In an after-conversation the honest King confessed that Lady Huntingdon herself had been painted to him in very odd colours, and, in admitting her to an interview, he was partly influenced by his curiosity to see whether she was so strange a creature as she had been described by her enemies. To his expressions of admiration for herself and her work the Queen added similar assurances; and could the archbishop have seen two sovereigns thus complimenting a ‘Methodist’ and a ‘Hypocrite,’ no doubt the primate, zealous for nightly ‘drums,’ would have burst into tears, and have declared that the sun of England was set for ever!
‘His Majesty,’ said Queen Charlotte, ‘had complaints made against yourself, in part, Lady Huntingdon, but chiefly against your students and ministers, whose preaching annoys one or two of our bishops who are careless.’ The King nodded assent, adding, it was a pity that these students and ministers could not be made bishops of, as then they would cease to annoy anyone by preaching. It was objected that even the Lady Huntingdon could not be made a bishop of, and so the evil would be as rife as ever. ‘I wish we could make her one,’ said the Queen, with a smile at the idea; ‘I am sure her ladyship would shame more than one upon the bench!’
The King then conversed with Lady Huntingdon, chiefly upon old times and persons of his father’s court, at which she had for a while been a frequent visitor. ‘We discussed a great many subjects,’ says the lady herself, in her account of the interview, ‘for the conversation lasted upwards of an hour, without intermission. The Queen,’ she adds, ‘spoke a good deal, asked many questions, and, before I retired, insisted on my taking some refreshments. On parting, I was permitted to kiss their Majesties’ hands; and when I returned my humble and most grateful acknowledgments for their very great condescension, their Majesties immediately assured me they both felt gratified and pleased with the interview, which they were so obliging as to wish might be renewed.’
The Queen repeatedly expressed her admiration of Lady Huntingdon’s conduct on this occasion, one result of which was a stringent letter addressed by the King to the primate. In this royal remonstrance and reproof, the writer told the archbishop that he ‘held such levities and vain dissipations as utterly inexpedient, if not unlawful, to pass in a residence for many centuries devoted to divine studies, religious retirement, and the extensive exercise of charity and benevolence ... where so many have led their lives in such sanctity as has thrown lustre on the pure religion they professed and adorned. From the dissatisfaction,’ adds the King, ‘with which you must perceive I hold these improprieties, not to speak in harsher terms, and on still more pious principles, I trust that you will suppress them immediately, so that I may not have occasion to show any further marks of my displeasure, or to interpose in a different manner.’
When it was necessary to administer such a reproof as this to an archbishop, we may readily believe that only a sorry sort of reputation attached itself to the clergy generally. This had been the case for many years. Speaking of the Queen’s drawing-room, held in January, 1777, Cumberland, who was present, says: ‘Sir George Warren had his order snatched off his ribbon, encircled with diamonds to the value of 700l. Foote was there and lays it upon the parsons, having secured, as he says, his gold snuff-box in his waistcoat pocket upon seeing so many black gowns in the room.’
Foote’s remark was only in jest, but it shows the estimation in which the clergy were held. They were for the most part, and yet with some noble exceptions, but wretched teachers both by precept and example. Where clerical instruction was thus doubly defective, lay practice was not of a very pure character. Only two or three years before Lady Huntingdon waited on Queen Charlotte and the King at Kew, an incident illustrative of my remark occurred at one of her Majesty’s drawing-rooms. A great crowd had assembled, and amid the throng—while the Prince of Wales was conversing with the King—he felt a sudden pull made at the hilt of his sword. He looked down and perceived that the diamond guard of the weapon was broken off, but it remained suspended by a small piece of wire, the elasticity of which had prevented it from breaking, and so preserved the diamond-studded guard. No discovery was made as to the author of this felonious attempt, and the Prince did wisely in refusing to fix on the gentleman who stood nearest to his side as the offender.
