LECTURE V

Creevey Papers—The Regency

It is time we entered better society than we have been in for the last few lectures. Of course much depends on the meaning of the word “better.” I do not think we need attach any moral significance to it. Let me at once admit that by better, I mean more select, or, perhaps, “exclusive” is the right term. For most people in the time of which I am about to treat it was necessary to be born to good society in order to obtain an entrance to it. Yet there were exceptions. Whilst there were men like Brougham whose genius compelled recognition, though they were made to feel that they neither were nor could be members of the inner circle; there were others, without even his socialqualifications, who took their place therein and made themselves felt and even feared by the highest in the land. Such a man was the author of the papers from which I shall borrow so much to-day; nor can we forget that the rival intonto the Prince Regent himself, the first gentleman in Europe, was Brummell, the tradesman’s son.

The subject of my remarks to-day will be at first mainly political, not that I have any desire to raise controversial questions; but one is bound to do so, when speaking of English life during the great war with Napoleon, which bears so striking an analogy to the present. There is a marked tendency to-day to say that the conduct of our statesmen and of society in general contrasts unfavourably with that of men of a century ago; and I think I shall be able to prove conclusively that, under very different conditions the passions of men are much the same as formerly, and that, if the advantage is on either side,it is with the present rather than with the past.

I feel I have set myself a very difficult task in attempting to define a Whig in the later years of George III.

The strength of the party was the new aristocracy created by Henry VIII with the spoils of the monasteries, of which the Cavendishs, Russells, and other houses were the leaders.[25]They were naturally strongly Protestant: and their immense power dates from the Revolution in 1688. Their rivals, the Tories, were in opposition till the accession of George III; and, as their sympathies were all on the side of the exiled Roman Catholic Stuarts, they had little or no influence. When, however, George III, a prince born in England, ascended the throne, the Tories, who bore him no grudge for his treatment of the exiled royal family, ralliedto the young monarch, who was resolved not to submit, as his grandfather had done, to the tyranny of the Whig oligarchy. Henceforward the Tories were on the side of the Crown, whilst their opponents resisted its encroachments. The revolt of the American colonies, provoked by Mr. Grenville’s Stamp Act, made the Whigs oppose the King, who was determined to coerce his disaffected subjects. When the French Revolution broke out, this party sympathised with the republicans; and were opposed to the war which began in 1792. Their following consisted of the dissenters and intellectuals: the former drawing their strength from the commercial classes, and the latter consisting of young men, enamoured with the cult of reason and extremely susceptible to new ideas. The bulk of the nation, however, the Church, the country gentry, the farmers, profiting by war prices, and even the lower orders, was Tory. The non-aristocratic members of the Whigparty were often great sufferers. They were exposed to mob violence, as in the case of Dr. Priestley, to social ostracism, and to vindictive prosecutions by the government. But the great houses maintained their position and were too strongly entrenched in it to be seriously disturbed.

Thus we have the spectacle of liberal ideas being championed by a coterie of great families, haughty, withdrawn from common folk, and so exclusive that it was almost impossible to gain admission to their circle. Hereditary exercise of power extending over fully a century made them skilled politicians; and when they recruited talent from the middle classes, the Whigs made their allies feel their dependence upon the ruling caste. Neither the philosophy of Edmund Burke in one generation, nor the versatility of Henry Brougham in another, prevented either from the sense of being in a state of dependence on their patrons.

One man, however, without the advantages of birth or wealth, enjoyed the privilege of moving freely in this charmed circle, in the person of Mr. Creevey, whose memoirs only appeared in 1903. His editor, Sir Herbert Maxwell, describes his abilities as hardly of the second order, but I must confess that, considering the position he occupied in the party, I cannot share his opinion. Married to a Mrs. Orde and apparently living on his wife’s moderate fortune, sitting for Thetford, a close borough of the Duke of Norfolk’s, and after his wife’s death subsisting on an income of £200 ($1000) a year, he never stooped to flatter, gave his advice without fear or favour, and, when the Duke put him out of his seat in the House of Commons, wrote the head of the English peerage a letter which shewed that he looked on his patron as an equal who had treated him very shabbily. From the Duke’s reply to “My dear Creevey” it is easy to see that hisGrace recognised that he had offended, not a humble dependant, but a man of great political and social influence.

