Nine weeks elapsed since the Princess had addressed the above memorial and depositions to the King, and still no reply reached her, except an intimation through the Lord Chancellor that his Majesty had read the documents in question, and had ordered them to be submitted to the commissioners. She complained, justly enough, at being left nine weeks without knowledge as to what judgment the commissioners had formed of the report drawn up in reply to their sentence, which acquitted her of gross guilt, yet left her under the weight of an accusation of having acted in a manner unbecoming her high station, or, indeed, unbecoming a woman in any station. From such delay, she said, the world began to infer her guilt, in total ignorance, as they were, of the real state of the facts. ‘I feel myself,’ she then said, ‘sinking in the estimation of your Majesty’s subjects, as well as what remains to me of my own family, into (a state intolerable to a mind conscious of its own purity and innocence) a state in which my honour appears at least equivocal, and my virtue is suspected. From this state I humbly entreat your Majesty to perceive that I can have no hope of being restored until either your Majesty’s favourable opinion shall be graciously notified to the world, by receiving me again into the royal presence, or until the false disclosures of the facts shall expose the malice of my accusers, and do away every possible ground for unfavourable inference and conjecture.’
The Princess then alluded to the fact that the occasion of assembling the royal family and the King’s subjects ‘in dutiful and happy commemoration of her Majesty’s birthday’ was then at hand; and she intimated that if the commissioners were prevented from presenting their final report before that time, and that consequently, at such a period, she should be without any knowledge of the King’s pleasure, the world would inevitably conclude that her answers to the charges must have proved altogether unsatisfactory, and the really infamous charges would be accounted of as too true.
Some months longer, notwithstanding this urgent appeal, was the Princess kept in suspense. There seemed a determination existing somewhere that, if her accusers could not prove her guilt, she should at least not be permitted to substantiate her innocence. At length, on the 25th of January 1807, the King having referred the entire matter, with her Royal Highness’s letters, to the cabinet ministers, the latter delivered themselves of their lengthily gestated resolution.
The ministers modestly declared themselves an incompetent tribunal to pronounce judicially a verdict of guilty or not guilty upon any person, of whatever rank. Their office was, indeed, more that of grand jurymen called upon to pronounce whether a charge is based upon such grounds, however slight, as to justify further proceedings against the person accused. They acquitted the Princess by their judgment that further proceedings were not called for, but, having been requested by the King to counsel him as to the reply he should render to his daughter-in-law, the nature of such counsel may be seen in the royal answer to the Princess’s memorial. The King exculpated her from the most infamous portion of the charge brought against her by Lady Douglas, and declared that no further legal proceedings would be taken except with a view of punishing that appalling slanderer. Of the other allegations stated in the preliminary examinations, the King declared that none of them would be considered as legally or conclusively established. But, said the King, and severely imperative as was this sovereign but, it was not uncalled for—‘In these examinations, and even in the answer drawn in the name of the Princess by her legal advisers, there have appeared circumstances of conduct on the part of the Princess which his Majesty never could regard but with serious concern. The elevated rank which the Princess holds in this country, and the relation in which she stands to his Majesty and the royal family, must always deeply involve both the interests of the state and the personal feelings of his Majesty in the propriety and correctness of her conduct. And his Majesty cannot, therefore, forbear to express, in the conclusion of the business, his desire and expectation that, in future, such a conduct may be observed by the Princess as may fully justify those marks of paternal regard and affection which the King always wishes to show to every part of the royal family.’
There is no doubt that this admonition was seriously called for. The conduct of the Princess had been that of an indiscreet, rash, and over-bold woman. At the court of the two preceding Georges such conduct would only have been called lively; but the example of Charlotte had put an end to such vivacity. The Queen Caroline of the former reign had, in her conversations with Sir Robert Walpole especially, gone far beyond the gaiety of the dialogues maintained by the Princess Caroline and Sir Sidney Smith under George III. But the Princess was as yet ‘without blemish,’ only in the degree that Queen Caroline was. She was not delicately minded, and was defiant of the Court-world when she had been cast out from it unjustly. The two Carolines were wronged in much the same degree, but the husband of the one respected the virtue of the wife whom he insulted; the husband of the other had no respect for either virtue or wife; nay, he would have been glad to prove that there had been a divorce between the two. He had failed to do so, and the King’s intimation to the Princess that ‘his Majesty was convinced that it was no longer necessary for him to decline receiving the Princess into the royal presence,’ while it was the triumphant justification of the wife, was the unqualified condemnation of the husband, beneath whose roof the slander was first uttered by Sir John Douglas to the Duke of Sussex. And so ended the ‘delicate investigation.’ A history of it was actually printed, but the copies were bought up and suppressed. A writer in ‘Notes and Queries’ (No. 128, 1852), says:—
‘Several years ago I was present when the sum of 500l. was paid for a copy of “The Delicate Investigation” by an officer high in the service of the then government.—H. B.’
