With the addition of the ordinary civic pomp the Queen arrived at the Cathedral, where she was received with affectionate respect by her friends, and with some show of courtesy by the ecclesiastical authorities, who had wiled away the time previous to her arrival by squabbling rather too loudly for the place and occasion with the corporation present.
The usual service was then proceeded with, and again the coincidence hunters sought for their favourite spoil. They found abundance of what they desired in the hundred-and-fortieth and the following psalms. But of these the phrases cut both ways, and perhaps there was no passage more personally applicable to the Queen, and some of those friends less in deed than in word, than where it is written, ‘Oh let not my heart be inclined to any evil thing; let me not be occupied in ungodly works with the men that work wickedness, lest I eat such things as please them. Let the righteous rather smite me friendly, and reprove me. But let not their precious balsam break my head; yea, I will pray yet against their wickedness.’ No especial form of thanksgiving was made use of in her Majesty’s name, but this was not needed. It was, however, imperative upon the clergy officiating to read the parenthetical clause in the General Thanksgiving prayer, which has immediate reference to the individual who desires to make an offering of human gratitude to God. This clause, however, was omitted! The Queen-consort of England was upon her knees upon the floor of the Cathedral, but the officiating minister virtually looked up to Him, and standing between Caroline and her Creator, exclaimed, ‘Lord, she is not here!’ The omission of the clause was tantamount to this. The people behaved better than the priests on that day; and yet it was one on which the priests might have found occasion to give valuable instruction to the people. Those of St. Paul’s mistook their mission on the day in question.
This spiritual matter ended, the temporal welfare of the Queen had to be looked to. If she could have existed upon good wishes, she would have been wealthy, for never did congratulatory addresses pour in upon her as at the end of this year and the beginning of that which followed. But she needed something more substantial than good wishes, and the King himself acknowledged as much in a speech from the throne, delivered on the re-opening of parliament in January, 1821. His Majesty recommended that a separate provision should be made for the Queen-consort. She instantly declared her refusal of any provision that was not accompanied by the restoration of her name in the Liturgy. The condition was peremptorily declined by the government, and the income of 50,000l. a year was then accepted by the Queen. In this step she disappointed numberless friends, who would not have contributed a farthing to her maintenance. But stern necessity broke the pride of the poor lady, who was beginning to feel that a banker without ‘effects’ for her use was a worse thing than a Liturgy without her name. Her increased revenue enabled her to bear the expenses of a town establishment, which she now formed at Cambridge House, South Audley Street, but her favourite residence was still that on the banks of the Thames.
Early in May, 1821, the ceremony of the King’s coronation began to be spoken of as an event that was about to take place. Caroline did not forget that she was Queen-consort. She immediately addressed Lord Liverpool, claiming to take part in the ceremony. The claim was made literally in these words:—‘The Queen, from circumstances, being obliged to remain in England, she requests of the King will be pleased to command those ladies of the first rank his Majesty may think the most proper in the realm to attend the Queen on the day of the Coronation, of which her Majesty is informed is now fixed, and also to name such ladies which will be required to bear her Majesty’s train on that day. The Queen, being particularly anxious to submit to the good taste of his Majesty, most earnestly entreats the King to inform the Queen in what dress the King wishes the Queen to appear in on that day at the Coronation.’ The premier replied that, as his Majesty had determined that the Queen should form no part of the ceremonial of the coronation, it was his royal pleasure that she should not even attend the ceremony itself. Ever active when she could inflict annoyance on the King by claiming what she very well knew he would never concede, she succeeded in obtaining a hearing for her legal advisers in her behalf before the Privy Council. They served her to the best of their ability, but in truth they had no right upon their side, and the arguments which they raised to prove what could not be demonstrated fell down as rapidly as they were constructed. Mr. Brougham deduced a presumed right from a curious fact, from a circumstance of a law being passed in the year 784 excluding Queen Adelberga from the ceremony of being crowned Queen of the West Saxons, because she had murdered a former husband. The most early instance in which the title of Queen is given to a wife of a King of Wessex in any contemporary document occurs in the reign of Edmund, A.D. 945. The West Saxons, it will be remembered, had well-nigh dethroned Ethelwolf for crowning his wife Judith, on the ground that by so doing he had violated the laws of the West Saxons, made by them on the death of their King Bertric. ‘It has been supposed,’ says Lingard, in his History of the Anglo-Saxon Church, ‘that Queens were crowned, because in some MSS. the order for the coronation of a Queen follows that for the coronation of a King; but this proves only that both orders were contained in the original from which the copy was made.’ The same writer also states that the little Queen Judith was so beloved that the people ultimately acquiesced in her coronation without a murmur. Mr. Brougham never pleaded a cause more unsuccessfully than on this day. Mr. Denman, the Queen’s solicitor-general, was, if not more successful, at least infinitely more reasonable. He grounded his application upon the simple and incontrovertible fact, that the Queen was in so unfortunate a position as to be unable to waive any right she considered she possessed without being exposed to the most injurious imputations. ‘He begged to impress upon their lordships, as well as upon the country, that the claim of his illustrious client was put forth in self-defence, because her Majesty could not forego that claim without hazarding her reputation or sacrificing her honour, which, to her, was dearer than life itself.’
