FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER V:
[39] Daily Post, 5th July, 1729.
[40] Lord Townshend to Poyntz, 14th June, 1728.
[41] Letter of Peter Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 31st July, 1729.
[42] Chamberlain to the Queen.
[43] On the 5th September, 1724, King George I., attended by many of the nobility and gentry, dined with Lord Orkney at Clieveden, where he was magnificently entertained.
[44] Suffolk Correspondence.
[45] These letters are preserved in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum. Some of them have been published in the Wentworth Papers, but many of those quoted here have never been printed.
[46] One of the Bubble schemes.
[47] Claremont was one of the seats of the Duke of Newcastle.
[48] The Right Hon. Henry Pelham, son of Lord Pelham and brother of Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, whose title had been revived in his favour by George the First.
[49] This was probably a practical joke played on Peter Wentworth, as he never held the office of secretary to the Queen.
[50] The double marriage scheme which had cropped up again for a brief space.
[51] Thackeray inaccurately says that “in the year 1729 he (King George II.) went over two whole years, during which time Caroline reigned for him in England, and he was not in the least missed by his British subjects”. The King was only away from March to September, 1729, and then returned to England, where he remained until 1732, when he again went to Hanover.
[52] Vide Vehse, Geschichte der Deutschen Höfe.
CHAPTER VI.
THE QUEEN AND THE NATION. 1729–1732.
Soon after the King’s return from Hanover, matters came to a crisis between Townshend and Walpole. Ill-feeling had existed for some time, and the Treaty of Seville served to irritate it. The King, who had a great regard for a minister who had served him long and faithfully, was reluctant to let Townshend go, but the Queen, who saw in him an obstacle to her plans, was anxious to be quit of him, and when once she made up her mind, it was not long before she got what she wanted. She suspected that Townshend was in league with Mrs. Howard, and she could not forgive his having endeavoured to curtail her powers as Regent. Moreover, Townshend, who had always treated her with scant respect, had so far forgotten himself as to make a scene in her presence.
One evening, when the court was at Windsor, the Queen asked Townshend where he had dined that day, and he told her with Lord and Lady Trevor. Walpole, who was standing by, said with his usual coarse pleasantry: “My Lord, madam, I think is grown coquet from a long widowhood, and has some design upon my Lady Trevor’s virtue, for his assiduity of late in that family is grown to be so much more than common civility, that, without this solution, I know not how to account for it.” That Walpole was only joking was evident from the fact that Lady Trevor, besides being a most virtuous matron, was very old, and exceedingly ugly. But Townshend, who was eager to take offence, flew into a passion, and replied with great warmth: “No, sir, I am not one of those fine gentlemen who find no time of life, nor any station in the world, preservatives against follies and immoralities that are hardly excusable when youth and idleness make us most liable to such temptations. They are liberties, sir, which I can assure you I am as far from taking, as from approving; nor have I either a constitution that requires such practices, a purse that can support them, or a conscience that can digest them.” He went white to the lips as he said this, his voice shook, and he trembled with rage, and was ready to spring at Walpole. His answer was intended to be offensive. Walpole led a notoriously immoral life, and had lately made himself the talk of the town by his amour with Maria, or Moll, Skerrett, and the caricatures and ballads of the day teemed with the coarsest allusions to this intrigue. But Walpole kept his temper, and, with a shrug of his shoulders, answered Townshend quietly: “What, my Lord, all this for my Lady Trevor!” Townshend would have retorted with heat, but the Queen, who was exceedingly uneasy at the scene, turned the subject with a laugh, and began to talk very fast about something else.
