To do George justice, his wife does not seem to have been attractive. He had excellent taste in dress and deportment; and Caroline was far from being a model of refinement in appearance or manners, whilst her choice of company was never discreet. The old King always treated her with kindness and even affection, but he found it necessary to warn her to be more careful in the selection of her society. In 1804 the Prince of Wales instituted a “Delicate Enquiry,” which four Lords were appointed to conduct, with the result that the behaviour of the Princess was pronounced not unsatisfactory. In the years which followed there were constant quarrels and recriminations about the education of their daughter, the Princess Charlotte of Wales, a high-spirited girl who stood up boldly to the ill treatment she received at her father’s hands, and defended her mother. In 1814 the Princess of Wales left England for her famous travels. Two years later the Princess Charlotte married Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, and settled down at Claremont, a beautiful place purchased for her by the nation. The young couple were thoroughly happy, the people looked forward to being one day ruled over by a beloved and virtuous queen. The incredible scandals of the family of George III were being forgotten, when the news came that the Princess was dead.
I shall never get to the trial! I must digress once more. What ensued was almost farcical. Despite the fact that George III had an immense family, he had no grandchildren. All his elderly sons hastened to get married. The Prince Regent was very little married to his wife, and very much so to various other ladies; the Duke of York had married happily, and was, if not always faithful, a kindly husband; but he had no family. The Duke of Cumberland had married a princess of whom the royal family disapproved, and perhaps he was more hated by the nation than any member of the house of Hanover. Among other things, many firmly believed that he was really guilty of the murder of his servant, Sellis. The idea of his coming to the throne was dreaded on all sides. But there was no lack of nominally unmarried Royal Dukes,—Clarence, Sussex, Kent, and Cambridge. The nearest persons to the succession, who had families, were the King of Würtemburg, his brother, and their sister the Princess Frederica Buonaparte. It became necessary for the Royal Dukes to take wives in accordance with the Royal Marriage Act of 1772;[27] and, though they had not only themselves but other ladies and their children to consider, these noble princes presented themselves at the altar of Hymen. Not, however, without some forethought, as the following remarks of the Duke of Kent to his friend Mr. Creevey testify:
The Duke thought that his brother Clarence would marry, but that his price would be too high for the ministers to accept, viz., “a settlement such as is proper for a prince who marries expressly for a succession to the Throne,” and in addition the payment of all his debts, and a handsome provision for each of his ten natural children. Kent, being next in the succession, was ready to do it cheaper. “It is now twenty-seven years that Madame St. Laurent and I have lived together, ... and you may well imagine, Mr. Creevey, the pang it will occasion me to part with her.” She need not have very much; but a certain number of servants and a carriage are essentials. Being a “man of no ambition,” the Duke of Kent wanted only £25,000 ($100,000) a year in addition to his present income if he took a wife—the same sum as York had when he married in 1792,—and Kent was generously prepared to make no further demands because of the decreased value of money since his brother’s allowance was made. “As to the payment of my debts,” he concluded, “I don’t call them great. The nation, on the contrary, is greatly my debtor.” So it is; for he married, and became the father of Queen Victoria.
The Princess Caroline had left England in 1814 and had been touring in the Mediterranean ever since. At first she was attended by some English in her suite; but these gradually dropped off, leaving Her Royal Highness without any of her husband’s subjects about her. We need not follow her in her travels or adventures. It is enough to say that she visited very out-of-the-way places and mixed with the sort of people no ordinary lady, not to say a royal Princess, could be expected to meet. She loaded her courier, Bergami, with honours and favours, she founded an order of knighthood when she visited Jerusalem and made him Grand Master. She had procured for him the title of Baron. Her conduct and the familiarities she permitted were, to say the least, indiscreet. Undoubtedly she had laid herself open to a serious charge of misconduct.
The Prince Regent resolved to do his best to get rid of his hated wife by trying to obtain a divorce. But not only law but also public opinion was against this. He had driven his wife away with every possible insult, he had kept her apart from her daughter, the Queen, his mother, had refused to receive her as Princess of Wales at court. And if, in desperation, Caroline had failed in her duty, Europe rang with stories of the immorality of the Regent, and the common people were heart and soul on the side of his wife. As a divorce seemed hopeless, attempts were made to bribe Caroline to renounce her titles and live on a large income out of England. Matters came to a climax when George III died. If George IV was King, his wife was Queen of England; and she was resolved to return to the country and maintain her rights.
This miserable matrimonial squabble with all its sordid details rapidly assumed the dimensions of a political struggle which rent the country in twain. The Whigs had never forgiven George for using them as long as he was Prince of Wales and throwing them over when he became Regent in 1812. They therefore espoused the cause of the Queen; and as far as possible—for they had little admiration of her conduct—defended her. The Whig lawyers rallied to her cause, notably Henry Brougham, who, despite his great talents, had suffered from the exclusiveness of the great Whig families. As a parvenu, high political office was closed to Brougham, but the case of the Queen gave him an unrivalled chance as a lawyer. More honest and unselfish and almost as useful to Queen Caroline was Alderman Wood, a prominent citizen of London, who more than once filled the office of Lord Mayor. Despised by the polite society of the time, called by the King, with his usual delicacy, “that beast Wood,” the alderman understood better than anyone the effect of the Queen’s return to the country. He knew that, however great her indiscretions, her wrongs would win her popular sympathy, and that her courage in facing her accusers would be sure to range the nation on her side. That he was no vulgar demagogue is attested by the facts that the royal family often sought his counsel; that it is due to his advice that Queen Victoria was born in England; and that he was the first baronet she created shortly after her accession to the throne. But of all the Queen’s friends there is no one who was more honest and faithful than that gaunt Scotch spinster, the Lady Ann Hamilton, whose memoirs were published when she was very old, without her consent and greatly to her distress. The daughter of the Duke of Hamilton and sister to the radical Lord Archibald Hamilton, she was six foot high, awkward and ungainly, and an object of ridicule to Caroline and her friends. They called her Joan of Arc, and shewed her no consideration and little courtesy. Yet in her hours of trial Caroline had no truer or stauncher friend. Her “Secret History of the Court of England,” published under the circumstances to which I have alluded, is extraordinarily scurrilous, but it reflects the fierceness of party spirit which animated the Whig faction; and I may have to recur to it.
George III died on January 29, 1820. The first act of his successor was to refuse to allow the new Queen’s name to appear in the prayer for the Royal family. But on the 7th of June Her Majesty entered London. The road from Westminster Bridge to Greenwich was thronged with spectators. “She travelled,” says Grenville, “in an open landau, Alderman Wood by her side and Lady Ann Hamilton and another woman opposite. Everybody was disgusted at the vulgarity of Wood sitting in the place of honour, whilst the Duke of Hamilton’s sister was sitting backwards in the carriage.” ... “It is impossible,” he adds, “to conceive the sensation created by this event. Nobody either blames or approves of this sudden return, but all ask, What will be done next? How is it to end?”
Events moved rapidly. The Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, produced the famous green bag, full of incriminating documents, in the House of Lords, but the Queen did not flinch. It was even proposed to bring her to trial under the fourteenth century act of treasons, 23 Edw. III.
Finally, however, the King’s advisers determined, not to try the Queen, but to introduce a bill into the House of Lords depriving her of all royal titles and dignities and divorcing her from her husband. But in order to carry the bill an investigation into her conduct was necessary, so that she was practically, if not actually, tried.
I propose to ask you to follow the Queen’s case in Creevey’s notes, and I think we shall gather from them something of the interest with which people watched it.