I am now going to select a few passages dating from the rupture of the Peace of Amiens in 1803 and onwards, shewing how England was rent by faction, even in the most perilous days of the war with Napoleon. Remember that often the country was fighting alone against perhaps the greatest genius the world has ever seen, and that her position at times appeared to be almost hopeless.

In 1804, when Buonaparte’s camp was established at Boulogne ready for the invasion of England, party feeling ran extraordinarily high. Pitt was becoming impatient of the incompetence of his friend Addington; and, as a party manœuvre, he moved for an inquiry into the conduct of Admiral Lord St. Vincent and was supported by Fox. Creevey writes that he is convinced that the accused is innocent; but still he felt boundto vote with Fox. “I am,” he says, “more passionately attached every day to party. I am certain that without it nothing can be done.” A month later the King’s madness was coming on, and Creevey hopes that this attack will make an end of him as a ruler. “I hope that the Monarch is done and can no longer make ministers.” Later on, the prospect of disaffection in Ireland fills Creevey with hopes that Pitt’s position may become impossible; he says, “The country engaged in a new war unnecessarily undertaken and ungraciously entered upon, the Catholics discontented, and the Opposition unbroken. If such a combination of circumstances does not shake the Treasury bench, what can?” The next year, 1805 (Trafalgar), brings to Mr. Creevey and his friends the hope that Mr. Pitt may be exposed for lending Government money to a firm which had recently gone bankrupt. In 1808, when Sir Arthur Wellesley began his work in the Peninsula,the convention of Cintra made him most unpopular; and the nation was, says Sir Herbert Maxwell, “almost unanimous in demanding his degradation if not his death.” Mr. Whitbred writes to Mr. Creevey, “I grieve for the opportunity which has been lost of acquiring national glory, but I am not sorry to see the Wellesley pride a little lowered.” The next year witnessed the lamentable failure of the Walcheren Expedition, and Wellesley’s victory of Talavera. Captain Graham Moore, brother to Sir John Moore, writes to Creevey: “The Cannings are in a damned dilemma with this expedition and the victory of Talavera. They mean, I understand, to saddle poor Lord Chatham with the first, but who can they saddle the victory with? They cannot attack the Wellesleys as they did my poor brother. What a cursed set you (politicians) are.” The passage of the Douro by Wellesley led to Mr. Whitbred addressing the General in mostcomplimentary terms; but the war occupied people’s thoughts but little, the main interest being centred in the exposure of the scandalous sale of commissions in the army by Mrs. Clarke, a friend of the Duke of York’s. Two years later, in 1811, Creevey takes encouragement from the number of sick in the army of Portugal and hopes it may bring about peace, and when the war in Spain was nearing its victorious conclusion a friend writes to him, abusing Wellington.

These remarks are indeed the mild utterances of leaders of a party more interested in disparaging their political opponents than in the progress of the war. When we turn to the extreme wing of the party we find Napoleon a hero and his defeat a calamity:

“But even with such mighty odds against him the towering and gigantic genius of Napoleon would have defied them all, if English money had not bribed some of his generals. It was this, and this only, thatcompleted his downfall. To talk of the Duke of Wellington as the conqueror of Napoleon is an insult to the understanding of any intelligent man; and for Lord Castlereagh to have boasted of having subdued him as his lordship was wont to do, was pitiful, was wondrous pitiful.” So wrote Lady Ann Hamilton; in the same strain also at an earlier period spoke Mr. Fox of the virtues of his country’s greatest and most determined enemy. It is thus that history repeats itself in the wars my country has waged in her long history.

I now pass to a character very different from Creevey’s, to the man who ruled the fashionable world with an authority even more undisputed than that of the Prince of Wales, Beau Brummell, the prince of the dandies. The Beau had no advantages of birth and only a moderate fortune. It is often the custom to regard him as a mere coxcomb, the outcome of a frivolous societyfitted only to point a moral and adorn a tale. I venture to take a more charitable view of him and to give my opinion that he owed his ascendancy to something more than extravagance of dress and unbounded impudence.