A variety of causes conspired to aggravate Townshend’s jealousy of his brother-in-law and former friend. Walpole put the case bluntly by saying that “so long as the firm was Townshend and Walpole things went all right, but the moment it became Walpole and Townshend things went all wrong;” but this was not all the truth. Walpole had built a magnificent house at Houghton in Norfolk, which completely overshadowed Townshend’s at Rainham, in the same county. At Houghton he gave frequent entertainments, to which politicians and place-hunters flocked in great numbers, turning their backs on Townshend. Walpole kept a sort of public table, which was much frequented by the country gentlemen, and the house was always full. Scenes of the wildest revelry were enacted at Houghton, and Walpole’s hospitality often degenerated into drunken orgies disfigured by licence of conduct and coarseness of speech. His annual parties in the shooting season were said to cost as much as £3,000. “The noise and uproar,” says Coxe, his panegyrist, “the waste and confusion were prodigious. The best friends of Sir Robert Walpole in vain remonstrated against the scene of riot and misrule. As the Minister himself was fond of mirth and jollity, the conviviality of their meetings was too frequently carried to excess, and Lord Townshend, whose dignity of deportment and decorum of character revolted against these scenes, which he called the bacchanalian orgies of Houghton, not infrequently quitted Rainham during their continuance.”[53]
To Houghton Walpole often brought his mistress, Maria Skerrett, whom he maintained openly, notwithstanding that his wife was still alive. He had one daughter by her.[54] Maria Skerrett’s origin was uncertain, though it was not so obscure as her enemies made out; she was a friend of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and her contemporaries have testified to her good heart. But she was an immoral woman of great licence of speech and behaviour, and it is doubtful whether Walpole was her first lover. He gave her £5,000 down, and a large allowance. The Prime Minister’s conduct in this matter gave great disgust to Townshend and the stricter of his supporters. The Queen, however, made light of it, saying that she “was glad if he had any amusement for his leisure hours,” but she couldn’t understand how he could care for a woman who evidently loved him only for his money. While of Skerrett, she said: “She must be a clever woman to have made him believe she cares for him on any other score; and to show you what fools we all are in some point or other, she certainly has told him some fine story or other of her love and her passion, and that poor man avec ce gros corps, ces jambes enflées, et ce vilain ventre believes her. Ah! what is human nature!”
As the differences between Walpole and Townshend extended not only to their political relations but to their private life, it was not long before matters came to a crisis. They were dining one night with Colonel Selwyn and his lady in Cleveland Row, opposite St. James’s Palace, and after dinner, when Walpole, as usual, had drunk too much wine, a dispute arose in which the Prime Minister so far lost his usual good humour as to reply to a taunt of Townshend’s by shouting: “My Lord, for once there is no man’s sincerity whom I so much doubt as your Lordship’s”. Townshend, who was of a hasty temperament, sprang at Walpole and seized him by the throat; the Prime Minister laid hold of his antagonist in turn, they struggled together and clapped hands on their swords. The whole party was in an uproar; Mrs. Selwyn shrieked and ran out of the house to summon the palace guard, but she was stopped by Henry Pelham, who entreated her not to make a scandal, and used the same argument with the two Ministers. After a time they were pacified a little, and a duel was prevented; but the quarrel was too serious to be patched up.
Townshend shortly after resigned his office in the Government and withdrew to Rainham; he embarked no more in politics, but spent the rest of his days in improving agriculture. His retirement meant more than appeared on the surface, for he had considerable influence with the King. It involved also the ascendency of the Queen and the defeat of Mrs. Howard, whose friend he was. Henceforward there was no one to thwart the influence of the Queen and Walpole. William Stanhope, who had been created Lord Harrington for his services in connexion with the Treaty of Seville, was now made Secretary of State. He was an admirable diplomatist but a poor speaker, and though he made but an indifferent figure in Parliament, his moderation, prudence and sagacity made him a very useful minister. Lord Harrington and the Duke of Newcastle were now the only persons of any importance in the Government except its chief.
Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, was one of the greatest noblemen of his time by sheer force of his wealth. He had an enormous rent roll, he maintained princely establishments, he spent freely on display, yet he was unable to attach to himself a single friend. “The Duke of Newcastle,” writes one who knew him, “hath spent half a million and made the fortunes of five hundred men, and yet is not allowed to have one real friend.”[55] But the fact that he scattered lavish sums at elections to support the Hanoverian succession, owned a large number of boroughs and had vast patronage, sufficed to give him many apparent friends, from the King downwards. He was a poor speaker, he was weak and mean-spirited, and his ignorance of matters connected with his office was almost incredible. On one occasion the defence of Annapolis was recommended to him. “Ah!” he said after some reflection, “to be sure, Annapolis ought to be defended; of course, Annapolis must be defended. By the by, where is Annapolis?” As we have seen, the King when Prince of Wales had the strongest aversion to him, but now the duke stood high in office. Yet the King does not seem to have loved him. “You see,” he said to one of his friends, “I am compelled to take the Duke of Newcastle to be my minister, though he is not fit to be a chamberlain in the smallest court of Germany.” But, however poor the duke’s capacity might be, he had great wealth and influence, and then, as now, men of his type were foisted on the public service to the detriment of the nation.
For the first time since the accession of the House of Hanover to the throne, the Government had respite from Jacobite intrigues. The Treaty of Seville (1729) and the second Treaty of Vienna (1731) established friendly relations between the English Government and all the European powers, so that none of them, not even Roman Catholic countries like Spain and Austria, could any longer lend outward support to James. Moreover the Jacobite party lost, almost at the same time, all their greatest men. Lord Mar died at Aix-la-Chapelle. The Duke of Wharton, who, while pretending loyalty to his master, had been negotiating for a return to England, died in Spain in comparative poverty, and so closed his career of splendid infamy. Bishop Atterbury, the ablest of all, had fallen out of favour with James, chiefly because of his wish to bring up the young Prince Charles Edward in the faith of the Church of England. When James saw the folly of alienating him it was too late. Atterbury died a few weeks after he had sent to James a copy of his vindication of the charges brought against him by Lord Inverness, and the Jacobite cause lost its wisest friend.
James was so unpopular in England at this time, even among his own supporters, that societies were formed to discuss the propriety of transferring their allegiance to his son, Prince Charles Edward, and reports were persistently circulated that the young Prince was to be taken from his father’s guardianship and brought up in the religion of the Church of England. This plan was at first supported by Bolingbroke, who did his utmost to bring it about, and it gained so much credence that in 1733 Sir Archer Croft declared in the House of Commons that “The Pretender was the more to be feared because they did not know but that he was then breeding his son a Protestant”.[56] Had this been true it would have been the severest possible blow for the Hanoverian family. It would have done away with their reason for occupying the throne, and though they could not have been expected to abdicate of their own free will, yet the personal unpopularity of the King after the Queen’s death was so great that the rising of ’45 would probably have had a different ending. But it was not true, for in matters of religion James was as great a bigot as his father, and Atterbury’s death put an end to all such plans.
The Duchess of Buckingham often went to Paris to have conferences with Atterbury on this question, and the Bishop used his influence with her to prevent the Duke of Berwick from giving a Roman Catholic tutor to her son, the young duke. The duchess pretended that her interviews with Atterbury were wholly connected with her son’s education, but Walpole knew that was only a pretext to hide her Jacobite intrigues. The duchess had a great position in England as head of the Jacobite ladies; she was in fact a sort of Jacobite Duchess of Marlborough, and a rival of that illustrious dowager, whom in arrogance and pride she strongly resembled. Like her she possessed enormous wealth, and Buckingham House vied in magnificence with Marlborough House across the park. Both the duchesses disliked and despised the Hanoverian family, though from different reasons, and both masked their dislike, and occasionally did the King and Queen the honour, as they considered it, of attending their drawing-rooms. The two duchesses were on friendly terms, but occasionally had their differences. The Duchess of Buckingham lost her son, and his remains were brought from Rome to be interred in Westminster Abbey with great pomp. She sent to her neighbour across the park, the Duchess Sarah, to ask the loan of the funeral car which had borne the body of the great Duke of Marlborough to St. Paul’s. Sarah spurned this request with contumely: “It carried my Lord Marlborough,” she sent word to say, “and it shall never be used for any meaner mortal.” “I have consulted the undertaker,” wrote back the other duchess, “and he tells me I can have a finer for twenty pounds.”
