That testator, however, had been a destroyer of wills himself. He had burnt that of the poor old Duke of Zell, and he had treated in like manner the last will of Sophia Dorothea. The latter document favoured both his children more than he approved, and the King, who could do no wrong, committed a felonious act, which for a common criminal would have purchased a halter. Being given to this sort of iniquity himself, he naturally thought ill of the heir whom he looked upon as bound to respect the will of his father. To bind him the more securely to such observance, he left two duplicates of his will; one of which was deposited with the Duke of Wolfenbüttel, the other with another German prince, whose name has not been revealed, and both were given up by the depositaries, for fee and reward duly paid for the service. The copies were destroyed in the same way as the original. What instruction was set down in this document has never been ascertained. Walpole speaks of a reported legacy of forty thousand pounds to the King’s surviving mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, and of a subsequent compromise made with the husband of the duchess’s ‘niece’ and heiress, Lady Walsingham—a compromise which followed upon a threatened action at law. Something similar is said to have taken place with the King of Prussia, to whose wife, the daughter of George I., the latter monarch was reported to have bequeathed a considerable legacy.
However this may be, the surprise of the council and the consternation of the primate were excessive. The latter dignitary was the last man, however, who could with propriety have blamed a fellow-man for acting contrary to what was expected of him. He himself had been the warmest advocate of religious toleration, until he reached the primacy and had an opportunity for the exercise of a little harshness towards dissenters. The latter were as much astonished at their ex-advocate as the latter was astounded by the act of the King.
We will not further allude to the coronation of George and Caroline than by saying that, on the occasion in question, these Sovereigns displayed a gorgeousness of taste of a somewhat barbarous quality. The coronation was the most splendid which had been seen for years. George, despite his low stature and fair hair, which heightened the weakness of his expression at this period, was said to be on this occasion ‘every inch a king.’ He enjoyed the splendour of the scene and of himself, and thought it cheaply purchased at the cost of much fatigue.
Caroline was not inferior to her lord. It is true that of crown jewels she had none, save a pearl necklace, the solitary spoil left of all the gems, ‘rich and rare,’ which had belonged to Queen Anne, and which had, for the most part, been distributed by the late King among his favourites of every degree. Caroline wore on the occasion of her crowning, not only the pearl necklace of Queen Anne, but ‘she had on her head and shoulders all the pearls and necklaces which she could borrow from the ladies of quality at one end of the town, and on her petticoat all the diamonds she could hire of the Jews and jewellers at the other; so,’ adds Lord Hervey, from whom this detail is taken, ‘the appearance and the truth of her finery was a mixture of magnificence and meanness, not unlike the éclat of royalty in many other particulars, when it comes to be nicely examined and its sources traced to what money hires and flattery lends.’
The Queen dressed for the grand ceremony in a private room at Westminster. Early in the morning she put on ‘an undress’ at St. James’s, of which we are told that ‘everything was new.’ She was carried across St. James’s Park privately in a chair, bearing no distinctive mark upon it, and preceded, at a short distance, by the Lord Chancellor and Mrs. Howard, both of whom were in ‘hack sedans.’ She was dressed by that lady. Mrs. Herbert, another bed-chamber woman, would fain have shared in the honour, but as she was herself in full dress for the ceremony, she was pronounced incapable of attiring her who was to be the heroine of it. At the conclusion of the august affair the Queen unrobed in an adjacent apartment, and, as in the morning, was smuggled back to St. James’s in a private chair.
Magnificent as Caroline was in borrowed finery at her coronation, she was excelled in point of show by Mrs. Oldfield, on the stage at Drury Lane. The theatre was closed on the night of the real event—the government had no idea then of dividing a multitude; but the management expended a thousand pounds in getting up the pageant of the crowning of Anne Boleyn, at the close of ‘Henry VIII.’ In this piece, Booth made Henry the principal character, and Cibber’s Wolsey sank to a second-rate part. The pageant, however, was so attractive, that it was often played, detached from the piece, at the conclusion of a comedy or any other play. Caroline went more than once with her royal consort to witness this representation, an honour which was refused to the more vulgar show, which had but indifferent success, at Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields.
The King’s revenue, as settled upon him by the Whig parliament, was larger than any of our Kings had before enjoyed. Caroline’s jointure, 100,000l. a year, with Somerset House and Richmond Lodge, was double that which had been granted previously to any Queen. This success had been so notoriously the result of Walpole’s exertions, that the husband of Caroline, who dealt in very strong terms, began to look complacently on the ‘rogue and rascal,’ thought his brother Horace bearable, in spite of his being, as George used to call him, ‘scoundrel,’ ‘fool,’ and ‘dirty buffoon,’ and he even felt less averse than usual to the two secretaries of state of Walpole’s administration, the Duke of Newcastle, the ‘impertinent fool,’ whom he had threatened at the christening of William, Duke of Cumberland, and Lord Townshend, whom he was wont to designate as a ‘choleric blockhead.’ The issue of the affair was, that of Walpole’s cabinet no one went out but the minister’s son-in-law, Lord Malpas, roughly ejected from the Mastership of the Robes, and ‘Stinking Yonge,’ as the King used elegantly to designate Sir William, who was turned out of the Commission of Treasury, and whose sole little failings were, that he was ‘pitiful, corrupt, contemptible, and a great liar,’ though, as Lord Hervey says, ‘rather a mean than a vicious one,’ which does not seem to mend the matter, and which is a distinction without a difference. After all, Sir William only dived to come up fresh again. And Lord Malpas performed the same feat.
Henceforth, it was understood by every lady, says Lord Hervey, ‘that Sir Robert was the Queen’s minister; that whoever he favoured she distinguished, and whoever she distinguished the King employed.’ The Queen ruled, without seeming to rule. She was mistress by power of suggestion. A word from her in public, addressed to the King, generally earned for her a rebuke. Her consort so pertinaciously declared that he was independent, and that she never meddled with public business of any kind, that every one, even the early dupes of the assertion, ceased at last to put any faith in it. Caroline ‘not only meddled with business, but directed everything which came under that name, either at home or abroad.’ It is too much, perhaps, to say that her power was unrivalled and unbounded, but it was doubtless great, and purchased at great cost. That she could induce her husband to employ a man whom he had not yet learned to like was in itself no small proof of her power, considering the peculiarly obstinate disposition of the monarch.
Her recommendation of Walpole was not based, it is believed, upon any very exalted motives. Walpole himself, in his official connections with the Sovereign, was certainly likely to take every advantage of the opportunity to create favourable convictions of his ability. Caroline, in praising his ability to the King, suggested that Sir Robert was rich enough to be honest, and had so little private business of his own that he had all the more leisure to devote to that of the King. ‘New leeches would be not the less hungry;’ and with this very indifferent sort of testimony to her favourite’s worth, Caroline secured a servant for the King and a minister for herself.
The tact of the Queen was so admirable that the husband, who followed her counsel in all things, never even himself suspected but that he was leading her. This was the very triumph of the Queen’s art, and the crowning proof of the simplicity and silliness of the King. It is said that he sneered at Charles I. for being governed by his wife; at Charles II. for being governed by his mistresses; at James led by priests; at William duped by men; at Queen Anne deceived by her favourites; and at his father, who allowed himself to be ruled by any one who could approach him. And he finished his catalogue of scorn by proudly asking, ‘Who governs now?’ The courtiers probably smiled behind their jaunty hats. The wits, and some of them were courtiers too, answered the query more roughly, and they remarked, in rugged rhyme and bad grammar—