To take but a single example: Everybody knows the story of Brummell walking with Lord Alvanley in the Park being cut by the Prince Regent and enquiring in an audible voice, “Who is your fat friend?” There is very little point in the remark except its offensiveness. But the biographer of Brummell, Captain Jesse, got the true version from a friend who witnessed the incident. It was not in the Park, but at a ball given by Brummell, Lord Alvanley, and two others. The Prince was not invited, because of his quarrel with Brummell; but, as everybody was going, he signified his pleasure to be present. When he arrived he greeted Lord Alvanley and his other two hosts, cuttingBrummell pointedly, thereby insulting one of his entertainers. The Prince had by a gross breach of good taste placed himself in an impossible position. If he did not know his host, his host had a right to regard him as an uninvited intruder; therefore the question was a snub, unanswerable even by the Regent. The life of Brummell is the record of much folly and frivolity, ending with a long exile in Calais, which terminated in imbecility and death in an almshouse. Nevertheless this famous dandy, fop though he was, is one of those butterflies whose useless lives at least add to the beauty of the scene. Nor is it for the recorder of his time to point the finger of scorn at him. Absurd as his ideal was, it was not wholly contemptible. His vanity was not malicious, he was at least no sycophant, he held his own among aristocrats, who were as vulgar as they were arrogant. He shamed his associates into decent manners, at a period when social polish washardly skin deep. He insisted on personal cleanliness in days when it was disregarded by the highest in the land. He had the art of making friends who stood by him in his hours of poverty and distress. The Duke of York, with all his faults the best liked son of George III, the Duchess, one of the most amiable ladies of the day, the Duke of Beaufort, and many others remained staunch to him as long as he lived. He was a sharer in the follies of his day, but so far as I know he was not so heartless in his vices as many a greater man; nor did he pander to the vices of others. We can laugh at his absurdities, without having that feeling of disgust with which we regard many of the faults of his august rival, the Prince Regent. How delightful, for example, is his criticism of the Duke of Bedford’s coat! On one occasion his Grace asked the Beau his opinion of his new clothes. “Turn round,” said Brummell, “now stand still.” Then taking the garment bythe lapel, he exclaimed, “Oh, Bedford, do you call this a coat?”

The thing which strikes us most in connection with the halcyon period of the dandies, with its follies and lavish expenditure, is that it coincided with some of the most anxious days through which England ever passed, and with the age when distress and poverty were most keenly felt. Fashionable life was indeed fast and furious and characterised by its reckless extravagance. Everybody gambled: every possible event was made the subject of a bet. The turf was, as it is to-day, crowded with blacklegs; and the issue of a great fight in the prize ring was watched with more trembling anxiety than that of a battle in Spain or Flanders. The prevalence of drunkenness was universal; every memoir of the time records drinking-bouts innumerable. The fine gentleman garnished every sentence with an oath and even used bad language in his letters to hisfriends. Duelling was universal. Pitt, the Duke of Wellington, Castlereagh, nearly all the leading statesmen, had to fight. Even the Duke of York, though very near the throne, ‘met’ the Duke of Richmond. But with all its failings the men of fashion had one merit: though they were almost incredibly coarse, brutal, and selfish, no one could reproach them with softness. They may have been bad, but they were men. If they went to see prize-fighters beat each other into a jelly, they were ready enough to use their fists themselves. If they gambled the cards and the dice, they did so at the risk of ending their days in a debtor’s prison. Many of them died ruined in purse and bankrupt even of honour. If they pursued their amours unscrupulously, there was always the risk of facing an outraged relative’s pistol. The spice of danger was never absent from their lives. One alone could share in all their pursuits, and be exempt from peril. He coulddrink himself drunk without danger of his words being called in question; he could ruin wives and daughters and no one would raise a hand against him; he could engage in shady transactions on the turf, and men made it a point of honour to shield his fair fame. If others were extravagant, they dissipated their own patrimony; and when that was gone, there was nothing for it but to starve. But he had only to fall back on national resources, and the taxpayer extricated him from his difficulties. It is because of its immunity, that the profligacy of George, as Prince, as Regent, and as King is so detestable.

