“Sir,—I am once more reluctantly compelled to address your Royal Highness, and to enclose, for your inspection, copies of a note which I have had the honour to receive from the Queen, and of the answer which I have thought it my duty to return to her Majesty. It would be in vain for me to inquire into the reasons of the alarming declaration made by your Royal Highness, that you have taken the fixed and unalterable determination never to meet me, upon any occasion, either in public or private. Of these, your Royal Highness is pleased to state yourself to be the only judge. You will perceive by my answer to her Majesty, that I have only been restrained by motives of personal consideration towards her Majesty, from exercising my right of appearing before her Majesty at the public drawing-rooms to be held in the ensuing month.
“But, Sir, lest it should be by possibility supposed that the words of your Royal Highness can convey any insinuation from which I shrink, I am bound to demand of your Royal Highness, what circumstances can justify the proceedings you have thus thought fit to adopt?
“I owe it to myself, to my daughter, and to the nation, to which I am deeply indebted for the vindication of my honour, to remind your Royal Highness of what you know: that after open persecution and mysterious inquiries, upon undefined charges, the malice of my enemies fell entirely upon themselves; and that I was restored by the King, with the advice of his Ministers, to the full enjoyment of my rank in his court, upon my complete acquittal. Since his Majesty’s lamented illness, I have demanded, in the face of Parliament and the country, to be proved guilty or to be treated as innocent. I have been declared innocent; I will not submit to be treated as guilty.
“Sir, your Royal Highness may possibly refuse to read this letter. But the world must know that I have written it: and they will see my real motives for foregoing, in this instance, the rights of my rank. Occasions, however, may arise (one, I trust, is far distant) when I must appear in public, and your Royal Highness must be present also. Can your Royal Highness have contemplated the full extent of your declaration? Has your Royal Highness forgotten the approaching marriage of our daughter, and the possibility of our coronation?
“I waive my rights in a case where I am not absolutely bound to assert them, in order to relieve the Queen, as far as I can, from the painful situation in which she is placed by your Royal Highness; not from any consciousness of blame, not from any doubt of the existence of those rights, or of my own worthiness to enjoy them.
“Sir, the time you have selected for this proceeding is calculated to make it peculiarly galling. Many illustrious strangers are already arrived in England; among others, as I am informed, the illustrious heir of the House of Orange, who has announced himself to me as my future son-in-law. From their society I am unjustly excluded. Others are expected of rank equal to your own, to rejoice with your Royal Highness in the peace of Europe. My daughter will, for the first time, appear in the splendour and publicity becoming the approaching nuptials of the presumptive Heiress of this Empire. This season your Royal Highness has chosen for treating me with fresh and unprovoked indignity: and of all his Majesty’s subjects, I alone am prevented by your Royal Highness from appearing in my place to partake of the general joy, and am deprived of the indulgence in those feelings of pride and affection permitted to every mother but me.
“I am, Sir,
“Your Royal Highness’s
“Faithful wife,
“Caroline P.”