The new Charter is certainly drawn up with great moderation, the few alterations which have been made approximating it to the spirit of the English Constitution, and in the whole of the proceedings the analogies of our revolution have been pretty closely followed. But there has been a remarkable deviation, which I think ominous, and I can’t imagine how it has escaped with so little animadversion here. That is the cavalier manner in which the Chamber of Peers has been treated, for the Deputies not only assumed all the functions of Government and legislation, and disposed by their authority of the Crown without inviting the concurrence of the other Chamber, but at the same time they exercised an enormous act of authority over the Chamber of Peers itself in striking off the whole of that great promotion of Charles X., which, however unwise and perhaps unconstitutional, was perfectly legal, and those Peers had, in fact, as good a right to their peerages as any of their colleagues. They have reconstructed the Chamber of Peers, and conferred upon it certain rights and privileges; but the power which can create can also destroy, and it must be pretty obvious after this that the Upper Chamber will be for the future nothing better than a superior Court of Judicature, depending for its existence upon the will of the popular branch. There are some articles of the old Charter which I am astonished at their keeping, but which they may possibly alter[4] at the revision which is to take place next year, those particularly POLIGNAC. which limit the entrance to the Chamber of Deputies to men of forty, and which give the initiation of laws to the King. But on the whole it is a good sign that they should alter so little, and looks like extreme caution and a dislike to rapid and violent changes.

[4] They are altered. The first translation of the Charter which I read was incorrect.

In the meantime we hear nothing of the old King, who marches slowly on with his family. It has been reported in London that Polignac is here, and also that he is taken. Nobody knows the truth. I have heard of his behaviour, however, which was worthy of his former imbecility. He remained in the same presumptuous confidence up to the last moment, telling those who implored him to retract while it was still time that they did not know France, that he did, that it was essentially Royalist, and all resistance would be over in a day or two, till the whole ruin burst on him at once, when he became like a man awakened from a dream, utterly confounded with the magnitude of the calamity and as pusillanimous and miserable as he had before been blind and confident. It must be owned that their end has been worthy of the rest, for not one of them has evinced good feeling, or magnanimity, or courage in their fall, nor excited the least sympathy or commiseration. The Duke of Fitzjames made a good speech in the Chamber of Peers, and Chateaubriand a very fine one a few days before, full of eloquence in support of the claim of the Duke of Bordeaux against that of Louis Philippe I.

In the meantime our elections here are still going against Government, and the signs of the times are all for reform and retrenchment, and against slavery. It is astonishing the interest the people generally take in the slavery question, which is the work of the Methodists, and shows the enormous influence they have in the country. The Duke (for I have not seen him) is said to be very easy about the next Parliament, whereas, as far as one can judge, it promises to be quite as unmanageable as the last, and is besides very ill composed—full of boys and all sorts of strange men.

August 20th, 1830

On Monday to Stoke; Alvanley, Fitzroy Somerset, Matuscewitz, Stanislas Potocki, Glengall, and Mornay were there. Lady Sefton (who had dined at the Castle a few days before) asked the King to allow her to take Stanislas Potocki to see Virginia Water in a carriage, which is not allowed, but which his Majesty agreed to. Accordingly we started, and going through the private drives, went up to the door of the tent opposite the fishing-house. They thought it was the Queen coming, or at any rate a party from the Castle, for the man on board the little frigate hoisted all the colours, and the boatmen on the other side got ready the royal barge to take us across. We went all over the place on both sides, and were delighted with the luxury and beauty of the whole thing. On one side are a number of tents, communicating together in separate apartments and forming a very good house, a dining-room, drawing-room, and several other small rooms, very well furnished; across the water is the fishing-cottage, beautifully ornamented, with one large room and a dressing-room on each side; the kitchen and offices are in a garden full of flowers, shut out from everything. Opposite the windows is moored a large boat, in which the band used to play during dinner, and in summer the late King dined every day either in the house or in the tents. We had scarcely seen everything when Mr. Turner, the head keeper, arrived in great haste, having spied us from the opposite side, and very angry at our carriages having come there, which is a thing forbidden; he did not know of our leave, nor could we even satisfy him that we were not to blame.

