Such is the record of a rhymer: Walpole, in plain and truthful prose, tells a very different story. He informs us that the London mob were highly diverted at the importation by the King of his uncommon seraglio of ugly women. ‘They were food,’ he says, ‘for all the venom of the Jacobites,’ and so far from Britain thanking him for coming himself, or for bringing with him these numerous tokens of his princely grace, ‘nothing could be grosser than the ribaldry vomited out in lampoons, libels, and every channel of abuse, against the sovereign and the new court, and chanted even in their hearing about the public streets.’ Mademoiselle von Schulemberg (sic) was created Duchess of Kendal. ‘The younger Mademoiselle von Schulemberg, who came over with her, and was created Countess of Walsingham, passed for her niece, but was so like the King, that it is not very credible that the duchess, who had affected to pass for cruel, had waited for the left-handed marriage.’ Lady Walsingham, as previously said, was afterwards married to the celebrated Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield.

To the Duchess of Kendal—George (who was so shocked at the infidelity of which his wife was alleged to be guilty) was to the mistress as inconstant as to the wife he had been untrue. He set aside the former, to put in her place Madame Kielmansegge, called, like her mother, Countess von Platen. On the death of her husband, in 1721, he raised her to the rank of Countess of Leinster in Ireland, Countess of Darlington and Baroness of Brentford in England. Coxe says of her, that her power over the King was not equal to that of the Duchess of Kendal, but her character for rapacity was not inferior. Horace Walpole has graphically portrayed Lady Darlington in the following passage:—

‘Lady Darlington, whom I saw at my mother’s in my infancy, and whom I remember by being terrified at her enormous figure, was as corpulent and ample as the duchess was long and emaciated. The fierce black eyes, large, and rolling beneath two lofty arched eyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed, and was not distinguished from, the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays—no wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress.’

The mob had a strong Tory leaven at this time, and among the multitude circulated a mass of broadsides and ballads, of so openly a seditious character that the power of the law was stringently applied to suppress the evil. Before the year was out half the provincial towns in England were infected with seditious sentiments against the Whig government, which had brought in a King whose way of life was a scandal to them. This feeling of contempt for both King and government was wide as well as deep; and it was so craftily made use of by the leaders of public opinion, that, before George had been three months upon the throne, the ‘High-church rabble,’ as the Tory party was called, in various country towns were violent in their proceedings against the government; and at Axminster, in Devonshire, shouted for the Pretender, and drank his health as King of England. The conduct of George to his wife, Sophia Dorothea, was as satirically dealt with, in the way of censure, as any of his delinquencies, and his character as a husband was not forgotten in the yearly tumults of his time, which broke out on every recurring anniversary of Queen Anne’s birthday (April the 23rd) to the end of his reign.

If the new King was dissatisfied with his new subjects, he liked as little the manners of England. ‘This is a strange country,’ said his Majesty; ‘the first morning after my arrival at St. James’s, I looked out of the window, and saw a park, with walks, a canal, and so forth, which they told me were mine. The next day, Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of my park, sent me a fine brace of carp out of my canal, and I was told that I must give five guineas to Lord Chetwynd’s servant, for bringing me my own carp, out of my own canal, in my own park!’

The monarch’s mistresses loved as much to receive money as the King himself loved little to part from it. The Duchess of Kendal’s rapacity has been mentioned: one instance of it is mentioned by Coxe, on the authority of Sir Robert Walpole, to the effect that ‘the restoration of Lord Bolingbroke was the work of the Duchess of Kendal. He gained the duchess by a present of eleven thousand pounds, and obtained a promise to use her influence over the King for the purpose of forwarding his complete restoration.’ Horace Walpole states that the duchess was no friend of Sir Robert, and wished to make Lord Bolingbroke minister in his room. The rapacious mistress was jealous of Sir Robert’s credit with the monarch. Monarch and minister transacted business through the medium of indifferent Latin; the King not being able to speak English, and Sir Robert, like a country gentleman of England, knowing nothing of either German or French. ‘It was much talked of,’ says the lively writer of the ‘Reminiscences of the Courts of the first two Georges,’ ‘that Sir Robert, detecting one of the Hanoverian ministers in some trick or falsehood before the King’s face, had the firmness to say to the German, “Mentiris impudentissime!” The good-humoured monarch only laughed, as he often did when Sir Robert complained to him of his Hanoverians selling places, nor would be persuaded that it was not the practice of the English court.’ The singularity of this complaint is, that it was made by a minister who was notorious for complacently saying, that ‘Every man in the House of Commons had his price.’

CHAPTER XII.
CROWN AND GRAVE.

Arrival of Caroline, Princess of Wales—The King dines at the Guildhall—Proclamation of the Pretender—Counter-proclamations—Government prosecutions—A mutiny among the troops—Impeachment of the Duke of Ormond of high treason—Punishment of political offenders—Failure of rebellion in Scotland—Punishment for wearing oak-boughs—Riot at the mug-house in Salisbury Court, and its fatal consequences—The Prince of Wales removed from the palace—Dissensions between the King and the Prince—Attempt on the life of King George—Marriage of the King’s illegitimate daughter—The South-Sea Bubble—Birth of Prince William, the butcher of Culloden—Death of the Duchess of Zell—Stricter imprisonment of the captive of Ahlden—Her calm death—A new royal favourite, Mrs. Brett—Death of the King.

While Sophia Dorothea continued to linger in her prison, her husband and son, with the mistresses of the former and the wife of the latter, were enjoying the advantages and anxieties which surround a throne. The wife of the Prince of Wales, Caroline, arrived at Margate on the 13th of October. She was accompanied by her two eldest daughters, Anne and Amelia. Mother and children rested during one day in the town where they had landed, slept one night at Rochester, and arrived at St. James’s on the 15th. The royal coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on the 20th of the same month. Amid the pomp of the occasion, no one appears to have thought of her who should have been Queen-consort. There was much splendour and some calamity, for as the procession was sweeping by, several people were killed by the fall of scaffolding in the Palace Yard. The new King entered the Abbey amid the cheers and screams of an excited multitude.

Three days after, the monarch, with the Prince and Princess of Wales, dined with the Lord Mayor and corporation in the Guildhall, London, and there George performed the first grateful service to his people, by placing a thousand guineas in the hands of the sheriffs, for the relief of the wretched debtors then immured in the neighbouring horrible prisons of Newgate and the Fleet.