The medical appointments made by Caroline and her husband certainly had a political motive. Thus, the Princess of Wales persuaded her husband to name Freind his physician-in-ordinary just after the latter had been liberated from the Tower, where he had suffered incarceration for daring to defend Atterbury in the House of Commons when the bishop was accused of being guilty of treason. Caroline always had a high esteem for Freind, independently of his political opinions, and one of her first acts, on ceasing to be Princess of Wales, was to make Freind physician to the Queen.
It is said by Swift that the Princess of Wales sent for him to Leicester Fields no less than nine times before he would obey the reiterated summons. When he did appear before Caroline, he roughly remarked that he understood she liked to see odd persons; that she had lately inspected a wild boy from Germany, and that now she had the opportunity of seeing a wild parson from Ireland. Swift declares that the court in Leicester Fields was very anxious to settle him in England, but it may be doubted whether the anxiety was very sincere. Swift’s declaration that he had no anxiety to be patronised by the Princess of Wales was probably as little sincere. The patronage sometimes exercised there was mercilessly sneered at by Swift. Thus Caroline had expressed a desire to do honour to Gay; but when the post offered was only that of a gentleman usher to the little Princess Caroline, Swift was bitterly satirical on the Princess of Wales supposing that the poet Gay would be willing to act as a sort of male nurse to a little girl of two years of age.
The Prince of Wales was occasionally as cavalierly treated by the ladies as the princess by the men. One of the maids of honour of Caroline, the well-known Miss Bellenden, would boldly stand before him with her arms folded, and when asked why she did so, would toss her pretty head, and laughingly exclaim that she did so, not because she was cold, but that she chose to stand with her arms folded. When her own niece became maid of honour to Queen Caroline, and audacious Miss Bellenden was a grave married lady, she instructively warned her young relative not to be so imprudent a maid of honour as her aunt had been before her.
But strange things were done by princes and princesses in those days, as well as by those who waited on them. For instance, in 1725, it is reported by Miss Dyves, maid of honour to the Princess Amelia, daughter of the Princess of Wales, that ‘the Prince, and everybody but myself, went last Friday to Bartholomew Fair. It was a fine day, so he went by water; and I, being afraid, did not go; after the fair, they supped at the King’s Arms, and came home about four o’clock in the morning.’ An heir-apparent, and part of his family and consort, going by water from Richmond to ‘Bartlemy Fair,’ supping at a tavern, staying out all night, and returning home not long before honest men breakfasted, was not calculated to make royalty respectable.
CHAPTER II.
THE FIRST YEARS OF A REIGN.
Death of George the First—Adroitness of Sir Robert Walpole—The first royal reception—Unceremonious treatment of the late King’s will—The coronation—Magnificent dress of Queen Caroline—Mrs. Oldfield, as Anne Boleyn, in ‘Henry VIII.’—The King’s revenue and the Queen’s jointure, the result of Walpole’s exertions—His success—Management of the King by Queen Caroline—Unseemly dialogue between Walpole and Lord Townshend—Gay’s ‘Beggars’ Opera,’ and satire on Walpole—Origin of the opera—Its great success—Gay’s cause espoused by the Duchess of Queensberry—Her smart reply to a royal message—The tragedy of ‘Frederick, Duke of Brunswick’—The Queen appointed Regent—Prince Frederick becomes chief of the opposition—His silly reflections on the King—Agitation about the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts—The Queen’s ineffectual efforts to gain over Bishop Hoadly—Sir Robert extricates himself—The Church made the scapegoat—Queen Caroline earnest about trifles—Etiquette of the toilette—Fracas between Mr. Howard and the Queen—Modest request of Mrs. Howard—Lord Chesterfield’s description of her.
Sir Robert Walpole was sojourning at Chelsea, and thinking of nothing less than of the demise of a king, when news was brought him, by a messenger from Lord Townshend, at three o’clock in the afternoon of the 14th of June 1727, that his late most sacred Majesty was then lying dead in the Westphalian palace of his serene highness the Bishop of Osnaburgh. Sir Robert immediately hurried to Richmond, in order to be the first to do homage to the new sovereigns, George and Caroline. George accepted the homage with much complacency, and on being asked by Sir Robert as to the person whom the King would select to draw up the usual address to the privy council, George II. mentioned the speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Spencer Compton.
This was a civil way of telling Sir Robert that his services as prime-minister were no longer required. He was not pleased at being supplanted, but neither was he wrathfully little-minded against his successor—a successor so incompetent for his task that he was obliged to have recourse to Sir Robert to assist him in drawing up the address above alluded to. Sir Robert rendered the assistance with much heartiness, but was not the less determined, if possible, to retain his office, in spite of the personal dislike of the King, and of that of the Queen, whom he had offended, when she was Princess of Wales, by speaking of her as ‘that fat beast, the prince’s wife.’ Sir Robert could easily make poor Sir Spencer communicative with regard to his future intentions. The latter was a stiff, gossiping, soft-hearted creature, and might very well have taken for his motto the words of Parmeno in the play of Terence:—‘Plenus rimarum sum.’ He intimated that on first meeting parliament he should propose an allowance of 60,000l. per annum to be made to the Queen. ‘I will make it 40,000l. more,’ said Sir Robert, subsequently, through a second party, to Queen Caroline, ‘if my office of minister be secured to me.’ Caroline was delighted at the idea, intimated that Sir Robert might be sure ‘the fat beast’ had friendly feelings towards him, and then hastening to the King, over whose weaker intellect her more masculine mind held rule, explained to her royal husband that as Compton considered Walpole the fittest man to be—what he had so long been with efficiency—prime-minister, it would be a foolish act to nominate Compton himself to the office. The King acquiesced, Sir Spencer was made president of the council, and Sir Robert not only persuaded parliament, without difficulty, to settle one hundred thousand a year on the Queen, but he also persuaded the august trustees of the people’s money to add the entire revenue of the civil list, about one hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year, to the annual sum of seven hundred thousand pounds, which had been settled as proper revenue for a king. Sir Robert had thus the wit to bribe King and Queen, out of the funds of the people, and we cannot be surprised that their Majesties looked upon him and his as true allies. Indeed Caroline did not wait for the success of the measure in order to show her confidence in Walpole. Their Majesties had removed from Richmond to their temporary palace in Leicester Fields, on the very evening of their receiving notice of their accession to the crown; and the next day all the nobility and gentry in town crowded to kiss their hands. ‘My mother,’ says Horace Walpole, ‘among the rest, who, Sir Spencer Compton’s designation and not his evaporation being known, could not make her way between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor could approach nearer to the Queen than the third or fourth row; but no sooner was she descried by her Majesty than the Queen said aloud: “There I am sure I see a friend!” The torrent divided and shrank to either side, “and as I came away,” said my mother, “I might have walked over their heads, had I pleased.”’
George I. had drawn up a will which he coolly thought his successor would respect. Perhaps he remembered that his son believed in ghosts and vampires, and would fulfil a dead man’s will out of mere terror of a dead man’s visitation. But George Augustus had no such fear, nor any such respect, as that noticed above.
At the first council held by George II., Dr. Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose hands George I. had deposited his last will and testament, produced that precious instrument, placed it before the King, and composed himself to hear the instructions of the deceased parent recited by his heir. The new King, however, put the paper in his pocket, walked out of the room, never uttered a word more upon the subject, and general rumour subsequently proclaimed that the royal will had been dropped into the fire by the testator’s son.