In 1801 the Prince of Wales was in full opposition against the crown and Pitt. The opposition had a Jacobinical character, and affected Jacobinical opinion without any reserve. Lord Malmesbury remarks of the Prince that even ‘his language in the streets is such as would better become a member of Opposition than the heir to these kingdoms.’ This conduct was followed at a time when the state of the King’s health began again to cause some anxiety. He had contracted a chill and severe cramps by remaining too long in a cold church, on the 13th of February. We find Lord Malmesbury recording on the 17th of February: ‘King got a bad cold. Takes James’s powders. God forbid he-should be ill!’ And the next day he writes: ‘King-better. Lord Radnor saw him yesterday morning, and he clearly had only a bad cold.’ One day later, on occasion of an audience of the King being sought by Mr. Pelham, the same writer says: ‘Pelham came back to me from court; he had seen and consulted the Duke of Portland, who approved his seeing the King, but said it would not be to-day, as the King was unwell, and on such occasions it was not usual to disturb him but on great public business.’ On the 21st matters appeared worse. ‘Bad accounts from Queen’s House; the answer at the door is, the King is better: but it is not so. He took a strong emetic on Thursday, and was requested to take another to-day, which he resisted.’ It would seem that the progressive seriousness of the symptoms produced no corresponding effects in the heir-apparent. On Sunday, the 22nd of February, the diarist writes: ‘His Majesty still bilious; not getting better; apprehensions of getting worse. Fatal consequence of Pitt’s hasty resignation. Princess Amelia unwell. Queen not well. At Carlton House they dance and sing.’ As the King grew worse, the intrigues of the husband of Caroline became more active. The regency was the object of these intrigues. In the meantime the condition of the Sovereign grew daily more unsatisfactory. On the 29th of February the King’s pulse was at 130 during the night. ‘This makes,’ says Lord Malmesbury, ‘in favour of the mental derangement, and proves it to be only the effect of delirium in consequence of fever, but it puts his life in very great danger.’
His mind had been extraordinarily excited at this period by an agitation which was being carried on against the Church, and in favour of the emancipation of the Romanists. The King had strong views of what he was bound to by the coronation oath, and the idea became the rooted torment of his mind. ‘The King, on Monday,’ writes Lord Malmesbury, ‘after having remained many hours without speaking, at last, towards the evening, came to himself, and said, “I am better now, but will remain true to the Church.” This leaves little doubt as to the idea uppermost in his mind. And the physicians do not scruple to say that, although his Majesty certainly had a bad cold, and would under all circumstances have been ill, yet that the hurry and vexation of all that has past was the cause of his mental illness, which, if it had shown itself at all, would certainly not have declared itself so violently, or been of a nature to cause any alarm, had not these events taken place.’ They were events which were weighing on the mind of George III., just as the loss of the American colonies had done in the preceding century.
The Duke of York at this juncture is said to have behaved with great propriety towards Queen Charlotte and the Princesses. How his elder brother behaved is thus recorded: ‘The Prince of Wales, on Sunday, the 22nd of February, the second day of the King’s illness, and when he was at his worst, went in the evening to a concert at Lady Hamilton’s, and there told Calonne, the rascally French ex-minister, “Savez vous, M. de Calonne, que mon père est aussi fou que jamais?”’ Later we have it recorded, that ‘the King at Windsor, about 6th or 7th instant (March), read his coronation oath to his family;—asked them whether they understood it? and added, If I violate it I am no longer legal sovereign of this country, but it falls to the house of Savoy.’ Subsequently, Lord Malmesbury writes: ‘Lady Salisbury said the King was quite well enough to have the Queen and Princesses at dinner. Qui prouve trop ne prouve rien. Any degree of fever could render this improper in anybody, and if you take away the fever, you have the intellectual derangement without a cause or hopes of recovery. I fear there is so much fever that his life is in imminent peril. The Duke of York deeply affected, and worn out with his assiduous attentions at the Queen’s House.’
Lord Vincent, the first lord of the admiralty, declared on the 2nd of March that not only was his Majesty much better, but that, throughout the present attack, he had never been so ill as he was at the moment when, in his previous illness, he had been pronounced by Warren to be convalescent. The King’s fever increased alarmingly that very night. On Tuesday, the 3rd of March, Lord Malmesbury thus graphically describes the crisis: ‘King so much worse last night that his life was despaired of. About ten he fell into a profound sleep; and awoke in about six hours quite refreshed and quite himself. His Majesty said he was thirsty, and, on being asked what he wished to drink, said, “if allowed, a glass of cold water.” This was given him. It put him into a perspiration. He fell asleep again, and awoke in the morning with the fever abated, and better in every respect. The crisis of his disorder. Crowds of people round Queen’s House, and their expressions of joy very great.’