The Duchess of Buckingham made frequent journeys to Paris and Rome to intrigue in favour of the Stuarts, of whom she considered herself one; she paid visits to Cardinal Fleury at Versailles, but according to a contemporary[57] she got nothing from the cardinal but compliments and civil excuses, and was laughed at both in Paris and Rome for her pompous manner of travelling, in which she affected the state of a princess of the blood royal. On her visits to Paris she always made a pilgrimage to the church in which the unburied body of James the Second lay, and prayed and wept over it. Horace Walpole says, with a characteristic touch of malice, that despite this outward show of grief she allowed the royal pall to rot itself threadbare through her parsimony. It is more likely that sentiment prevented her from having it repaired. To Sir Robert Walpole, who knew all her intrigues almost before she embarked upon them, and who treated her as a person of no importance, she made extraordinary overtures to induce him to join with her in effecting the restoration of the Stuarts. She knew that Walpole was very fond of his daughter by Maria Skerrett, and she hinted to him that it might be possible to wed her to Prince Charles Edward if he would embrace the Stuart cause. She asked him if he remembered what Lord Clarendon’s reward had been for helping to restore the royal family; Sir Robert affected not to understand, and she said: “Was he not allowed to match his daughter to the Duke of York?” Walpole smiled and changed the subject. The King had not the same patience with the Duchess of Buckingham’s eccentricities as his Prime Minister, and would probably have taken some action against her had not Caroline counselled the wiser policy of ignoring her Grace’s quixotic proceedings; but on one occasion the duchess was really frightened lest the King should discover her little plots. She had quitted England without having obtained the requisite permission, and she wrote to Walpole from Boulogne: “I know there is a usual form, as I take it only to be esteemed, of any peer’s asking permission of the King (or Queen in the present circumstance) to go out of the kingdom, but even that ceremony I thought reached not to women, whose being in and out of their country seemed never to be of the least consequence”. In the same letter she alludes to her intrigues, and speaks of them as “nonsensical stories” not worthy of credence. Walpole took her letter to the Queen, who was then Regent, and they laughed over it together, but they let “Princess” Buckingham, as they called her, alone.
THE PRINCESS CLEMENTINA (CONSORT OF PRINCE JAMES FRANCIS EDWARD STUART).
From the Painting in the National Portrait Gallery
While the Stuarts were losing ground Caroline was working hard and incessantly to make the Hanoverian family acceptable to the English nation. By birth a foreign princess, one who did not arrive upon these shores until well into middle life, she could not boast that she was “entirely English” like Queen Anne, but it is remarkable, considering the great and obvious disadvantages under which she laboured, how well she succeeded in impressing her personality upon the English people. She was careful to express herself in public in warm admiration of the laws, customs and constitution of this country; she often declared that England owed everything to its liberties. Yet sometimes when the King abused England, as he invariably did after a visit to Hanover, speaking of the English people as “king-killers” and “republicans,” and grumbling at their riches as well as their rights, she would fall into his vein, and rail against the limited powers of the Crown, which rendered the King “a puppet of sovereignty” and a servant of Parliament. It is probable that she chafed against the limitations to the power of the Sovereign, for she was a woman who loved to rule; but in theory she was all for liberty and tolerance. But whatever her predilections, she clearly understood, and acquiesced in, the only possible terms by which the Hanoverian family were allowed to reign in England. As she could not increase the limited power of the Crown in political matters, she determined to increase its unlimited influence in other directions, and to this end she encouraged everything which helped to promote the well-being and prosperity of the people, especially those movements which had a national origin. This was especially the case with home industries. For example, we read:—
