Having glanced at these social traits of men who were among the foremost of those who were above the rank of mere courtiers around the throne of the husband of Caroline, let us quit the palace, and seek for other samples of the people and the times in the prisons, the private houses, and the public streets.
With regard to the prisons, it is easier to tell than to conceive the horrors even of the debtors’ prisons of those days. Out of them, curiously enough, arose the colonisation of the state of Georgia. General Oglethorpe having heard that a friend named Castle, an architect by profession, had died in consequence of the hardships inflicted on him in the Fleet Prison, instituted an enquiry, by which discovery was made of some most iniquitous proceedings. The unfortunate debtors, unable to pay their fees to the gaolers, who had no salary and lived upon what they could extort from the prisoners and their friends, were subjected to torture, chains, and starvation. The authorities of the prison were prosecuted, and penalties of fine and imprisonment laid upon them. A better result was a parliamentary grant, with a public subscription and private donations, whereby Oglethorpe was enabled to found a colony of liberated insolvents in Georgia. Half of the settlers were either insolvent simply because their richer and extravagant debtors neglected to pay their bills; the other half were the victims of their own extravagance.
Bad roads and ill-lighted ways are said to be proofs of indifferent civilisation when they are to be found in the neighbourhood of great cities. If this be so, then civilisation was not greatly advanced among us, in this respect, a century and a quarter ago. Thus we read that on the 21st of November 1730, ‘the King and Queen, coming from Kew Green to St. James’s, were overturned in their coach, near Lord Peterborough’s, at Parson’s Green, about six in the evening, the wind having blown out the flambeaux, so that the coachman could not see his way. But their Majesties received no hurt, nor the two ladies who were in the coach with them.’
If here was want of civilisation, there was positive barbarity in other matters. For instance, here is a paragraph from the news of the day, under date of the 10th of June 1731. ‘Joseph Crook, alias Sir Peter Stranger, stood in the pillory at Charing Cross, for forging a deed; and after he had stood an hour, a chair was brought to the pillory scaffold, in which he was placed, and the hangman with a pruning-knife cut off both his ears, and with a pair of scissors slit both his nostrils, all which he bore with much patience; but when his right nostril was seared with a hot iron, the pain was so violent he could not bear it; whereupon his left nostril was not seared, but he was carried bleeding to a neighbouring tavern, where he was as merry at dinner with his friends, after a surgeon had dressed his wounds, as if nothing of the kind had happened. He was afterwards imprisoned for life in the King’s Bench, and the issues and profits of his lands were confiscated for his life, according to his sentence.’
It was the period when savage punishment was very arbitrarily administered; and shortly after Sir Peter was mangled, without detriment to his gaiety, at Charing Cross, the gallant Captain Petre had very nearly got hanged at Constantinople. That gallant sailor and notable courtier had entertained our ambassador, Lord Kinneal, on board his ship, and honoured him, on leaving the vessel at nine o’clock at night, with a salute of fifteen guns. The Sultan happened to have gone to bed, and was aroused from his early slumbers by the report. He was so enraged, that he ordered the captain to be seized, bastinadoed, and hanged; and so little were King George and Queen Caroline, and England to boot, thought of in Turkey at that day, that it was with the greatest difficulty that the British ambassador could prevail on the Sultan to pardon the offender. The court laughed at the incident. Cromwell would have avenged the affront.
But we must not fancy that we were much less savage in idea or action at home. There was one John Waller, in 1732, who stood in the pillory in Seven Dials, for falsely swearing against persons whom he accused as highway robbers. The culprit was dreadfully pelted during the hour he stood exposed; but at the end of that time the mob tore him down and trampled him to death. Whether this, too, was considered a laughable matter at court is not so certain. Even if so, the courtiers were soon made serious by the universal sickness which prevailed in London in the beginning of the year 1732. Headache and fever were the common symptoms; very few escaped, and a vast number died. In the last week of January, not less than fifteen hundred perished of the epidemic within the bills of mortality. There had not been so severe a visitation since the period of the plague. But our wonder may cease that headache and fever prevailed, when we recollect that gin was being sold, contrary to law, in not less than eight thousand different places in the metropolis, and that drunkenness was not the vice of the lower orders only.
It has been truly said of Queen Caroline that, with all her opportunities, she never abused the power which she held over the King’s mind, by employing it for the promotion of her own friends and favourites. This, however, is but negative, or questionable praise. There is, too, an anecdote extant, the tendency of which is to show that she was somewhat given to the enjoyment of uncontrolledly exercising the power she had attained for her personal purposes. She had prepared plans for enclosing St. James’s Park, shutting out the public, and keeping it for the exclusive pleasure of herself and the royal family. It was by mere chance, when she had matured her plans, that she asked a nobleman connected with the Board which then attended to what our Board of Woods and Forests neglects, what the carrying out of such a plan might cost. ‘Madam,’ said the witty and right-seeing functionary, ‘such a plan might cost three crowns.’ Caroline was as ready of wit as he, and not only understood the hint, but showed she could apply it, by abandoning her intention.
And yet, she doubtless did so with regret, for gardens and their arrangement were her especial delight; and she did succeed in taking a portion of Hyde Park from the public, and throwing the same into Kensington Gardens. The Queen thought she compensated for depriving the public of land by giving them more water. There was a rivulet which ran through the park; and this she converted, by help from Hampstead streams and land drainage near at hand, into what is so magniloquently styled the Serpentine river. It is not a river, nor is it serpentine, except by a slight twist of the imagination.
This Queen was equally busy with her gardens at Richmond and at Kew. The King used to praise her for effecting great wonders at little cost; but she contrived to squeeze contributions from the ministry, of which the monarch knew nothing. She had a fondness, too, rather than a taste, for garden architecture, and was given to build grottoes and crowd them with statues. The droll juxtaposition into which she brought the counterfeit presentments of defunct sages, warriors, and heroes caused much amusement to the beholders generally.
There was one child of George and Caroline more especially anxious than any other to afford her widowed father consolation on the death of the Queen. That child was the haughty Anne, Princess of Orange. She had strong, but most unreasonable, hopes of succeeding to the influence which had so long been enjoyed by her royal mother; and she came over in hot haste from Holland, on the plea of benefiting her health, which was then in a precarious state. The King, however, was quite a match for his ambitious and presuming child, and peremptorily rejected her proffered condolence. This was done with such prompt decision, that the princess was compelled to return to Holland immediately. The King would not allow her, it is said, to pass a second night in the metropolis. He probably remembered her squabbles with his father’s ‘favourite,’ Miss Brett; and the disconsolate man was not desirous of having his peace disturbed by the renewal of similar scenes with his own ‘favourite,’ Lady Yarmouth.