The battle, however, was not yet concluded. The prince’s party resolved to make the same motion in the Lords which had been made in the Commons. The King and Queen meanwhile considered that they were released from their engagement, whereby the prince’s revenue was to be placed entirely in his own power. They were also anxious to eject their son from St. James’s. Good counsel, nevertheless, prevailed over them to some extent, and they did not proceed to any of the extremities threatened by them. In the meantime, the scene within the palace was one to make a very stoic sigh. The son had daily intercourse with one or both of his parents. He led the Queen by the hand to dinner, and she could have stabbed him on the way; for her wrath was more bitter than ever against him, for the reason that he had introduced her name, through his friends, in the parliamentary debate, in a way which she considered must compromise her reputation with the people of England. He had himself declared to the councillors who had brought him the terms of the King’s offer, that he had frequently applied through the Queen for an interview with the King, at which an amicable arrangement of their differences might be made; but that she had prevented such an interview, by neglecting to make the prince’s wishes known to his father. This story was repeated by the prince’s friends in parliament, and Caroline called heaven and earth to witness that her son had grossly and deliberately lied. In this temper the two often sat down to dinner at the same table. As for the King, although Frederick attended the royal levées, and stood near his royal sire, the latter never affected to behold or to consider him as present, and he invariably spoke of him as a brainless, impertinent puppy and scoundrel.[28]
The motion for the address to the King, praying him to confer a jointure on the princess, and to settle 100,000l. a-year out of the civil list on the prince, was brought before the House of Peers by Lord Carteret. That nobleman so well served his royal client that, before bringing forward the motion, he made an apology to the Queen, declaring that office had been forced on him. The exercise thereof was a decided failure. The Lords rejected the motion, on a division of 103 to 40, the minority making strong protest against the division of the House, and in very remarkable language. The latter did not trouble their Majesties, and this settling of the question helped to restore Walpole to the royal favour, from which he had temporarily fallen.
There was another public affair which gave the Queen as much perplexity as any of her domestic troubles. This was the investigation into the matter of the Porteous riot at Edinburgh, with the object of punishing those who were most to blame. It is not necessary to detail this matter at any length, or indeed further than the Queen was personally connected with it. She was exceedingly desirous that it should be decided on its merits, and that it should not be made a national matter of. On this account, she was especially angry with the Duke of Newcastle, on whom she laid the blame of having very unnecessarily dragged up to London such respectable men as the Scotch judges; and she asked him ‘What the devil he meant by it?’ While the affair was still pending, but after the judges had been permitted to go back again, the Queen remarked to Lord Hervey, ‘she should be glad to know the truth, but believed she should never come at it—whether the Scotch judges had been really to blame or not in the trial of Captain Porteous: for, between you and the Bishop of Salisbury’ (Sherlock), said she, ‘who each of you convinced me by turns, I am as much in the dark as if I knew nothing at all of the matter. He comes and tells me that they are all as black as devils; you, that they are as white as snow; and whoever speaks last, I believe. I am like that judge you talk of so often in the play (Gripus,[29] I think you call him), who, after one side had spoken, begged t’others might hold their tongue, for fear of puzzling what was clear to him. I am Queen Gripus; and since the more I hear the more I am puzzled, I am resolved I will hear no more about it; but let them be in the right or the wrong, I own to you I am glad they are gone.’
The city of Edinburgh was ultimately punished by the deposition of its provost, Mr. Wilson, who was declared incapable of ever serving his Majesty, and by the imposition of a fine of two thousand pounds sterling. The ‘mulct’ was to go to the ‘cook-maid widow of Captain Porteous, and make her, with most unconjugal joy, bless the hour in which her husband was hanged.’[30]
The conduct of Caroline, when Sir John Bernard proposed to reduce the interest on the National Debt from four to three per cent., again presents her to us in a very unfavourable light. Not only the Queen, but the King also was most energetically opposed to the passing of the bill. People conjectured that their Majesties were large fundholders, and were reluctant to lose a quarter of the income thence arising, for the good of the nation. The bill was ultimately thrown out, chiefly through the opposition of Walpole. By this decision, the House stultified its own previously accorded permission (by 220 to 157) for the introduction of the bill. Horace Walpole, the brother of Sir Robert, was one of those who voted first for and then against the bill—or first against and then for his brother. We must once more draw from Lord Hervey’s graphic pages to show what followed at court upon such a course:—‘Horace Walpole, though his brother made him vote against the three per cent., did it with so ill a grace, and talked against his own conduct so strongly and so frequently to the Queen, that her Majesty held him at present in little more esteem or favour than the Duke of Newcastle. She told him that because he had some practice in treaties, and was employed in foreign affairs, he began to think he understood everything better than anybody else; and that it was really quite new his setting himself up to understand the revenue, money matters, and the House of Commons better than his brother! “Oh, what are you all but a rope of sand, that would crumble away in little grains, one after another, if it was not for him?” And whenever Horace had been with her, speaking on these subjects, besides telling Lord Hervey, when he came to see her, how like an opinionative fool Horace had talked before them, she used to complain of his silly laugh hurting her ears, and his dirty body offending her nose, as if she had never had the two senses of hearing and smelling, in all her acquaintance with poor Horace, till he had talked for three per cent. Sometimes she used to cough and pretend to retch with talking of his dirt; and would often bid Lord Hervey open the window to purify the room of the stink Horace had left behind him, and call the pages to burn sweets to get it out of the hangings. She told Lord Hervey she believed Horace had a hand in the “Craftsman,” for that once, warmed in disputing on this three-per-cent. affair, he had more than hinted to her that he guessed her reason for being so zealous against this scheme was her having money in the stocks.’
