FOOTNOTES:
[37] This has been denied.
[38] Her jointure House.
[39] This is the pretty original French:—
“Malgré tout le danger que j’ai essuie dans cette tempête ma chère Caroline, et malgré tout ce que j’ai souffert en etant malade à un point que je ne croisois, pas quel le corps humain pourroit souffrir, je vour jure que je m’éxposorois encore et encore pour avoir le plaisir d’entendre les marques de votre tendresse que cette situation m’a procuré. Cette affection que vous temoignez, cette amitié, cette fidelité, cette bonté inépuisable que vous avez pour moi, et cette indulgence pour toutes mes foiblesses sont des obligations que je ne sçaurai, jamais récompenser, que je ne sçaurai mériter, mais que je ne sçaurai jamais oublier non plus.”
CHAPTER XVI.
Parliament and the Prince’s Income.
It has been stated that the Prince of Wales’s popularity had been steadily growing ever since his marriage. It was much increased about this time, just before the King’s return, by his determined action at a fire which occurred near the Temple, the latter cluster of old buildings being said to have been saved by his timely intervention, which limited the loss to five or six houses.
He appears to have worked among the crowd, and to have excited its admiration to a remarkable degree. Some unwise persons raised a cry of “Crown him! Crown him!!” and this being duly reported to his mother, the Queen, caused her the gravest anxiety, and the most unreasonable anger.
Hervey, as usual, poured oil, not upon the troubled waters, but upon the fire of her wrath; he suggested that owing to the King being so much hated and the Prince so popular, the latter believed that his favour with the people helped to keep his father on the throne.
To this the Queen replied bitterly that owing to the reports of the Prince’s popularity—brought to her principally by Lord Hervey, who was her news-carrier-in-chief—that popularity, instead of keeping the King upon the throne, was likely to depose him. But a far greater cause of dissension between the Prince of Wales and his parents was now looming very near. It cannot be doubted that when Lord Bolingbroke, to use his own words, “left the stage,” he gave to the Prince detailed instructions for a move to be made in Parliament for an increase of his income; that increase which he, together with the bulk of the nation, considered he was fully entitled to under the settlement of the Civil List on his father ascending the throne of England. The subtle talent of the great diplomatist had mapped all this out long before he left these shores, possibly as a Parthian shaft at his enemies whom he left behind triumphant. Be this as it may, a glance at the Prince’s position will, however, fully justify the course he took.
Before his marriage, it appears that he received from his father £24,000 a year, not in any fixed or settled income, but as the King chose to give it to him. It must be remembered that the cost of living for royal personages was then much more than it is at present, the expenses for dress and the personnel of the Household were far in excess of anything we know of in our day. In those times as much as five hundred pounds were given for one court suit, and the ladies’ dresses were in proportion as regards cost.
On the Prince’s marriage, no jointure was settled on his wife, who brought him a paltry dowry of five thousand pounds, but the King increased his allowance to £50,000 a year.
This on the face of it appeared a wonderful addition, but it must be remembered that the Prince was very much in debt, and that the expenses of the marriage itself were enormous; they could not possibly have been otherwise in the case of a Prince of Wales.
As regards the increase in his household, the expenses were at once doubled, as the Princess had practically a new household of her own, with ladies-in-waiting, gentlemen-in-waiting, women of the bedchamber, gentlemen ushers, and a host of others required by the Court etiquette of the time. What would have been a large income for a nobleman was totally inadequate for the Prince of Wales, and as a result he commenced at once to fall deeper and deeper into debt. It is not surprising with these facts facing him, and with the knowledge that his father—who most of this time was engaged in squandering enormous sums of good English gold on German women—received from George the First, the full sum of £100,000 per annum allotted by Parliament as the income of the Prince of Wales. These thoughts, together with the prospect of greatly increased expenses in the future must have been very galling—for the probability of a child being born to them must have been known to the Prince and Princess at this time, though not disclosed until later. It is not to be wondered at then that the Prince thought over Bolingbroke’s counsels, and eventually decided to take a strong step to obtain that increase in his income to which he was evidently fully entitled by Act of Parliament, and which he would have received in the ordinary way but for the fact of the hatred and meanness of his parents towards him. For the hatred at least a good reason will be shown in its proper place.
The Prince then having consulted with his advisers—and the principal of these were the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Carteret and Mr. Pulteney—decided to appeal to Parliament to petition the King to grant him that same income as Prince of Wales, which he himself received from George the First.
