“Madam,—I have received the letter which your Majesty has done me the honour to address to me, prohibiting my appearance at the public drawing-rooms which will be held by your Majesty in the ensuing month, with great surprise and regret.
“I will not presume to discuss with your Majesty topics which must be as painful to your Majesty as to myself.
“Your Majesty is well acquainted with the affectionate regard with which the King was so kind as to honour me up to the period of his Majesty’s indisposition, which no one of his Majesty’s subjects has so much cause to lament as myself: and that his Majesty was graciously pleased to bestow upon me the most unequivocal and gratifying proof of his attachment and approbation, by his public reception of me at his court at a season of severe and unmerited affliction, when his protection was most necessary to me. There I have since uninterruptedly paid my respects to your Majesty. I am now without appeal or protection. But I cannot so far forget my duty to the King, and to myself, as to surrender my right to appear at any public drawing-room to be held by your Majesty.
“That I may not, however, add to the difficulty and uneasiness of your Majesty’s situation, I yield in the present instance to the will of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, announced to me by your Majesty, and shall not present myself at the drawing-rooms of the next month.
“It would be presumptuous in me to attempt to inquire of your Majesty the reasons of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent for this harsh proceeding, of which his Royal Highness can alone be the judge. I am unconscious of offence; and in that reflection I must endeavour to find consolation for all the mortifications I experience; even for this, the last, the most unexpected, and the most severe; the prohibition given to me alone, to appear before your Majesty, to offer my congratulations upon the happy termination of those calamities with which Europe has been so long afflicted, in the presence of the illustrious personages who will in all probability be assembled at your Majesty’s court, with whom I am so closely connected by birth and marriage.
“I beseech your Majesty to do me an act of justice, to which, in the present circumstances, your Majesty is the only person competent, by acquainting those illustrious strangers with the motives of personal consideration towards your Majesty which alone induce me to abstain from the exercise of my right to appear before your Majesty: and that I do now, as I have done at all times, defy the malice of my enemies to fix upon me the shadow of any one imputation which could render me unworthy of their society or regard.
“Your Majesty will, I am sure, not be displeased that I should relieve myself from a suspicion of disrespect towards your Majesty, by making public the cause of my absence from court at a time when the duties of my station would otherwise peculiarly demand my attendance.
“I have the honour to be,
“Your Majesty’s most obedient
“Daughter-in-law and servant,