like a robber than what he really was, an ornament to his country.” Leibniz had worked harder than any man for the House of Hanover, and this was his reward. Truly his career was an object-lesson of the old truth, “Put not your trust in princes”.

During the King’s stay at Hanover an important treaty was concluded with France. The Jacobite rising had made it desirable that James should quit Lorraine, and the Regent of France was willing to enter into an alliance with England. A treaty was signed between England and France on November 28th, 1716. The Dutch subsequently entered into this alliance, which became known as the Triple Alliance. In consequence of this treaty James was forced to quit Lorraine, and went to Italy, where he resided, sometimes at Rome, and sometimes at Urbino. Soon after his arrival at Rome he contracted a marriage by proxy with the Princess Clementina, a granddaughter of John Sobieski, the late King of Poland, a princess remarkable for her beauty and grace. The Princess set out for Italy, where the full marriage was to take place; but the British Government, having knowledge of her movements, meanly prevailed on the Emperor of Austria to detain her at Innsbrück. She was kept there nearly three years, and James was left waiting for his bride.

LEIBNIZHAUS, HANOVER.(Where Leibniz Died.)

LEIBNIZHAUS, HANOVER.

(Where Leibniz Died.)

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK II, CHAPTER VI:74This room, with its beautifully painted ceiling, may still be seen at Hampton Court.75Lady Cowper’s Diary.76Walpole’s Letters to Stanhope, 30th July and 9th August, 1716.77This room was also redecorated by order of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the fine tapestry which still adorns the walls was placed there about this time.78Lady Cowper’s Diary.79Tindal’sHistory, vol. vii.

74This room, with its beautifully painted ceiling, may still be seen at Hampton Court.

75Lady Cowper’s Diary.

76Walpole’s Letters to Stanhope, 30th July and 9th August, 1716.

77This room was also redecorated by order of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the fine tapestry which still adorns the walls was placed there about this time.

78Lady Cowper’s Diary.

79Tindal’sHistory, vol. vii.

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