The husband of Caroline was at this time suffering from a double anguish. He was snubbed by his political friends, and he was what is called deeply in love with Lady Hertford. The ‘passion’ for this lady was contracted during some negotiations with her family, entered upon for the purpose of placing Miss Seymour (a niece of Lady Hertford’s) under the care of Mrs. Fitzherbert. When this passion was in progress the Prince aimed at bringing it to a successful issue by the strangest of love-processes. He was accustomed, if not actually ill, to make himself so, in order that he might appear interesting, and have a claim upon the compassion of the ‘fair,’ who might otherwise have proved obdurate. With this end in view he would submit to be bled several times in the night, and by several operators, when in fact ‘there was so little necessity for it that different surgeons were introduced for the purpose unknown to each other, lest they should object to so unusual a loss of blood.’[9] It was reported that, after the rupture with his second wife, the Prince sought to renew his intimacy with his first, but that Mrs. Fitzherbert would not consent till a brief arrived from Rome assuring her, in answer to a statement of her case expressly laid before the Court, that the wishes of the Prince were quite legitimate. This is intended to imply that the Papal Court actually looked upon a marriage ceremony performed by a Protestant minister, and uniting a Roman Catholic with a Protestant, as a valid ceremony! The assurance was enough for the lady. The old intimacy was renewed, and inaugurated by a public breakfast, at her own house, to all the fashionable world, with the Prince at the head of it! The ‘next eight years’ of her connections with the Prince she described as supremely happy years. They were extremely poor, she said, but ‘as merry as crickets,’ and ‘joyously proud, on once returning to Brighton from London, that they could not raise 5l. between them.’ So runs this Idyll.
If he was ridiculous in this, he was criminal in other respects. The pretty child, Miss Seymour, was placed with Mrs. Fitzherbert, and the Prince became greatly attached to her. The guardians of the young lady, rightly or wrongly, thought that a person in the position which Mrs. Fitzherbert occupied was not exactly a fitting guide for a motherless girl. The law was had recourse to in order to obtain the removal of the latter, and ultimately the matter was brought before the supreme tribunal of the peers. It is a well-known fact that when this was the case the Prince, in whose heart there had been lit up a flame of genuine affection warmer than anything he had ever felt for his own daughter, became alarmed at the idea of losing Miss Seymour. He therefore actually stooped to canvass for the votes of peers in this, a purely judicial question, which they were called upon to decide according to law and their consciences. An heir-apparent to a throne, and so engaged, presented no edifying spectacle. And it must be remembered that at the time he was thus suborning witnesses (for to canvass the vote of a judicial peer was subornation of those whose office it was to enforce the due administration of the law) he had set his small affections upon a child, and was living in open disregard of the seventh commandment, and of that portion of the tenth which relates to our neighbour’s wife. He was accusing, through suborned testimony, his own wife of crimes and sentiments of a similar nature, and with no better result than to make patent his own infamy, and to establish nothing worse than thoughtless indiscretion on the part of the consort whom he had abandoned.
The Princess, who was still suffering from debility consequent upon an attack of measles, was naturally elated at the result of the protracted inquiry, and respectfully requested to be permitted to ‘throw herself at his Majesty’s feet on the following Monday.’ The monarch reminded her of her debility, bade her take patience, and promised to name a day for receiving her, when he was assured of her being fully restored to health. She waited patiently for the expression of the King’s pleasure upon the matter, and was preparing once more for the enjoyment of again being received by him, when all her hopes were suddenly annihilated by an intimation from the King that—the Prince of Wales having stated that he was not satisfied with the result of the late inquiry—the Prince had placed the matter in the hands of his legal advisers, and had requested his Majesty to refrain from taking further steps in the business for the present; the King consequently ‘considered it incumbent on him to defer naming a day to the Princess of Wales until the further result of the Prince’s intention shall have been made known to him.’ This note was dated ‘Windsor Castle, the 10th of February, 1807.’ From that day the Princess looked upon her husband as assuming the office of public accuser against her. The Blackheath plot had failed, and the Prince was now appealing against the decision of judges to whose arbitrament he had committed the responsible duty of examination and sentence. What he required was a judgment unfavourable to his wife; not having succeeded, he sought for another tribunal, and virtually requested the monarch and the nation to hold his consort guilty until he might have the luck or leisure to prove her to be so. Had she been twice the imprudent woman she was, such conduct as this on the part of the Prince was sure to make a popular favourite of the Princess.
The courage of the latter rose, however, as persecution waxed hotter; and the advisers who now stood by her, of whom Mr. Perceval was the chief, were doubly stimulated by political as well as personal feelings. The Princess continued to address vigorous appeals to the King, whose intellect was beginning to be too weak to comprehend, and his eyesight too feeble for him to be able to read them. Their cry was still for justice; they claimed for her a public reception at court, and apartments in some one of the royal palaces, as more befitting her condition. Intimation, too, was made that if the justice demanded were not awarded her, a full detail of the whole affair, taken from the view held of it by the advisers of the Princess, would be forthwith published. It is said that the menace touched even Queen Charlotte herself, who had a dread of ‘The Book,’ as it was emphatically called, upon which Mr. Perceval was known to be busily engaged, and which it was feared he was about to publish. But the temporary triumph of the Princess was at hand. In March 1807 the Grenville administration, the members of which were known to be favourites with the Queen and enemies of the Princess of Wales, retired from office, and within a month the new ministry advised the King that the complete innocence of the Princess had been established, and that it would be well for him to receive her at court in a manner suitable to her rank and station. The ministers present at the meeting of council when this advice was rendered were Lord Chancellor Eldon, Lord President Camden, Lord Privy Seal Westmoreland, the Duke of Portland, the Earl of Chatham, the Earl of Bathurst, Viscount Castlereagh, Lord Mulgrave, Mr. Canning, and Lord Hawkesbury.