The first sign of the King’s return home was a letter received on the early morning of Saturday, January 14th, by express from his Majesty stating that after a delay of five weeks at Helvetsluis, he had at last embarked, and after encountering a contrary wind all the way, they had tacked until at last they made Lowestoft, at which port the King had landed about noon on the previous day.
The news seems to have been held back in the ante-room while the Queen slept, and here Sir Robert Walpole and the Prince of Wales appear to have met and had a two hours’ chat, whilst they waited for the Queen to wake.
According to Hervey, most of the talking appears to have been carried on by Sir Robert, who seems to have grasped the opportunity to lecture the Prince in that fatherly manner adopted by old men towards young ones when their pockets are not affected. As reported by Hervey, Walpole’s discourse was a string of sleepy platitudes—he had been roused out of his bed—peculiarly irritating to the Prince under the circumstances, which he seems to have listened to with exemplary patience, but the vital subject of the increase in his income does not appear to have been touched upon at all. The next day the King arrived at St. James’s Palace, and the Queen and the whole of the Royal Family went down into the Colonnade to receive him.
Contrary to all expectation he was in an excellent humour, but suffering from a terrible cold.
He kissed everybody, including the Prince of Wales, and was at once marched off to bed by his solicitous spouse, to be doctored for his cold, which by this time, from long neglect, required careful nursing. Here in his bedroom he was kept a close prisoner by the Queen, and very few people were allowed to see him; those that did, did not come away with any great opinion either of his health or his temper, which had not improved by confinement. Any allusion to his royal health irritated him beyond measure. Lord Dunmore, one of his Lords of the Chamber, offended in this respect, and was ordered out. To Lord Pembroke, whom he called to take his place, he spoke of the erring nobleman as a troublesome inquisitive “puppy,” a designation very much in the royal favour at that time; he added that he and others were always plagueing him about his health like a parcel of old nurses.
Sir Robert Walpole and others got very anxious about the King at this time, mainly on account of the seclusion in which he was kept by the Queen. He was certainly unwell, suffering undoubtedly from the reaction after the excitement of his escape from shipwreck, and perhaps his excesses in Hanover, for he was getting old; but his indisposition was but a slight one, and when he came out from his apartments, which he did just at the time it suited the Queen to let him, it was found that his recovery was very rapid indeed.
It is more than probable that the Queen had a strong reason for keeping up at this time the idea of his ill-health, and a reason may be easily found for it, in the following incident.
There can be no doubt whatever, although, according to Hervey, she strenuously denied it, that during the summer of 1736, the Prince of Wales soon after his marriage appealed to his mother on the subject of his financial position, and that at the same time he informed her of his intention to seek the aid of Parliament to obtain his full allowance of £100,000 a year as Prince of Wales, and a jointure for the Princess. The circumstance is recorded both by Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, in his papers, and by Doddington in his diary.
The Queen affected to receive the announcement airily, and to laugh it off, according to the Prince’s description of the interview, but nevertheless she may have taken the matter to heart more seriously than she pretended, and knowing that Parliament was to meet almost immediately after the King’s return; it is quite possible that she made the most of the King’s indisposition to keep the Prince and his Party from bringing the matter of the income forward. If she did, she made a miscalculation, for many votes probably went the Prince’s side on account of this supposed uncertainty of the King’s life, and the probable accession of the Prince to the throne.
It was, however, only a few days before the motion was made in the House of Commons that definite information reached the Court, through Lord Hervey, as usual, that the Prince intended to lay the dispute between himself and his father concerning his income before Parliament.
Lord Hervey begged the Queen not to tell the King that night as it might disturb his rest and set him fuming, but to break it gently to him in the morning; this she did, when the King took the news much more calmly than was expected, and in fact showed much less concern than the Queen all through.
Then began a state of excitement which divided the country into two great parties, those for the King, and those for the Prince, which latter was by far the larger party.
But as in the present day, but still a great deal more so then, the House of Commons was divided by many interests, principally the interests of the individuals who sat there.