It has been customary, I think, to underrate his abilities. Thackeray has a most misleading passage about his relation with the Whigs. “At first he made a pretence of having Burke and Fox and Sheridan for his friends. But how could such men be serious before such an empty scapegrace as thislad...; what had these men of genius in common with their tawdry young host of Carlton House? That fribble the leader of such men as Fox and Burke! That man’s opinions about the constitution—about any question graver than the button of a waistcoat or the sauce of a partridge worth anything! The friendship between the Prince and the Whig Chiefs was impossible. They were hypocrites in pretending to respect him, and if he broke the hollow compact between them, who shall blame him?” But if we turn to Creevey, we shall see that George played the game with the Whigs with consummate skill. Not that he cared a straw for the constitution or political matters. He wanted leisure, comfort, influence,—above all, money. He used the Whigs for his purposes in the question of the Regency, and in order to extort money from the nation. They were ready enough to serve him in defeating Pitt and their other opponents;but he, once he was Regent in 1812, with his father, the old King, hopelessly insane, flung them aside as no longer useful and made the Tory government uphold the two things now to his interest to conserve,—thestatus quoand the power of the Crown.

No one has ever doubted the power of fascination exercised by George, which was due not less to his clever adaptability, than to his high position. What reader of Lockhart’s “Life of Scott” can forget the dinner party when the King and Sir Walter exchanged mutual badinage in the freest manner? We find the same in Creevey regarding the extreme affability with which he treated him and the Whig leaders at Brighton, when Prince Regent. George’s charm of manner and the ease with which he could adapt himself to his company and forget to all appearance his royal dignity in social intercourse was one of his most powerful political assets which he used to the fullest advantage.

The influence exercised by him was almost wholly evil. Head of the state in the days of its greatest military glory, when the moral and political influence of England was paramount in Europe; living in the days of great industrial and mechanical triumph, in which his country had the fullest share; confronted as King with some of the gravest social problems, which its poets and philosophers were taxing their utmost to expose and remove,—the marvel is that any man could have occupied such a position, and yet interested himself almost exclusively in frivolous pleasures and sensual amours.

I do not think that it is too harsh a verdict to say that George IV’s example acted like a poison to the social life of several generations. Vice was rampant enough in English society before he came to manhood; but his father had done much to set an example to his nobility of a pure domestic life, and to encourage simple tastes and pleasures.Gambling and profligacy went on despite the King; but his son led the orgies of extravagance. His taste was atrocious. What can be more monstrous than the Pavilion at Brighton? Read Thackeray’s description of his coming of age fête at Carlton House, quoted from theEuropean Magazine, 1784: “The saloon may be styled thechef-d’œuvre, and in every ornament discovers great invention. It is hung with a figured plush.... The window curtains, sofas, and chairs are of the same colour. The ceiling is ornamented with emblematical paintings, representing the Graces and Muses, together with Jupiter, Mercury, and Apollo and Paris. Two ormolu chandeliers are placed here, etc., etc.”[26]The coronation was a monstrous exhibition of extravagance. For the feast in Westminster Hall, where the Champion of England, “mounted on a horse, borrowed from Astley’s theatre, rode into theHall,” more than eight hundred dozen of wine and one hundred gallons of punch were provided. Vulgarity distinguished the period of the ‘First Gentleman in Europe.’ Countless families were brought to ruin by association with him, and at no time that I can call did more eminent people die by their own hands. As Thackeray says: “There is no greater satire on that proud society ... than that it admired George!”

One episode which perhaps throws as much light as anything upon the manners and morals of the time is the trial of Caroline of Brunswick, the unhappy, if indiscreet, consort of George IV. Before making the attempt I am afraid I must go back to 1795, when the Prince of Wales, on the report of his not too refined sailor brother, decided to offer his hand to that princess. He got very well paid by the country for the sacrifice. His income was raised from £60,000 ($300,000) to £125,000 ($625,000); for thepreparations for the wedding he got £27,000 ($135,000); a further grant of jewels and plate, or cash to buy them, £28,000 ($140,000). Then came £15,000 ($130,000) to complete Carlton House; and the Princess, his wife, was in addition offered an allowance of £50,000 ($250,000) a year. For some reason—I should say she was the only princess who ever did so—Caroline accepted less than was offered as income; namely, £35,000 ($175,000).

