When a deputation of Quakers waited on the prince to solicit him to support by himself and friends a clause of the Tything bill in their favour, he replied: ‘As I am a friend to liberty in general, and to toleration in particular, I wish you may meet with all proper favour; but, for myself, I never gave my vote in parliament; and to influence my friends or direct my servants in theirs does not become my station. To leave them entirely to their own consciences and understandings is a rule I have hitherto prescribed to myself, and purpose through life to observe.’ Andrew Pitt, who was at the head of the deputation, replied: ‘May it please the Prince of Wales, I am greatly affected with thy excellent notions of liberty, and am more pleased with the answer thou hast given us than if thou hadst granted our request.’ But the answer was not a sincere one, and the parliamentary friends and servants of the prince were expected to hold their consciences at his direction. Once Lord Doneraile ventured to disregard this influence; upon which the prince observed: ‘Does he think that I will support him unless he will do as I would have him? Does he not consider that whoever may be my ministers, I must be king?’ Of such a man Walpole’s remark was not far wide of truth when he said that Frederick resembled the Black Prince only in one circumstance—in dying before his father!
He certainly exhibited little of the chivalrous spirit of the Black Prince. In 1745, vexed at not being promoted to the command of the army raised to crush the rebellion, and especially annoyed that it was given to his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, who had less vanity and more courage, he ridiculed all the strategic dispositions of the authorities; and when Carlisle was being besieged by the rebels, a representation in paste of the citadel was served up at his table, at dessert, which, at the head of the maids of honour, he bombarded with sugar-plums.
The young Prince George, afterwards George III., ‘behaved excessively well on his father’s death.’ The words are Walpole’s; and he establishes his attestation by recording, that when he was informed of his father’s decease, he turned pale and laid his hand on his breast. Upon which his reverend tutor, Ayscough, said, very much like a simpleton, and not at all like a divine, ‘I am afraid, sir, you are not well.’ ‘I feel,’ said the boy, ‘something here, just as I did when I saw the two workmen fall from the scaffold at Kew.’ It was not the speech of a boy of parts, nor an epitaph deeply filial in sentiment on the death of a parent; but one can see that the young prince was conscious of some painful grief, though he hardly knew how to dress his sensations in equivalent words.
Another son of Frederick, Edward, Duke of York, was ‘a very plain boy, with strange loose eyes, but was much the favourite. He is a sayer of things,’ remarks Walpole. Nine years after his father’s death, Prince Edward had occasion to pay as warm a compliment to Lady Huntingdon as ever had been paid her by his father. The occasion was a visit to the Magdalen, in 1760. A large party accompanied Prince Edward from Northumberland House to the evening service. They were rather wits than worshippers; for among them were Horace Walpole, Colonel Brudenell, and Lord Hertford, with Lords Huntingdon and Dartmouth to keep the wits within decent limits. The ladies were all gay in silks, satins, and rose-coloured taffeta; there were the Lady Northumberland herself, Ladies Chesterfield, Carlisle, Dartmouth, and Hertford, Lady Fanny Shirley, Lady Selina Hastings, Lady Gertrude Hotham, and Lady Mary Coke. Lord Hertford, at the head of the governors, met the prince and his brilliant suite at the doors, and conducted him to a sort of throne in front of the altar. The clergyman, who preached an eloquent and impressive sermon from Luke xix. 20, was, not many years after, dragged from Newgate to Tyburn, and there ignominiously hung. Some one in the company sneeringly observed that Dr. Dodd had preached a very Methodistical sort of sermon. ‘You are fastidious indeed,’ said Prince Edward to the objector: ‘I thought it excellent, and suitable to season and place; and in so thinking, I have the honour of being of the same opinion as Lady Huntingdon here, and I rather fancy that she is better versed in theology than any of us.’ This was true, and it was gracefully said. The prince, moreover, backed his opinion by leaving a fifty-pound note in the plate.
CHAPTER XI.
THE LAST YEARS OF A REIGN.
Princess Augusta named Regent in the event of a minority—Cause of the Prince’s death—Death of the Prince of Orange—The King’s fondness for the theatre—Allusion to the King’s age—Death of the Queen of Denmark—Her married life unhappy—Suffered from a similar cause with her mother—Rage of Lady Suffolk at a sermon by Whitfield—Lady Huntingdon insulted by her—War in Canada—Daily life of the King—Establishments of the sons of Frederick—Death of the truth-loving Princess Caroline—Deaths of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Anne—Queen Caroline’s rebuke of her—Death of the King—Dr. Porteous’s eulogistic epitaph on him—The King’s personal property—The royal funeral—The burlesque Duke of Newcastle.
The last nine years of the reign of the consort of Caroline were of a very varied character. The earliest of his acts after the death of Frederick was one of which Caroline would certainly not have approved. In case of his demise before the next heir to the throne should be of age, he, with consent of parliament, named the widow of Frederick as regent of the kingdom. This appointment gave great umbrage to the favourite son of Caroline, William, Duke of Cumberland, and it was one to which Caroline herself would never have consented.
But George now cared little for what the opinions of Caroline might have been; and the remainder of his days was spent amid death, gaiety, and politics. The year in which Frederick died was marked by the decease of the husband of Caroline’s eldest daughter, of whose plainness, wooing, and marriage I have previously spoken. The Prince of Orange died on the 11th of October 1751. He had not improved in beauty since his marriage, but, increasingly ugly as he became, his wife became also increasingly jealous of him. Importunate, however, as the jealousy was, it had the merit of being founded on honest and healthy affection.
The immediate cause of the prince’s death was an imposthume in the head. Although his health had been indifferent, his death was rather sudden and unexpected. Lord Holdernesse was sent over from England by the King, Walpole says, ‘to learn rather than to teach,’ but certainly with letters of condolence to Caroline’s widowed daughter. She is said to have received the paternal sympathy and advice in the most haughty and insulting manner. She was proud, perhaps, of being made the gouvernante of her son; and she probably remembered the peremptory rejection by her father of the interested sympathy she herself had offered him on the decease of her mother, to whose credit she had hoped to succeed at St. James’s.
But George himself had little sympathy to spare, and felt no immoderate grief for the death of either son or son-in-law. On the 6th of November 1751, within a month of the prince’s death, and not very many after that of his son and heir to the throne, George was at Drury Lane Theatre. The entertainment, played for his especial pleasure, consisted of Farquhar’s ‘Beaux Stratagem’ and Fielding’s ‘Intriguing Chambermaid.’ In the former, the King was exceedingly fond of the ‘Foigard’ of Yates and the ‘Cherry’ of Miss Minors. In the latter piece, Mrs. Clive played her original part of ‘Lettice,’ a part in which she had then delighted the town—a town which could be delighted with such parts—for now seventeen years. Walpole thus relates an incident of the night. He is writing to Sir Horace Mann, from Arlington Street, under the date of the 22nd of November 1751: ‘A certain King, that, whatever airs you may give yourself, you are not at all like, was last week at the play. The intriguing chambermaid in the farce says to the old gentleman, ‘You are villainously old; you are sixty-six; you can’t have the impudence to think of living above two years.’ The old gentleman in the stage-box turned about in a passion, and said, “This is d—d stuff!”’