Of the Graces who were the daughters of Caroline, the marriage of one began now to be canvassed. Meanwhile, there was much food for mere talk in common passing events at home. The courtiers had to express sympathy at their Majesties’ being upset in their carriage, when travelling only from Kew to London. Then the son of a Stuart had just died in London. He was that Duke of Cleveland who was the eldest son of Charles II. and Barbara Villiers. In the year 1731 died two far more remarkable people. On the 8th of April ‘Mrs. Elizabeth Cromwell, daughter of Richard Cromwell, the Protector, and grand-daughter of Oliver Cromwell, died at her house in Bedford Row, in the eighty-second year of her age.’ In the same month passed away a man whose writings as much amused Caroline as they have done commoner people—Defoe. He had a not much superior intellectual training to that of Stephen Duck, but he was ‘one of the best English writers that ever had so mean an education.’ The deaths in the same year of the eccentric and profligate Duke of Wharton, and of the relict of that Duke of Monmouth who lost his head for rebellion against James II., gave further subject of conversation in the court circle; where, if it was understood that death was inevitable and necessary, no one could understand what had induced Dr. Nichols, of Trinity College, Cambridge, to steal books from the libraries in that university town. The court was highly merry at the precipitate flight of the doctor, after he was found out; but there was double the mirth the next year at the awkwardness of the Emperor of Germany, who, happening to fire at a stag, chanced to shoot Prince Schwartzenberg, his master of the horse. But we turn from these matters to those of wooing and marriage.
In the year 1733 the proud and eldest daughter of Caroline, she who had expressed her vexation at having brothers, who stood between her and the succession to the crown—a crown, to wear which for a day, she averred she would willingly die when the day was over—in the year above named, the Princess Anne had reached the mature age of twenty-four, and her hand yet remained disengaged. Neither crown nor suitor had yet been placed at her disposal. A suitor with a crown was once, however, very nearly on the point of fulfilling the great object of her ambition, and that when she was not more than sixteen years of age. The lover proposed was no less a potentate than Louis XV., and he would have offered her a seat on a throne, which, proud as she was, she might have accepted without much condescension.
It is said that the proposal to unite Louis XV. and the Princess Anne originated with the French minister, the Duke de Bourbon, and that the project was entertained with much favour and complacency, until it suddenly occurred to some one that if the princess became queen in France, she would be expected to conform to the religion of France. This, it was urged, could not be thought of by a family which was a reigning family only by virtue of its pre-eminent Protestantism. It does not seem to have occurred to any one that when Maria Henrietta espoused Charles I., she had not been even asked to become a professed member of the Church of England, and that we might have asked for the same toleration in France for the daughter of Caroline as had been given in England to the daughter of the ‘Grand Henri.’ However this may be, the affair was not pursued to its end, and Caroline could not say to her daughter, as Stanislas said to his on the morning he received an offer for her from the young King Louis:—‘Bon jour! ma fille: vous êtes Reine de France!’
Anne was unlucky. She lived moodily on for some half-dozen years, and, nothing more advantageous offering, she looked good-naturedly on one of the ugliest princes in Europe. But then he happened to be a sovereign prince in his way. This was the Prince of Orange, who resembled Alexander the Great only in having a wry neck and a halt in his gait. But he also had other deformities from which the Macedonian was free.
George and Caroline were equally indisposed to accept the prince for a son-in-law, and the parental disinclination was expressed in words to the effect that neither King nor Queen would force the feelings of their daughter, whom they left free to accept or reject the misshapen suitor who aspired to the plump hand and proud person of the Princess Anne.
The lady thought of her increasing years; that lovers were not to be found on every bush, especially sovereign lovers; and, remembering that there were Princesses of England before her who had contrived to live in much state and a certain degree of happiness as Princesses of Orange, she declared her intention of following the same course, and compelling her ambition to stoop to the same modest fortune.
The Queen was well aware that her daughter knew nothing more of the prince than what she could collect from his counterfeit presentments limned by flattering artists; and Caroline suggested that she should not be too ready to accept a lover whom she had not seen. The princess was resolute in her determination to take him at once, ‘for better, for worse.’ Her royal father was somewhat impatient and chafed by such pertinacity, and exclaimed that the prince was the ugliest man in Holland, and he could not more terribly describe him. ‘I do not care,’ said she, ‘how ugly he may be. If he were a Dutch baboon I would marry him.’ ‘Nay, then, have your way,’ said George, in his strong Westphalian accent, which was always rougher and stronger when he was vexed; ‘have your way: you will find baboon enough, I promise you!’
Could the aspiring Prince of Orange only have heard how amiably he was spoken of en famille by his future relations, he would perhaps have been less ambitious of completing the alliance. Happily these family secrets were not revealed until long after he could be conscious of them, and accordingly his honest proposals were accepted with ostentatious respect and ill-covered ridicule.
The marriage of the princess royal could not be concluded without an application to parliament. To both houses a civil intimation was made of the proposed union of the Princess Anne and the Prince of Orange. In this intimation the King graciously mentioned that he promised himself the concurrence and assistance of the Commons to enable him to give such a portion with his eldest daughter as should be suitable to the occasion. The Commons’ committee promised to do all that the King and Queen could expect from them, and they therefore came to the resolution to sell lands in the island of St. Christopher to the amount of 80,000l., and to make over that sum to the King, as the dowry of his eldest daughter. The resolution made part of a bill of which it was only one of the items, and the members in the house affected to be scandalised that the dowry of a Princess of England should be ‘lumped in’ among a mass of miscellaneous items—charities to individuals, grants to old churches, and sums awarded for less dignified purposes. But the bill passed as it stood, and Caroline, who only a few days before had sent a thousand pounds to the provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, for the rebuilding and adorning of that college, was especially glad to find a dowry for her daughter, in whatever company it might come, provided only it was not out of her own purse.
The news of the securing of the dowry hastened the coming of the bridegroom. On the 7th of November 1732 he arrived at Greenwich, and thence proceeded to Somerset House. His intended wife, when she heard of his arrival, was in no hurry to meet him, but went on at her harpsichord, surrounded by a number of opera-people. The Queen spoke of him as ‘that animal!’ The nuptials were to have been speedily solemnised, but the lover fell grievously sick. When the poor ‘groom’ fell sick, not one of the royal family condescended to visit him, and though he himself maintained a dignified silence on this insulting conduct, his suite, who could not imitate their master’s indifference, made comment thereupon loud and frequent enough. They got nothing by it, save being called Dutch boobies. The princess royal exhibited no outward manifestation either of consciousness or sympathy. She appeared precisely the same under all contingencies; and whether the lover were in or out of England, in life or out of it, seemed to this strong-minded lady to be one and the same thing.