For a King to be sending about in the House, bribing members with actual hard cash to vote for him, seems a very shocking thing in our eyes, but it was not uncommon then. In addition there was a strong party among the Tories—at whose head was Sir William Wyndham—who regarded the Prince’s application to Parliament as a motion injurious to the constitution, and who, while sympathizing with him and determined not to vote against him, yet hesitated to commit themselves by voting for him. But the Prince and his Party lost no opportunity to secure votes; Mr. Pulteney, the leader of the Opposition was with them hand and glove, and it certainly appeared, if the Tory party could be counted upon, that the Prince would gain the victory, which would have been a crushing blow to the Court and Walpole. So serious did matters begin to look that Sir Robert counselled a compromise, and with great difficulty persuaded the King—and Queen—to send a message to the Prince offering to settle Fifty Thousand a year upon him certain, instead of the present voluntary allowance and to give the Princess a jointure—amount not stated. The following is the text of this document with which the Lord Chancellor (Lord Hardwicke, who had only received the Great Seal that morning, and who did not relish this message to the Prince as the first act of his Chancellorship), Lord President, Lord Steward, Lord Chamberlain, Dukes of Richmond, Argyll[40] and Newcastle, Earls of Pembroke and Scarborough and Lord Harrington, were sent to the Prince of Wales:
“His Majesty has commanded us to acquaint your Royal Highness, in his name, that upon your Royal Highness’s marriage, he immediately took into his Royal consideration the settling a proper jointure upon the Princess of Wales; but his sudden going abroad and his indisposition since his return had hitherto retarded the execution of these his gracious intentions; from which short delay His Majesty did not apprehend any serious inconvenience could arise[41]; especially since no application had in any manner been made to him upon this subject by your Royal Highness; and that His Majesty hath now given orders for settling a jointure upon the Princess of Wales, as far as he is enabled by law, suitable to her rank and dignity; which he will in proper time lay before his Parliament in order to be made certain and effectual for the benefit of Her Royal Highness. The King has further commanded us to acquaint your Royal Highness that though your Royal Highness has not thought fit, by any application to His Majesty, to desire that your allowance of fifty thousand pounds per annum, which is now paid you by monthly payments, at the choice of your Royal Highness, preferably to quarterly payments, might by His Majesty’s further grace and favour be rendered less precarious. His Majesty, to prevent the bad consequences which he apprehends may follow from the undutiful measures, which His Majesty is informed your Royal Highness has been advised to pursue, will grant to your Royal Highness for His Majesty’s life, the said fifty thousand pounds per annum, to be issuing out of His Majesty’s Civil List Revenues, over and above your Royal Highness’s revenues arising from the Duchy of Cornwall, which His Majesty considers a very competent allowance, considering his numerous issue and the great expenses which do and must necessarily attend an honourable provision for his whole family.”
Such was the message which the Lord Chancellor, by command of King George, read over to his son, in the presence of the nine other noblemen who accompanied him.
According to the circumstantial account of the interview given by Lord Hervey, the Prince stepped up to Lord Hardwicke, who had kissed hands and been congratulated by him on his appointment as Chancellor, and made the following communication in a “sort of whisper”:
“That he wondered it should be said in the message that he had made no sort of communication to the King on this business, when the Queen knew he had often applied to him through her, and that he had been forbidden by the King ever since the audience he asked of his Majesty two years ago at Kensington, relating to his marriage, ever to apply to him again any way but by the Queen.”
Upon this communication being repeated to the Queen, she flew into a violent rage, and called the Prince a liar!
To this she added, according to Lord Hervey’s account—which looks very much like his own cooking—a great deal of special pleading to endeavour to show that there were no witnesses to prove the Prince’s assertion. But the plain answer to this is that it was hardly the sort of communication, especially passing between mother and son, at which the Prince would have been likely to have provided himself with witnesses. Against the Queen’s denial, we have the record of such a communication having taken place in the papers of Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, who gives circumstances and the nature of the interview, and we have also the same fact mentioned in Doddington’s Diary (Appendix). In the celebrated interview which took place between Doddington and the Prince there recorded, it is clearly shown that the Prince made this statement concerning the communication to his mother, to Doddington on February 8th, 1737, long before the deputation of his father’s noblemen waited on him, and that to Doddington he stated that the interview with the Queen had taken place during the previous summer. This seems to be a very strong piece of evidence that the Prince was speaking the truth and his mother the reverse. In fact from this time forth her hatred of him seemed to grow stronger day by day.
But to return to the deputation to the Prince with the King’s terms of settlement.