When such coarseness was common at court, we need not be surprised that dramatic authors, whose office it is to hold the mirror up to nature, should have attempted to make some reflection thereon, or to take license therefrom, and give additional coarseness to the stage. Walpole’s virtuous indignation was excited at this liberty—a liberty taken only because people in his station, and far above his station, by their vices and coarseness, justified the license. It was this vice, and not the vices of dramatic authors, which first fettered the drama and established a censorship. The latter was set up, not because the stage was wicked, but in order that it should not satirise the wickedness of those in high station. The Queen was exceedingly delighted to see a gag put upon both Thalia and Melpomene.
The vice was hideous. They who care to stir the offensive mass will find proof enough of this hideousness in the account given by Lady Deloraine, the wife of Mr. Windham, of the King’s courtship of her, and his consequent temporary oblivion of Madame Walmoden. This new rival of the Queen, a charming doll of thirty-five years of age, was wooed by the King in a strain which the stage would hardly have reproduced; and his suit was commented upon by the lady, in common conversation with lords and ladies, with an unctuousness of phrase, a licentiousness of manner, and a coolness of calculation such as would have disgraced the most immodest of women. This coarseness of sentiment and expression was equally common. When it was said that Lord Carteret was writing a history of his times, and that noble author himself alleged that he was engaged in ‘giving fame to the Queen,’ the latter, one morning, noticed the alleged fact to Lord Hervey. The King was present, and his Majesty remarked:—‘I dare say he will paint you in fine colours, the dirty liar.’ ‘Why not?’ asked Caroline; ‘good things come out of dirt sometimes. I have ate very good asparagus raised out of dung?’ When it was said that not only Lord Carteret, but that Lords Bolingbroke and Chesterfield were also engaged in writing the history of their times, the Queen critically anticipated ‘that all the three histories would be three heaps of lies; but lies of very different kinds: she said Bolingbroke’s would be great lies; Chesterfield’s little lies; and Carteret’s lies of both sorts.’[31] It may be added, that where there were vice and coarseness there was little respect for justice or for independence of conduct. The placeman who voted according to his conscience, when he found his conscience in antagonism against the court, was invariably removed from his place.
In concluding this chapter, it may be stated that when Frederick was about to bring forward the question of his revenue, the Queen would fain have had an interview with the son she alternately despised and feared, to persuade him against pursuing this measure—the carrying out of which she dreaded as prejudicial to the King’s health in his present enfeebled state. Caroline, however, would not see her son, for the reason, as the mother alleged, that he was such an incorrigible liar that he was capable of making any mendacious report of the interview, even of her designing to murder him. She had, in an interview with him, at the time of the agitation connected with the Excise bill, been compelled to place the Princess Caroline, concealed, within hearing, that she might be a witness in case of the prince, her brother, misrepresenting what had really taken place.
When the King learned the prince’s intentions, he took the matter much more coolly than the Queen. Several messengers, however, passed between the principal parties, but nothing was done in the way of turning the prince from his purpose. It was an innocent purpose enough, indeed, as he represented it. The parliament had entrusted to the King a certain annual sum for the prince’s use. The King and Queen did not so understand it, and he simply applied to parliament to solicit that august body to put an interpretation on its own act.
The supposed debilitated condition of the King’s health gave increased hopes to the prince’s party. The Queen, therefore, induced him to hold levées and appear more frequently in public. His improvement in health and good humour was a matter of disappointment to those who wished him dying, and feared to see him grow popular.