The next day I called on Batchelor (he was valet de chambre to the Duke of York, afterwards to George IV.), who has an excellent apartment in the Lodge, which, he said, was once occupied by Nell Gwynne, though I did not know the lodge was built at that time. I was there a couple of hours, and heard all the details of the late King’s illness and other things. For many months before his death those who were about him were aware of his danger, but nobody dared to say a word. The King liked to cheat people with making them think he was well, and when he had been at a Council he would return to his apartments and tell his valets de chambre how he had deceived them. GEORGE IV.’S ILLNESS AND DEATH. During his illness he was generally cheerful, but occasionally dejected, and constantly talked of his brother the Duke of York, and of the similarity of their symptoms, and was always comparing them. He had been latterly more civil to Knighton than he used to be, and Knighton’s attentions to him were incessant; whenever he thought himself worse than usual, and in immediate danger, he always sent for Sir William. Lady Conyngham and her family went into his room once a day; till his illness he always used to go and sit in hers. It is true that last year, when she was so ill, she was very anxious to leave the Castle, and it was Sir William Knighton who with great difficulty induced her to stay there. At that time she was in wretched spirits, and did nothing but pray from morning till night. However, her conscience does not seem ever to have interfered with her ruling passion, avarice, and she went on accumulating. During the last illness waggons were loaded every night and sent away from the Castle, but what their contents were was not known, at least Batchelor did not say. All Windsor knew this. Those servants of the King who were about his person had opportunities of hearing a great deal, for he used to talk of everybody before them, and without reserve or measure.

This man Batchelor had become a great favourite with the late King. The first of his pages, William Holmes, had for some time been prevented by ill health from attending him. Holmes had been with him from a boy, and was also a great favourite; by appointments and perquisites he had as much as 12,000ℓ. or 14,000ℓ. a year, but he had spent so much in all sorts of debauchery and living like a gentleman that he was nearly ruined. There seems to have been no end to the tracasseries between these men; their anxiety to get what they could out of the King’s wardrobe in the last weeks, and their dishonesty in the matter, were excessive, all which he told me in great detail. The King was more than anybody the slave of habit and open to impressions, and even when he did not like people he continued to keep them about him rather than change.

While I was at Stoke news came that Charles X. had arrived off Portsmouth. He has asked for an asylum in Austria, but when once he has landed here he will not move again, I dare say. The enthusiasm which the French Revolution produced is beginning to give way to some alarm, and not a little disgust at the Duke of Orleans’ conduct, who seems anxious to assume the character of a Jacobin King, affecting extreme simplicity and laying aside all the pomp of royalty. I don’t think it can do, and there is certainly enough to cause serious disquietude for the future.

Sefton in the meantime told me that Brougham and Lord Grey were prepared for a violent opposition, and that they had effected a formal junction with Huskisson, being convinced that no Government could now be formed without him. I asked him if Palmerston was a party to this junction, and he said he was, but the first thing I heard when I got to town was that a negotiation is going on between Palmerston and the Duke, and that the former takes every opportunity of declaring his goodwill to the latter, and how unshackled he is. Both these things can’t be true, and time will show which is. It seems odd that Palmerston should abandon his party on the eve of a strong coalition, which is not unlikely to turn out the present Administration, but it is quite impossible to place any dependence upon public men now-a-days. There is Lord Grey with his furious opposition, having a little while ago supported the Duke in a sort of way, having advised Rosslyn to take office, and now, because his own vanity is hurt at not being invited to join the Government, or more consulted at least, upon the slight pretext of the Galway Bill in the last Parliament he rushes into rancorous opposition, and is determined to give no quarter and listen to no compromise. Brougham is to lead this Opposition in the House of Commons, and Lord Grey in the Lords, and nothing is to be done but as the result of general deliberation and agreement. Brougham in the meantime has finished his triumph at York in a miserable way, having insulted Martin Stapylton on the hustings, who called him to account, and then he forgot what he had said, and slunk away with a disclaimer of unintentional offence, as usual beginning with intemperance CHARLES X. IN ENGLAND. and ending with submission. His speeches were never good, but at his own dinner he stated so many untruths about the Duke of Wellington that his own partisans bawled out ‘No, no,’ and it was a complete failure. His whole spirit there was as bad as possible, paltry and commonplace. That man, with all his talents, never can or will do in any situation; he is base, cowardly, and unprincipled, and with all the execrable judgment which, I believe, often flows from the perversion of moral sentiment. Nobody can admire his genius, eloquence, variety and extent of information, and the charm of his society more than I do; but his faults are glaring, and the effects of them manifest to anybody who will compare his means and their results.