It is true George also wanted his debts, amounting to a trifle of £600,000 ($3,000,000) odd, paid, and failed to get it; still, considering the value of money in those days, and that times in England were worse than had been known,—wars, taxes, bad seasons, the poor in abject distress, Pitt distracted how to raise money, sedition rampant, and no very glorious period for the British arms,—he certainly did not sell himself cheap. Of the miserable marriage which ensued little needbe said. From the time the Prince raised his bride, when she tried to kneel, and said to Lord Malmesbury, “Harris, I am not well; get me a glass of brandy,” to her death twenty-six years later, it is one long discreditable story. But I allude to it for a personal reason. I have myself seen two of the counsels of the Queen in the celebrated trial. Dr. Lushington was a friend of my family’s, and I was at a school in Brighton which Lord Brougham used to visit; and—I believe I am correct in saying this—I actually received one of the prizes when he gave them away. I certainly have a book on my shelves which, I fancy, I got on that occasion. It assuredly does not make a man feel young when he realises that he has seen and can remember men who not only witnessed but took a very prominent part in a trial which was held ninety-six years ago.

Let me, however, recapitulate the events which led up to the great scene in the Houseof Lords. George as Prince of Wales hated his wife from the first, and after the birth of the Princess Charlotte refused to have anything to do with her. On April 30, 1796, the Prince wrote a letter to the Princess in which he said: “Our inclinations are not in our power, nor should either of us be held answerable to the other, because nature has not made us suitable to each other.... I shall now finally close this disagreeable correspondence, trusting that, as we have completely explained ourselves to each other, the rest of our lives will be passed in uninterrupted tranquillity.”

To do George justice, his wife does not seem to have been attractive. He had excellent taste in dress and deportment; and Caroline was far from being a model of refinement in appearance or manners, whilst her choice of company was never discreet. The old King always treated her with kindness and even affection, but he found it necessaryto warn her to be more careful in the selection of her society. In 1804 the Prince of Wales instituted a “Delicate Enquiry,” which four Lords were appointed to conduct, with the result that the behaviour of the Princess was pronounced notunsatisfactory. In the years which followed there were constant quarrels and recriminations about the education of their daughter, the Princess Charlotte of Wales, a high-spirited girl who stood up boldly to the ill treatment she received at her father’s hands, and defended her mother. In 1814 the Princess of Wales left England for her famous travels. Two years later the Princess Charlotte married Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, and settled down at Claremont, a beautiful place purchased for her by the nation. The young couple were thoroughly happy, the people looked forward to being one day ruled over by a beloved and virtuous queen. The incredible scandals of the family of George III werebeing forgotten, when the news came that the Princess was dead.

I shallneverget to the trial! I must digress once more. What ensued was almost farcical. Despite the fact that George III had an immense family, he had no grandchildren. All his elderly sons hastened to get married. The Prince Regent was very little married to his wife, and very much so to various other ladies; the Duke of York had married happily, and was, if not always faithful, a kindly husband; but he had no family. The Duke of Cumberland had married a princess of whom the royal family disapproved, and perhaps he was more hated by the nation than any member of the house of Hanover. Among other things, many firmly believed that he was really guilty of the murder of his servant, Sellis. The idea of his coming to the throne was dreaded on all sides. But there was no lack ofnominallyunmarried Royal Dukes,—Clarence, Sussex,Kent, and Cambridge. The nearest persons to the succession, who had families, were the King of Würtemburg, his brother, and their sister the Princess Frederica Buonaparte. It became necessary for the Royal Dukes to take wives in accordance with the Royal Marriage Act of 1772;[27]and, though they had not only themselves but other ladies and their children to consider, these noble princes presented themselves at the altar of Hymen. Not, however, without some forethought, as the following remarks of the Duke of Kent to his friend Mr. Creevey testify:

The Duke thought that his brother Clarence would marry, but that his price would be too high for the ministers to accept, viz., “a settlement such as is proper for a prince who marries expressly for a succession to the Throne,” and in addition the payment ofall his debts, and a handsome provision for each of his ten natural children. Kent, being next in the succession, was ready to do it cheaper. “It is now twenty-seven years that Madame St. Laurent and I have lived together, ... and you may well imagine, Mr. Creevey, the pang it will occasion me to part with her.” She need not have very much; but a certain number of servants and a carriage are essentials. Being a “man of no ambition,” the Duke of Kent wanted only £25,000 ($100,000) a year in addition to his present income if he took a wife—the same sum as York had when he married in 1792,—and Kent was generously prepared to make no further demands because of the decreased value of money since his brother’s allowance was made. “As to the payment of my debts,” he concluded, “I don’t call them great. The nation, on the contrary, is greatly my debtor.” So it is; for he married, and became the father of Queen Victoria.