If these had not been communicated privately to him before, Frederick must have known that the King’s offer really meant very little, and he seemed quite prepared with his reply. It was at once taken down as he spoke it, and was as follows:—“That His Royal Highness desired the Lords to lay him with all humility at his Majesty’s feet, and to assure his Majesty that he had, and ever should retain, the utmost duty for his Royal person; that His Royal Highness was very thankful for any instance of his Majesty’s goodness to him or the Princess, and particularly for his Majesty’s intention of settling a jointure upon Her Royal Highness; but that as to the message, the affair was now out of his hands, and therefore he could give no answer to it.” After which His Royal Highness used many dutiful expressions towards his Majesty; and then added: “Indeed, my Lords, it is in other hands—I am sorry for it,” or to that effect. His Royal Highness concluded with earnestly desiring the Lords to represent his answer to His Majesty in the most respectful and dutiful manner.
There does not seem much in this answer to find fault with in the direction of respect at any rate, under the circumstances. The interview, however, ended there, and the Lords withdrew to convey the Prince’s answer back to his Royal Father in another part of the same Palace of St. James’s.
Both the King and Queen were enraged at the reply, and the former commenced at once to abuse rather roughly Sir Robert Walpole for persuading him to send it, but the minister sagely answered that he expected the good result of it not that day but on the morrow—the day of the Motion in the House of Commons. He was not wrong for he made the utmost use of it himself on that occasion in his speech.
So the agreement between father and son having fallen through, and everybody being worked up to the required pitch of excitement, the matter went forward, and on the next day, February 22nd, Pulteney made his motion before the House of Commons, for an address to be presented to the King, humbly asking for a settlement of £100,000 a year on the Prince of Wales and the same jointure on the Princess, as the Queen had when she was Princess of Wales, giving the King the assurance that the House would support him in this measure.
The strong points of Pulteney’s speech were, the claim the Prince had to the increase of income, which he said was founded on equity and good policy, and a legal right founded on law and precedent.
He contended that the revenue of the Civil List had been granted to George the First, and afterwards added to in the case of George the Second, on the express—or at any rate implied condition—that out of the revenue a sum of £100,000 a year should be set aside for the Prince of Wales. Pulteney is said to have spoken on the subject with great ability for an hour and a half, Lord Hervey adding in his account that in the speech there was “a great deal of matter and a great deal of knowledge, as well as art and wit, and yet I cannot but say I have often heard him speak infinitely better than he did that day. There was a languor in it, that one almost always perceives in the speeches that have been so long preparing and compiling.”
Sir Robert Walpole at once answered and, as might have been expected almost at the commencement of his speech, conveyed to the House the orders he had received from His Majesty to communicate to them the message he had sent his son on the previous day. This of course was the reason of his advising the King to send the message at all.
Sir Robert read aloud the whole of the King’s message to his son, this magnanimous offer of something he could not get out of giving, and after it the Minister made all he could of the Prince’s answer:
“Indeed, my Lords, it is in other hands; I am sorry for it.”
Walpole’s speech was an able one, and for the most part went to show that the King could really not afford—out of an income of nearly a million—to give his son the extra £50,000 per annum, and if he could, he was not bound to give it by the Settlement made by Parliament of his Civil List.
But of all the speeches that were made that evening, by far the most telling was one by a supporter of the Prince, of which the following is a summary:
“By the regulation and Settlement of the Prince’s Household, as made sometime since by His Majesty himself[42] the yearly expense comes to £63,000 without allowing one shilling to His Royal Highness for acts of charity and generosity.
“By the message now before us, it is proposed to settle upon him only £50,000 a year, and yet from this sum we must deduct the Land Tax, which, at two shillings in the pound, amounts to £5,000 a year, we must likewise deduct the sixpenny duty to the Civil List Lottery, which amounts to £1,250 a year, and we must also deduct the fees paid at the Exchequer, which amount to about £750 a year more. All these deductions amount to £7,000 a year, and reduce the £50,000, proposed to be settled upon him by the message to £43,000 a year.
National Portrait Gallery.Spooner & Co.
SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.
“Now, as His Royal Highness has no other estate but the Duchy of Cornwall, which cannot be reckoned, at the most, above £9,000, his whole yearly revenue can amount but to £52,000, and yet the yearly expense of his Household, according to His Majesty’s own regulations, is to amount to £63,000, without allowing His Royal Highness one shilling for the indulgence of that generous and charitable disposition with which he is known to be endued in a very eminent degree. Suppose then we allow him but £10,000 a year for the indulgence of that laudable disposition, his whole yearly expense, by His Majesty’s own acknowledgment, must then amount to £73,000, and his yearly income, according to this message, can amount to no more than £52,000. Is this, sir, showing any respect to his merit? Is this providing for his generosity? Is it not reducing him to real want, even with respect to his necessities, and consequently to an unavoidable dependence too upon his father’s Ministers and servants.
