Lady Townshend held the little Princess at the font. Some time elapsed before the officiating prelate took her from Lady Townshend, whose state of health at the time was such as to make her incapable of standing long without some peril to her own future hopes. The Princess of Wales pitied her, and asked the Queen, in a low voice, if she would not command poor Lady Townshend to be seated. But Queen Charlotte liked nothing so little as an interruption of established ceremony; and, blowing the snuff from her fingers, she exclaimed, ‘No, no! she may stand—she may stand!’ The Queen was nearly as strict in public with her own children. They, on such occasions, never sat down in her presence unless commanded; never spoke, unless first spoken to; and once, it is said, when the Queen was playing at whist, one of the Princesses, standing behind her chair, fell fast asleep from sheer fatigue.
The domestic troubles of the Queen were now in great part connected with the affairs of her eldest son and her daughter-in-law. They will be found alluded to in the Life of the latter. Another marriage, scarcely more promising, soon occupied her attention. The widowed Prince of Wurtemburg proposed for the hand of the Princess Royal. His first wife was the daughter of Augusta, and sister of the Caroline of Brunswick for whom the Queen, her mother-in-law, had such small measure of affection. This first marriage had been an unhappy one. The Prince had taken his wife to Russia, where she is said to have become so thoroughly corrupted as to have shocked the unclean Czarina, Catherine, herself. From Russia she never returned; but how, when, or where she died, no writer seems to be able to state with certainty. That she died there in confinement cannot be doubted; and yet her sister Caroline used to express her belief that she had been seen in Italy long after the reported period of her death. Queen Charlotte had an especial dislike to the projected match of this Prince with her daughter, nor would the King consent until he had been satisfied that the Prince had not been a cruel husband to his first wife, and that he had not become a widower by unfair means. What the nature of this satisfaction was no one knows. The marriage took place on the 18th of May. After a thirty years’ residence in Wurtemburg, during which time that locality was raised to the rank of a kingdom, and the daughter of our own Charlotte was visited more than once by the first Napoleon, of whom her husband was a very active ally, Charlotte Augusta, the ‘good Queen-dowager,’ and a childless widow, visited England once more, in order to obtain medical relief for a dropsical complaint. On her voyage back, in worse health than when she came hither, the vessel had nearly perished in a storm. To her terrified attendants she calmly remarked, ‘We are as surely under the protection of God here as upon the dry land—be not afraid!’ She survived her mother ten years, dying in October, 1828. Her letters addressed to the lady who superintended the education of the Princess Charlotte of Wales are creditable alike to her head and her heart.
The Princess Royal was married in 1797. Soon after she had set out from St. James’s, early on a morning in June, in tears, and without a relation to bid her adieu, all having gone through that ceremony the night before, in order to be saved the trouble of early rising, the mutiny in the navy broke out—a circumstance which hardly annoyed the King more than the agitation for Parliamentary reform; for it was more easily suppressed. There was some compensation for these vexations in the visit to Duncan’s victorious North Sea fleet, and in the triumphs of our other naval squadrons. The year ended appropriately with the royal procession to St. Paul’s to render fervent thanksgiving for the success of the arms of England.
It was early in 1798 that the first book was stereotyped in England, and the Queen was the origin of this innovation—not that she had any idea of innovation. The facts are simply these:—The press had been teeming with productions offensive alike to virtue and religion. To protect both was an anxious object with the Queen. According to contemporary report, she procured from a German Lutheran divine (Freylighausen) his ‘Abstract of the whole Doctrine of the Christian Religion,’ and this she submitted to the judgment of Dr. Porteus, Bishop of London. The prelate, well pleased to see the State thus submissive or suggestive to the Church, read the pamphlet—not only read it, but approved of, and (as it was said, erroneously) translated it into English. He caused it to be printed in stereotype, and this translated book was the first volume that was ever so printed in England. With stereotyping, the name of Queen Charlotte should always be mentioned in honourable connection.
The year 1798 was marked by the Irish rebellion, the national subscription for the exigencies of the state, and for the uneasiness felt at court at the standing toast of the Whigs—‘The sovereignty of the people!’ That and the following year were the years of the Volunteer mania. The King and Queen were too happy to encourage this sort of enthusiasm; and, even in their retirement at Weymouth, the Volunteer reviews were among the most cherished of their amusements. They hoped they had reconquered the love of a people on whom the burden of war pressed heavily. They were at least not safe from popular fanaticism. On the 15th of May, 1800, the royal family attended Drury Lane Theatre, after a review in the morning. As the King entered the box, and was in the act of bowing to the audience, he was fired at from the pit. The Queen and her daughters were entering as the shot was fired; and the King kept them back with his hand, lest, as he said, ‘there might be another.’ After Hatfield, the assassin, had been secured and carried off, the King and his family sat calmly down, and witnessed the whole representation. This coolness was deservedly admired. On the return to the palace the King replied to a sympathising observation of the Queen, ‘I am going to bed with a confidence that I shall sleep soundly; and my prayer is that the poor unhappy prisoner who aimed at my life may rest as quietly as I shall.’
The other domestic incidents in the life of the Queen or King are not of sufficient interest to be worth the detail. We may make exception of one, however, which introduces us once more to the earnest and indefatigable Lady Huntingdon.
Early in the present century we again meet with this lady, busy at, with, and in defiance of courts. In her zeal as a reformer of manners and morals, she was bold without being indiscreet; and she was never more bold than when she attacked, courteously and courageously, no less a person than Dr. Cornwallis, Archbishop of Canterbury. This right reverend lord primate had given several grand routs at his palace. The archbishop was an old-fashioned man; and what had been tolerated in his father and mother must also be permitted to himself and wife, the magnificent Mrs. Cornwallis—leader and slave of ton. Let the world have justice done to it, the majority therein were sorely scandalised at these irreverend proceedings. But Lady Huntingdon was the only one bold enough to give expression to what she felt. With the energy and tact natural to such a woman she contrived to obtain the grant of an audience with the primate and his lady, and thither she went, accompanied by the Marquis of Townshend.
The priests of the sacred cities of Anahuac were not more horror-stricken when Cortez asked them to burn their gods, than the primate of all England was when the good lady pressed upon him sacrifices which would entail the necessity of spending very dull evenings. As for Mrs. Cornwallis, she tarred and feathered Lady Huntingdon, metaphorically, by flinging missiles which soiled her who flung them, and by scattering light ridicule which was blown back upon the face and reputation of the scatterer. Lady Huntingdon again and again assaulted the archi-episcopal fortress, but she was driven back by repeated discharges of ‘Methodist!’ and ‘Hypocrite!’
She could do nothing at Lambeth, and accordingly she turned her face towards Kew. Nor had she long to wait before Queen Charlotte and her royal consort admitted her to an interview, to which she was conducted by Lord Dartmouth and the Duchess of Ancaster.
The sovereigns listened to the simple yet earnest story. The King was especially warm in expressing his indignation, and the Queen took her full share in such expression. ‘I had heard something of this before,’ said George III., ‘but I knew not if all was as bad as Lady Huntingdon has detailed it. The archbishop has behaved very ill to the lady. I will see if he dare refuse to listen to a King.’ The gay and orthodox courtiers present began to think that the world was at an end. Here was the State placing itself above the Church! Mentally, they no doubt denied the royal supremacy.