"I drink with all my heart to the health of every unfortunate prince," replied King George, with a smile.
He was not so merciful after the failure of the Scotch rebellion, for executions were of daily occurrence, and those who were spared perished miserably in prison. The wearing of oak-branches,—a Stuart emblem,—was considered an insult to the government, and two soldiers were whipped almost to death in Hyde Park for appearing with them on the twenty-ninth of May, in memory of the Restoration; while others were actually shot down for wearing white-rose badges, which they refused to surrender.
A.D. 1717. The Princess of Wales had gone to London with her daughters shortly after the accession of George I., and lived at St. James's Palace. Three years later she had a son, who was christened George William. The king and the Duke of Newcastle were godfathers, and the Duchess of St. Albans was godmother. But we must relate an incident that occurred at the time this ceremony was performed. The Prince of Wales wanted his uncle, the Duke of York, to be sponsor for his boy with the king. George I. said that the Duke of Newcastle should share the office with him, and peremptorily insisted that it should be so. The prince was forced to yield, though he hated the duke, who always treated him with studied neglect. Just after the christening had been performed, the prince crossed the room, and, shaking his finger in the face of the Duke of Newcastle, said, "You are a rascal, and I shall find a time to be revenged." The king understood this to mean a challenge to fight, so placed his son under arrest, but soon released him, and turned him and the princess out of the palace, though their three daughters lived with him until he died.
Not only did George I. banish his son from his palace, but forbade all those who visited at the court of the Prince and Princess of Wales ever to come into his presence. The fact is that he had never loved his son since he had made the attempt to visit his mother when he was hunting in the neighborhood of Ahlden; and it has been asserted that he at one time thought of having the prince captured and sent off to America, without letting it be known what had become of him.
A.D. 1720. One of the most remarkable circumstances of the reign of George I. was the formation and bursting of a gigantic speculation known as the South-Sea Company, that being the name of the organization by which the scheme was manipulated. As in all such cases, a few people realized immense fortunes by the sudden rise of the stock,—that is, those who were in the secret of the plot and knew when to sell. In a few months thousands of victims were reduced to a deplorable state of misery and ruin by the decline of the stock, which, was much more rapid than the rise had been.
The king was in Germany when this catastrophe happened; but he was summoned to England to discuss with his ministers some means for quelling the disturbance it had caused. A committee from the House of Commons was appointed to investigate the affair. They pronounced it the most villanous fraud that had ever been contrived for the ruin of a nation. Many members of parliament were implicated in the disastrous affair, and the profits of the South-Sea Company were found to amount to thirteen millions of pounds. It was many years before the country recovered from the dreadful effects of this unparalleled swindle.
It was not only the officials who cheated; this propensity extended to the menials also. Once a Hanoverian cook complained in person to the king that all his assistants helped themselves so freely they left him no chance whatever. He was honest, he declared, but such was not the case with any other servant in the royal household. "Embezzlement is rife in the kitchen in despite all I can do," he said. "When the dishes are brought from your majesty's table, one steals a fowl, another a pig, a third a joint of meat, another a pie, and so on till there is nothing left." George, who saw that the trouble lay in the fact of there being nothing left to steal, answered, "I can put up with these things; and my advice to you is, to go and steal like the rest, and to remember to take enough." This was very bad advice, for the fellow became an accomplished thief, though probably if he had not inclined in that direction he would not have taken his master at his word.
A.D. 1726. And now we have only to record the death of the poor prisoner of Ahlden, after a captivity of more than thirty years. She had been ill for a long time, and became worse as the hopes she had entertained of escape gradually grew fainter. Through the long weary years she had been a model of patience, mildness, and dignity, and she died asserting her innocence, commending herself to God, mentioning her children with tenderness, and pardoning her oppressors.
A.D. 1727. Six months later King George I. set out for Hanover, and by the end of a week he was dead. He had landed in Holland and travelled quickly through the country, eating heartily wherever he stopped, and taking no heed of the violent pains that frequently attacked him after doing so. As he approached Osnaburg he became worse, and fell forward in his carriage, saying to his attendant, "I am a dead man!" He was carried to Osnaburg in an unconscious state, and died there on the eleventh of June, 1727, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. He was buried at Hanover.
He had once promised the Duchess of Kendal that if it were possible for the departed to return to this world, he would visit her after his death. So when a large black raven flew in at that lady's window at Isleworth, she was so convinced that it was the soul of the departed monarch that she treated the bird with great tenderness and respect.