The King’s attorney-general showed that, if claim there were, it rested solely on usage, and that here the law of usage was without application, as a coronation of a Queen-consort was not a right, but a mere favour conferred by the King. The Queen, in short, could no more demand her own coronation than she could that of the King. The Privy Council made a report accordingly; it was approved by the King, and a copy was transmitted to Viscount Hood. The purport of it was—that, as the queens consort of this realm are not entitled of right to be crowned at any time, it followed that her Majesty Queen Caroline was not entitled as of right to be crowned at the time specified in her Majesty’s memorial. The conclusion was disagreeable, but it was inevitable. They who thought, however, that it would silence the Queen for ever, were much mistaken. If she could not form a part of the ceremony, she could mar it by her presence; and this she resolved to effect. An announcement was made to Lord Sidmouth of the Queen’s intention to be present at the coronation on the 19th of July, and she demanded that a suitable place might be appointed for her accordingly. The noble lord, in a letter commencing ‘Madam,’ and terminating without the signature of the writer, informs the Queen that it was not his Majesty’s intention to comply with the application contained in her letter.
The Queen was none the less bent upon appearing in the Abbey, and due notification of the fact was made to the Duke of Norfolk, as earl marshal of England, with the request added that his grace would order persons to be in attendance to conduct the Queen to her seat. The earl marshal transmitted the letter containing the notification and request to Lord Howard of Effingham, who was the ‘acting earl marshal’ on the day in question, and that official ‘made his humble representations to her Majesty of the impossibility, under existing circumstances, of his having the honour of obeying her Majesty’s commands.’ Her Majesty, however, was not so easily got rid of. She now addressed a note to the Archbishop of Canterbury, informing him of her desire to be crowned, some day after the King, and before the arrangements for the previous ceremony had been done away with. The lord primate humbly replied that he was the King’s servant, and was ready to obey any commands that he might receive from his royal master. Thus foiled once more, the Queen issued a protest against the proceedings. This document was drawn up by the law-advisers of her Majesty. It re-asserted that the Queen could claim as of right to be crowned, and yet it admitted that there had been cases in which the exercise of the right ‘was from necessity suspended, or from motives of policy checked;’ and though perhaps not in the sense in which it was understood by the Queen’s council, the King now saw that there was a ‘necessity’ for the suspension of the right claimed, and that there were ‘motives of policy,’ as well as of personal feeling, for declining to authorise the exercise of it. The protest was addressed to the King, from whom, says the royal protester, ‘the Queen has experienced only the bitter disappointment of every hope she had indulged;’ but—and it was in such phrases she was made to represent the nation as hostile against the King—‘in the attachment of the people she has found that powerful and decided protection which has ever been her ready support and unfailing consolation.’
Her Majesty’s legal advisers supposed, at least they hoped, that she had now done enough for her dignity, and that with this protest would end all further prosecution of a matter which could not be carried further without much peril to that dignity and to her self-respect. But even they did not know of what metal she was made. On the coronation day she was up with the dawn, determined to penetrate into the Abbey, or resolved to test the popular attachment, the powerful and decided protection of the people, the ready support of the public, of which she boasted in her last protest, and see if, upon one or other of these visionary essences, she could not be borne to the end which she ardently desired. Her health had already begun to suffer from the effects of the unsettled and agitated career through which she had passed, but her resolution was above all thoughts of health. She was like the sick gladiator, determined to stand in the arena, trusting to the chance of striking an effective blow and yet almost assured that defeat was certain.
At six o’clock in the morning, the poor Queen, in a carriage drawn by six horses, and with Lord and Lady Hood and Lady Anne Hamilton in attendance upon her, proceeded down to Westminster. The acclamations of the people hailed her on her way, and she reached the front of Westminster Hall without obstruction. If many a shout here welcomed her as she descended from her carriage, there was something like fear, too, in many a breast, lest the incident, peaceful as it seemed, should not end peacefully. After some hesitation, Caroline, attended as above mentioned, advanced to the doors of the Hall, amid much confusion, both of people and soldiery—the first were eager to witness the result, the second were uncertain how to act, and their leaders appeared as uncertain how to direct them. The officer on guard respectfully declined allowing her to pass, even though she were, as she said, Queen of England. He could only obey his orders, and they were to this effect: to give passage to no one whatever who was not the bearer of a ticket. The Queen turned away, disappointed, proceeded on foot to other doors, and encountered only similar results. It was a pitiable sight to see her, hurrying along the platform by which her husband was presently to march in gorgeous array, seeking for permission to pass the way she would go, ejected alike wherever she made the application, forced back in one direction by officers in authority, and turned off the platform, not roughly, but yet turned off, by the common men; and not an arm of the multitude, upon whose aid she reckoned, was raised to help her to her end. They pitied her, perhaps, but as her presence there promised to mar the splendour of which they hoped to be spectators, they wished she were gone, and rather tolerated than encouraged her.
Never was Queen cast so low as she, when, flurried, fevered, now in tears and now hysterically laughing, she stood at the door of the Abbey haggling with the official who acted as porter, and striving to force or win her way into the interior. The chief of the ‘door-keepers’ demanded to see her ticket, but Lord Hood claimed exemption for her on account of her recognised rank: the door-keeper would not recognise the claim. ‘This is your Queen!’ said Lord Hood. ‘Yes, I am your Queen; will you admit me?’ The assertion and the request were repeatedly made, but always with the same effect. No passage could be given without the indispensable ticket. Lord Hood possessed one, and the Queen appeared for a moment inclined to pass in with that. But her heart failed her, and, half-laughing, to hide perhaps what she could not conceal, her half-crying, she declined to go in without her ladies. Finally, a superior officer appeared, and respectfully intimated that no preparations whatever had been made for the accommodation of her Majesty; upon which, after looking around her, as if searching for suggestions or help from the people, and finding no encouragement, she assented to Lord Hood’s proposition, that it were better for her to enter her carriage and return home.
She had dared the hazard of the die: the cast had been unfortunate. She, for the first time, felt degraded, and she withdrew, still, like the gladiator from the arena, conscious of bearing the wound of which death must ultimately and speedily come.