The Princess Caroline had left England in 1814 and had been touring in the Mediterranean ever since. At first she was attended by some English in her suite; but these gradually dropped off, leaving Her Royal Highness without any of her husband’s subjects about her. We need not follow her in her travels or adventures. It is enough to say that she visited very out-of-the-way places and mixed with the sort of people no ordinary lady, not to say a royal Princess, could be expected to meet. She loaded her courier, Bergami, with honours and favours, she founded an order of knighthood when she visited Jerusalem and made him Grand Master. She had procured for him the title of Baron. Her conduct and the familiarities she permitted were, to say the least, indiscreet. Undoubtedly she had laid herself open to a serious charge of misconduct.

The Prince Regent resolved to do his bestto get rid of his hated wife by trying to obtain a divorce. But not only law but also public opinion was against this. He had driven his wife away with every possible insult, he had kept her apart from her daughter, the Queen, his mother, had refused to receive her as Princess of Wales at court. And if, in desperation, Caroline had failed in her duty, Europe rang with stories of the immorality of the Regent, and the common people were heart and soul on the side of his wife. As a divorce seemed hopeless, attempts were made to bribe Caroline to renounce her titles and live on a large income out of England. Matters came to a climax when George III died. If George IV was King, his wife was Queen of England; and she was resolved to return to the country and maintain her rights.

This miserable matrimonial squabble with all its sordid details rapidly assumed the dimensions of a political struggle which rentthe country in twain. The Whigs had never forgiven George for using them as long as he was Prince of Wales and throwing them over when he became Regent in 1812. They therefore espoused the cause of the Queen; and as far as possible—for they had little admiration of her conduct—defended her. The Whig lawyers rallied to her cause, notably Henry Brougham, who, despite his great talents, had suffered from the exclusiveness of the great Whig families. As a parvenu, high political office was closed to Brougham, but the case of the Queen gave him an unrivalled chance as a lawyer. More honest and unselfish and almost as useful to Queen Caroline was Alderman Wood, a prominent citizen of London, who more than once filled the office of Lord Mayor. Despised by the polite society of the time, called by the King, with his usual delicacy, “that beast Wood,” the alderman understood better than anyone the effect of theQueen’s return to the country. He knew that, however great her indiscretions, her wrongs would win her popular sympathy, and that her courage in facing her accusers would be sure to range the nation on her side. That he was no vulgar demagogue is attested by the facts that the royal family often sought his counsel; that it is due to his advice that Queen Victoria was born in England; and that he was the first baronet she created shortly after her accession to the throne. But of all the Queen’s friends there is no one who was more honest and faithful than that gaunt Scotch spinster, the Lady Ann Hamilton, whose memoirs were published when she was very old, without her consent and greatly to her distress. The daughter of the Duke of Hamilton and sister to the radical Lord Archibald Hamilton, she was six foot high, awkward and ungainly, and an object of ridicule to Caroline and her friends. They called her Joan ofArc, and shewed her no consideration and little courtesy. Yet in her hours of trial Caroline had no truer or stauncher friend. Her “Secret History of the Court of England,” published under the circumstances to which I have alluded, is extraordinarily scurrilous, but it reflects the fierceness of party spirit which animated the Whig faction; and I may have to recur to it.

George III died on January 29, 1820. The first act of his successor was to refuse to allow the new Queen’s name to appear in the prayer for the Royal family. But on the 7th of June Her Majesty entered London. The road from Westminster Bridge to Greenwich was thronged with spectators. “She travelled,” says Grenville, “in an open landau, Alderman Wood by her side and Lady Ann Hamilton and another woman opposite. Everybody was disgusted at the vulgarity of Wood sitting in the place of honour, whilst the Duke of Hamilton’s sister wassitting backwards in the carriage.” ... “It is impossible,” he adds, “to conceive the sensation created by this event. Nobody either blames or approves of this sudden return, but all ask, What will be done next? How is it to end?”

Events moved rapidly. The Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, produced the famous green bag, full of incriminating documents, in the House of Lords, but the Queen did not flinch. It was even proposed to bring her to trial under the fourteenth century act of treasons, 23 Edw. III.

Finally, however, the King’s advisers determined, not to try the Queen, but to introduce a bill into the House of Lords depriving her of all royal titles and dignities and divorcing her from her husband. But in order to carry the bill an investigation into her conduct was necessary, so that she was practically, if not actually, tried.