“On Saturday last a considerable body of dealers in bone-lace from the counties of Bucks, Northampton and Bedford, waited upon her Majesty with a petition on behalf of their manufacture, and carried with them a parcel of lace to show the perfection they had brought it to, and when her Majesty showed her royal intention to encourage the British manufacturer by receiving them very graciously, and bought a considerable quantity of lace for the use of the Royal Family, and several ladies followed her example, the said dealers in lace had the honour to kiss her Majesty’s hand.”[58] And again: “On Wednesday last some of the Trustees for Georgia and Sir Thomas Loombe waited upon her Majesty with the Georgia silk, which is to be wove into a piece for her Majesty’s wear, from a beautiful pattern which her Majesty chose, and she, in a most gracious manner, expressed satisfaction at the British Colonies having produced so fine a silk.”[59]
She was quick to encourage English inventions and enterprise. For instance: “On Monday Mr. Clay, the inventor of the machine watches in the Strand, had the honour of exhibiting to her Majesty at Kensington his surprising musical clock, which gave uncommon satisfaction to all the Royal Family present, at which time her Majesty, to encourage so great an artist, was pleased to order fifty guineas to be expended for numbers in the intended raffle, by which we hear Mr. Clay intends to dispose of this said beautiful and most complete piece of machinery.”[60] And again: “On Tuesday a most beautiful hat, curiously made of feathers in imitation of a fine Brussels lace, was shown to her Majesty, who, for the encouragement of ingenuity, being the first of the kind ever made in England, was so good as to purchase it, and afterwards presented it to the Princess of Wales.”[61]
There was very little social legislation during Walpole’s tenure of power, the great Minister going on the principle of letting things alone; but a few useful reforms were passed from time to time, and in all of them the Queen took a warm interest. One was effected at the instance of the Duke of Argyll, who brought in a bill that all proceedings of the courts of justice should be conducted in English instead of Latin as heretofore. “Our prayers,” said the Duke of Argyll, “are in our native tongue, so that they are intelligible; and why should not the laws wherein our lives and properties are concerned be so, for the same reason?” The measure was carried, notwithstanding the fact that most of the lawyers strongly opposed the change; Lord Raymond, for instance, declared that if the bill were passed the law must likewise be translated into Welsh, since in Wales many understood no English. Another reform was the purging of the Charitable Corporation from gross abuses. This corporation had been formed for the relief of the industrious poor by lending them small sums of money at legal interest, but had drifted into malpractices and extortionate usury; penalties were now inflicted upon the malefactors, and the whole system was reformed.
The Queen’s private charities were very numerous. She would never refuse a supplicant who sought her aid, in whatever rank of life he might be, and though her income was large, she spent all of it, chiefly upon others. She had no sense of the value of money, and with her to have was to spend, or to give away, not always very wisely perhaps, but always cheerfully. The journals of the period teem with notices of her liberality; but, even so, they did not represent a tithe of her charities, for she gave away much in secret, of which the public never knew. The following extracts from newspapers, taken almost at random, will serve to show how wide was her sympathy, and how generous her impulses:—
“Twelve French Protestants, who were made slaves on account of their religion, having lately been released from the jails of France on the representation of their Britannic Majesties, and having arrived here, a charitable collection is making for them, towards which the Queen has given £1,000.”[62]
“Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to give and bestow the sum of £500, as a mark of her royal bounty and charity, towards the relief of the sufferers in the late dreadful fire at Gravesend in Kent.”[63]
“We hear that her Majesty has ordered a sum of money to relieve poor housekeepers and other families in necessity.”[64]
“Thursday last week, the wife of the drummer at Woolwich, lately brought to bed of three children, waited on the Queen, and her Majesty ordered her fifty guineas.”[65]
“Mr. James Brown, one of the pages of the presence to her Majesty, having been ill of the palsy this year, and now lying incapable of doing his duty, her Majesty has been pleased to order that he should be paid his salary of £40 per annum during his life.”[66]
“On Tuesday last, her Majesty, together with the Duke and the three Princesses, paid a visit to Mrs. Simpson, whose husband is one of the keepers of Bushey Park. She is 106 years old, being born in the town of Cardigan in the year 1625, is now in good health, and has all her senses, except hearing, perfect. Her Majesty after expressing herself pleased with the manner of life by which she had preserved herself to this good old age, made her a present of a purse of gold.”[67]