“I confess, sir, when I first heard this motion made, I was wavering a good deal in my opinion; but this message has confirmed me. I now see, that without the interposition of Parliament, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, the Heir Apparent to our Crown, must be reduced to the greatest straits, the most insufferable hardships.”
However, despite this statement, after a few more speeches from Lord Baltimore, Mr. Hedges—both of the Prince’s Household, and the Master of the Rolls, who was neither one way nor the other, the House divided at eleven o’clock, with the result that the motion in favour of the Prince was negatived by 234 votes to 204. A very close majority considering, and that was entirely owing to forty-five Tories rising and leaving the House in a body without voting.
But the King and Queen were delighted and heaped renewed abuse upon their son, the very mildest terms of which were “Puppy” and “scoundrel.” Congratulations poured in upon the Royal Parents from the Court Party, not only upon the rejection of the motion, but upon the small amount of money it had cost the King in bribes to the Members of the House of Commons—the matter seemed to be quite public property, for it was known that the King had only disbursed £900 in all; £500 to one man, and £400 to another, and this in any case would have had to have been given them at the end of the Session—for selling their constituents’ interests apparently—but they clamoured for it then. One would have liked to have seen these two clamouring members of the House.
But the Prince nothing daunted, consented to the wishes of his friends, and had the same motion made two days after (February 23rd) in the House of Lords by Lord Carteret—who was a double-faced man, and apologized to the Queen before he made it, urging that he was forced to make it, which was not the truth. In the Upper House, however, the Prince was even less fortunate, and the motion was lost there by a majority of 103 against 40. But in all the excitement which prevailed at this time we may be certain of one thing, and that is that the victorious little King, with his strong German accent always spoke of the sum asked for by his son as “dat Puppy’s fifty sousand pound.”
The Prince, on his part, however the adverse vote of the House of Commons may have affected him, certainly did not desire the increase in his income to come out of the pockets of the British Taxpayer, for when a suggestion of that nature was made to him by Doddington at his interview already referred to on February 8th, that the Fifty Thousand Pounds should be voted by Parliament apart from the King’s income, Frederick made the following fine answer:
“I think the nation has done enough, if not too much, for the family already; I would rather beg my bread from door to door than be a further charge on them.”
The following is the comment of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough on this affair, written to Lord Stair at the time:
“1736. A great battle in the Houses of Parliament concerning the revenue which the public pays to the King to support the Prince of Wales. The Court carried it by a majority of thirty, not without the expense of a great deal of money, and a most shameful proceeding to threaten and fetch sick men out of their beds to vote, for fear of losing their bread. But notwithstanding this, the minority for the Prince was two hundred and four; and a great many other members who would have been in it if they had been in town. A great many charming truths were said on that side; no justice or common sense was expressed on the other. The speakers on the majority were Sir Robert, Horace, Sir W. Yonge, Pelham, and somebody of the Admiralty that I have never heard of before. I am confident that though the Prince lost the question, the ministers were mightily frighted, and not without reason, for it is a heavy-weight two hundred and four, who were certainly on the right side of the question—and I am apt to think, that men who have been so base with estates and so mean as to act against the interests of their country, will grow very weary of voting to starve the next heir to the crown; since the generality of the majority has a view only to their own interest, and it is apprehended that the King is in so bad a state of health, that though he has got over his illness so far as sometimes to appear in public, yet we shall not be so happy as to have him live long; and everybody that sees him tells me that he looks at this time extremely ill. The Prince in all this affair has shown a great deal of spirit and sense, and the intolerable treatment which he has had for so many years will no doubt continue him to be very firm, and to act right.
“House of Lords:—Proxies and all but forty for the Prince, and a majority of near three to one on the other side. Nobody surprised at that. I really think that they might pass an Act there, if they pleased, to take away Magna Charta. ’Tis said they don’t intend to turn out anybody in the King’s service who voted in this question for the Prince in either House. If they don’t, I think that shows some fear.
“I am never very sanguine, and for a long time could not imagine which way the liberties of England could be saved. But I really do think now there is a little glimmering of daylight.”