I propose to ask you to follow the Queen’scase in Creevey’s notes, and I think we shall gather from them something of the interest with which people watched it.

The trial began on Aug. 17; and Creevey thus describes the entry of the Queen. “To describe to you her appearance and manner is far beyond my powers. I had been taught to believe she was as much improved in looks as in dignity of manners; it is therefore with much pain I am obliged to observe that the nearest resemblance I can recollect to this much injured lady is a toy which you used to call Fanny Royde. There is another toy of a rabbit or a cat, whose tail you squeeze under its body, and then out it jumps in half a minute off the ground into the air. The first of these toys you must suppose to represent the person of the Queen; the latter the manner by which she popped all at once into the House, made aduckat the throne, another to the Peers, and a concluding jump into the chair which was placed for her.Lady Ann Hamilton was behind the Queen, leaning on her brother Archy’s arm.... She is full six feet high and bears a striking resemblance to one of Lord Derby’s great deer.”

Brougham and Denman both spoke for the Queen, and she was better received on the next day, the 18th. Creevey went off to his club and wrote: “Nothing can be more triumphant for the Queen than this day altogether.... The Law Officers of the Crown are damnably overweighted by Brougham and Denman.” The next day the facts adduced by the Attorney General made things look bad. A less numerous and reputable crowd appeared to cheer the Queen on the 22d. “Now,” writes Creevey, “her danger begins.” But then things began to mend; the witness in whom the prosecution had most confidence was a certain Teodoro Majocchi. Brougham forced him to contradict himself, and seeing how he was being driven into admissions,the witness continually replied,Non mi ricordo, “I don’t remember,” a phrase which became for a time proverbial. There were very few English witnesses, but when Creevey, on Aug. 25, mentioned this to the Duke of Wellington, his Grace replied, “Ho! but we have a great many English witnesses—officers.” “And this was the thing,” writes Creevey, “which frightened me most.” On the 26th the evidence of a chambermaid gave trouble, and Creevey is angry with the Queen. “This,” to quote him, “gives considerable—indeed very great advantage—to the case of that eternal fool, to call her (the Queen) no worse name.” A few days later, Sept. 8, he calls her “the idiot.”—The next day the House adjourned till the 3d October, and the divorce clause was dropped. Creevey remarks that now the Bill of Pains and Penalties was really directed against the King: its object being “to declare the Queen an abandoned woman, and the Kinga fit associate for her!” When the House sat on Oct. 3, Mr. Brougham made his great speech for the defence. On the 6th it came out that the husband of the Queen’s friend, Lady Charlotte Lindsay, had sold his wife’s letters to the Treasury. On the 9th Creevey reports “the town literally drunk with joy at the unparalleled triumph of the Queen.” But at 4P.M.the weather changed. Two Naval officers, Flynn and Hownam, were called for the defence, and broke down under cross examination, so that the Queen’s guilt became almost certain. Then the government lost its advantage by committing the mistake of letting a witness, who was to have been indicted for perjury, leave the country. On the 13th the Duke of Norfolk wrote to Creevey, saying that “if this horrible bill” passed, he would feel no regret that as a Roman Catholic he could not take his seat as a Peer. At last, on Oct. 24, the trial was nearing its end and Denman began to sumup. The attack he made on the King and the Duke of Clarence, who had been especially bitter against the Queen, is a striking example of the freedom allowed to a British advocate. He compared the case to the dismissal of the virtuous Octavia by Nero and the examination of her servants by his infamous minister, Tigellinus.

He looked at the Duke of Clarence and declared that he ought to come forward as a witness and not whisper slanders against Caroline. The Queen, he said, might well exclaim, “Come forth, thou slanderer, and let me see thy face! If thou would’st equal the respectability of an Italian witness, come forth and depose in open court. As thou art, thou art worse than an Italian assassin! Because, while I am boldly and manfully meeting my accusers, thou art plunging a dagger unseen into my bosom.”