“As soon as her Majesty heard of the misfortune of the country girl’s breaking both her thigh bones by the overturning of a cart near Hampton Court, she sent some ladies to enquire the truth of it, and being satisfied thereof, her Majesty was graciously pleased to order one guinea a week to be paid for her lodging, nurse and diet, and directed the surgeon to take particular care of the girl, and her Majesty would pay him.”[68]
“Her Majesty being informed of the great benefit the inhabitants of the city and liberties of Westminster received from the infirmaries established there for the relief of such of their poor as are sick and lame, has been graciously pleased to send to each such infirmary a bounty of £100 to promote so useful a charity.”[69]
“We hear that her Majesty has lately given to the hospital near Hyde Park Corner, the sum of £100.”[70]
“Last Saturday when the Royal Family returned from hunting, her Majesty was told by Lady Deloraine that the Princess Louisa had been pleased to stand godmother to the twins of Mrs. Palairet, wife of her Highness’s writing master. Whereupon her Majesty ordered the mother and children to be brought to her, when her Majesty, finding that Mrs. Palairet intended to suckle them both herself, was graciously pleased with the courage and tenderness of the mother in undertaking the hard task, and ordered her a purse of guineas.”[71]
“Last Sunday a great number of the widows of the Navy, whose husbands died before August, 1732, and were unprovided, waited on the Queen at Kensington with their humble address of thanks for the provision they lately received upon their humble petition presented to her Majesty on Sunday, 29th April.”[72]
“Her Majesty going through Hammersmith was pleased to order ten guineas for the poor haymakers, who were very numerous on the road.”[73]
“Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to send fifty guineas towards the relief of the unhappy sufferers by the late fire in Cecil’s Court in St. Martin’s Lane.”[74]
“Her Majesty has been pleased to declare her royal intention of bestowing £5,000 towards building and endowing a hospital for foundling children.”[75]
“Her Majesty has been pleased to order the royal gardens at Richmond to be free to all in the same manner as those at Kensington are when the Royal Family does not reside there, so that the walks are full of company every evening to the great advantage of the town and the neighbourhood.”[76]
“Her Majesty has been pleased to grant a charter and to give a donation to the governors of the infirmary at Hyde Park Corner, to establish themselves into a corporation, the same to be called St. George’s Hospital.”[77]
Queen Caroline was a constant and generous patron of learning; she twice gave donations of £1,000 to Queen’s College, Oxford, and she tried in many ways to advance the interests of education. Science, especially medical science, found in her a warm supporter. Under the guidance of Sir Hans Sloane, President of the Royal Society, she lent her aid to any movement to promote the health of the people, and any doctor or man of science who distinguished himself was sure of receiving notice and encouragement from her. Perhaps her most notable achievement in the advancement of science was the support which she gave to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who, on her return from the East, introduced inoculation as a safeguard against smallpox into England. This beneficent discovery was opposed with great clamour by the clergy, the more ignorant of the doctors, and the middle and lower classes, and Lady Mary would certainly have failed had not Caroline stood by her side from first to last. She and her husband and children were inoculated, and by her example and determination she prevailed on the higher classes and the more enlightened people to be inoculated also, and so make the practice general.
Queen Caroline held firmly to the principle that the welfare of the people should be the first care of princes, and she strove in every way to ameliorate their lot. Parliament did little for them in Caroline’s day, the era of social legislation had scarcely begun to dawn. The wars of nations, the conflicts of dynasties, the strife of creeds absorbed all energies, and in the noise and heat thus engendered the needs of the people were thrust aside and forgotten. The condition of the poor not only in the large towns, but in the country districts, was deplorable in the extreme. Many of them were sunk in ignorance and vice, and treated like beasts of burden. There was much talk about the liberties of the nation, but the lower classes of the people were little better than serfs. Neither Whig nor Tory did anything for them; they had no votes and the politician passed them by. Under such conditions the influence of one woman, however highly placed, could do little. Let it be recorded that in an epoch when the duty of man to his fellow-man was least understood, when the national selfishness was greatest and the national ideals were lowest, Queen Caroline did what she could.