In his peroration Denman made a most unlucky slip, but he faithfully reproducedthe irrational attitude of public opinion.[28]The people believed the Queen guilty and yet desired her acquittal. She had suffered so cruelly, she had been so shamefully treated, her ruin had been sought by employing spies against her, her accusers were worse than she. So Denman quoted the divine words to less guilty accusers of a sinful woman—“Go and sin no more,”—whereupon a wag wrote:

“Most gracious Queen, we thee imploreTo go away and sin no more;But if that effort be too great,To go away, at any rate.”

“Most gracious Queen, we thee implore

To go away and sin no more;

But if that effort be too great,

To go away, at any rate.”

Then followed the debate, and on the 6th of November, even with the aid of eleven of the bishops, there was a majority of only 28 in favour of the Bill of Pains and Penalties. The feeling of the peers was in accordance with Denman’s peroration. Caroline was guiltybut ought not to be punished. Said Lord Ellenborough: “No man who had heard the evidence would say that the Queen of England was not the last woman in the country which a man of honour would wish his wife to resemble, or the father of a family would recommend as an example to his daughters.” (Loud cheers.) But he voted against the bill. On Nov. 8 it was proposed that the divorce clause should be tacked on to the bill. Creevey writes (Nov. 10): “Three times three!if you please, before you read a word further.—The Bill has gone, thank God! to the devil. Their majority was brought down to 9 ... and then the dolorous Liverpool came forward andstruck. He moved that his own bill be read this day six months.” “I was a bad boy,” he writes next morning, “and drank an extra bottle of claret with Foley, Dundas, etc.” I need not tell the rest of poor Caroline’s story, how public feeling calmed down, especially when Parliamentvoted her £50,000 ($250,000) a year. How she tried to attend the Coronation, how she died, and the King ordered the body not to be taken through London, and how the people rose and forced the funeral procession to pass through the city, how at last she found rest among her ancestors in her native Brunswick. Time will not permit me to do more than allude to George’s visit to Ireland at the very time his injured wife was dying, and his speech: “This is one of the happiest days of my life. I have long wished to visit you. My heart has always been Irish. Go and do by me as I shall do by you. Go and drink my health in a bumper. I shall drink all yours in a bumper of Irish whiskey.”

Well might Byron celebrate the occasion of the Irish visit and the King’s tumultuous welcome:

“Is it madness or meanness which clings to thee now?Were he God—as he is but the commonest clay,With scarce fewer wrinkles than sins on his brow—Suchservile devotion might shame him away.Ay, roar in his train! Let their orators lashTheir fanciful spirit to pamper his pride.”

“Is it madness or meanness which clings to thee now?

Were he God—as he is but the commonest clay,

With scarce fewer wrinkles than sins on his brow—Such

servile devotion might shame him away.

Ay, roar in his train! Let their orators lash

Their fanciful spirit to pamper his pride.”

I am afraid I have occupied much time with this famous trial. Had I told you the evidence in the least detail I should only have inspired disgust. Nor should I have selected the subject except for a special reason.

Though no results immediately followed, even though George IV recovered his popularity in a measure,—for he was a very clever and could be a very charming man,—yet the very fact that the bill was introduced into the House of Lords ranged public opinion against that branch of the Legislature as nothing previously seemed to have done. It brought about the time when the days of the aristocracy as the sole influence in government were to be numbered. Peers were no longer to be allowed the enormous privileges they had enjoyed. They had rangedthemselves on the side of the throne in an unjust cause,—not because they cared for the King,—but because they considered their interests and his to be identical. The Reform Bill of 1832 was the answer of the English middle class to the Bill of Pains and Penalties of 1820.

FOOTNOTES:[25]Disraeli’s “Sybil” gives a scathing portraiture of the great Whig families in his sketch of the career of the Earls of Marney.[26]Quoted from Thackeray’s “Four Georges.”[27]Which made illegal any marriage contracted by a prince of the blood without the consent of King and Parliament.[28]I am informed by a friend, Mr. Denman, a grandson of Caroline’s Counsel, that the words were not used in the speech, which was reported wrongly in theAnnual Register.

[25]Disraeli’s “Sybil” gives a scathing portraiture of the great Whig families in his sketch of the career of the Earls of Marney.

[26]Quoted from Thackeray’s “Four Georges.”

[27]Which made illegal any marriage contracted by a prince of the blood without the consent of King and Parliament.

[28]I am informed by a friend, Mr. Denman, a grandson of Caroline’s Counsel, that the words were not used in the speech, which was reported wrongly in theAnnual Register.

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