The ill-advised proceedings once commenced, no time was lost in carrying them through. On the 7th of July the Italian witnesses in support of the bill (twelve in number) landed at Dover. The object of their visit soon became known, and on emerging from the custom house they were set upon and badly beaten by a furious crowd, composed principally of women. They were lodged in a building then separating the old houses of Parliament, which, with its enclosure, was called Cotton Garden; the front faced the abbey, the rear the Thames. “The land entrance was strongly barricaded. The side facing Westminster Bridge was shut out from the public by a wall run up for the express purpose at a right angle to the Parliament stairs. Thus the only access was by the river. Here was erected a causeway to low-water mark; a flight of steps led to the interior of the inclosure. The street was guarded by a strong military force, the water side by gunboats. An ample supply of provisions was stealthily (for fear of the mob) introduced into the building; a bevy of royal cooks was sent to see that the food was of good quality, and to render it as palatable as their art could make it. About this building, in which the witnesses were immured from August till November, the London mob would hover like a cat round the cage of a canary. Such confinement would have been intolerable to the natives of any other country, but it was quite in unison with the feelings of Italians. To them it realized their favourite ‘dolce far niente.’ Their only physical exertion appears to have been the indulgence in that description of dance that the Pifferari have made familiar to the Londoner.”[39] Such was the residence of the Italian witnesses against the queen, and it is certain that if they had ventured beyond its precincts they would have been torn in pieces.
The appearance which Caroline of Brunswick presented at her trial was an outrageous caricature, and is thus described by one then distinctly friendly to her cause—the Earl of Albemarle: “The peers rose as the queen entered, and remained standing until she took her seat in a crimson and gilt chair immediately in front of her counsel. Her appearance was anything but prepossessing. She wore a black dress with a high ruff, an unbecoming gipsy hat with a huge bow in front, the whole surmounted by a plume of ostrich feathers. Nature had given her light hair, blue eyes, a fair complexion, and a good-humoured expression of countenance; but these characteristics were marred by painted eyebrows, and by a black wig with a profusion of curls, which overshadowed her cheeks and gave a bold, defiant air to her features.” The names of the witnesses, and possibly the precise nature of the testimony against her, would seem to have been unknown to the queen, for we have it on record that when the first witness (Teodoro Majoochi, the celebrated “Non Mi Ricordo”) was placed at the bar, on the 21st of August, Her Majesty, “uttering a loud exclamation, retired hastily from the House, followed by Lady Ann Hamilton.”[40] She evidently laboured under some strong emotion, whether of surprise or displeasure, or both, seems never to have been ascertained.
Among the general public, and even in the House of Commons itself, the falsehood of all that had been alleged on oath against the queen was assumed as an undeniable axiom; the witnesses were loaded with the most opprobrious epithets, while those who had been concerned in collecting or sifting evidence were represented as conspirators or suborners. We shall see, when we come to speak of the caricatures of Robert Cruikshank, the light in which these unhappy witnesses were regarded by the graphic satirists on the popular side.[41] Nevertheless, if their testimony is carefully read over by any unprejudiced person having any knowledge of the law of evidence, in spite of the badgering of Mr. Brougham, the admirable speech of that gentleman, and the testimony of the witnesses on the other side, I think he cannot fail to come to any other conclusion than that expressed by the then Lord Ellenborough, that Her Royal Highness was “the last woman a man of honour would wish his wife to resemble, or the father of a family would recommend as an example to his daughters. No man,” said his lordship, “could put his hand on his heart and say that the queen was not wholly unfit to hold the situation which she holds.”[42] He will see too, by reference to the report of the proceedings in the “Annual Register,” that of the peers who decided to vote against the second reading of the bill on the ground of inexpediency, a large majority gave it as their deliberate opinion that the case had been proved against the queen.[43] In a very clever pictorial satire, published by S. Humphrey in 1821, the queen, Bergami, and a third figure (possibly intended for Alderman Wood) are represented as standing on a pedestal forming the apex of a slender stem labelled “Mobility,” which rests on a base marked “Adultery.” The whole structure depends for support on a broom (in allusion of course to Mr. Brougham) and two frail pieces of wood, labelled respectively, “Sham addresses,” and “Sham processions,” which in turn rest on a slender railing, while a ladder on either side, marked “Brass” and “Wood,” lend a further slight support to the very insecure fabric. The superincumbent weight of the queen and Bergami breaks the frail stem in pieces, and the three figures tumble to the ground together. The back of the design is occupied with scenes and incidents detailed in the evidence. A very clever caricature, without date (published by T. Sidebotham), I am inclined to assign to this period; and if so, it is one of the most plain spoken and telling satires ever published. It is entitled, City Scavengers Cleansing the London Streets of Impurities; a placard which has fallen in the street sufficiently explains its meaning: “By particular desire of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, D— of K—t in the chair, ordered that the city officers do keep the streets clear of common prostitutes.—Signed, Wood, Mayor.”[44]
A more foolish and undignified proceeding, however, than this “Bill of Pains and Penalties” can scarcely be conceived. Its fate might almost have been predicted from the first. The second reading was carried on the 6th of November, by a majority of twenty-eight, but the third (for the reasons already given) by a majority of nine only; whereupon, the Earl of Liverpool said that, “had the third reading been carried by as considerable a number of peers as the second had been, he and his colleagues would have felt it their duty to persevere with the bill and to send it down to the other branch of the legislature. In the present state of the country, however, ... they had come to the determination not to proceed further with it.”[45] The victory will be acknowledged by us now-a-days as damaging as a defeat; but the result, curious to relate, was hailed by the queen and her party as if her innocence had been triumphantly vindicated. In signing a document prepared by her counsel on the 8th of November, she wrote, “Carolina Regina,” adding the words, “there, Regina still, in spite of them.” The abandonment of the bill was followed by three nights of illumination; but it was observed that they were of a very partial character, wholly unlike those which had greeted the great victories by sea and land, in which the public sympathy was spontaneous and universal. The mob in some cases testified its disapproval when these signs of satisfaction were wanting; and one gentleman in Bond Street, on being repeatedly requested to “light up,” placed a single rushlight in his two-pair-of-stairs window. Some of the transparencies were, as might have been expected, of a singular character. A trunk maker in the same street displayed the following new reading from Genesis: “And God said, It is not good the King should reign alone.” A publican at the corner of Half Moon Street exhibited a flag whereon, in reference to the unpopular witness Teodoro Majoochi, was depicted a gallows with the following inscription:—
| “Q. What’s that for? A. Non Mi Ricordo.” |
An enthusiastic cheesemonger at the top of Great Queen Street displayed a transparency on which he had inscribed the following verses:—
| “Some friends of the devil With mischief and evil Filled a green bag of no worth; But in spite of the host, It gave up the ghost And died 53 days after birth.” |
The caricaturists of course were not idle, and the trial of Queen Caroline provoked a perfect legion of pictorial satires. The queen’s victory is celebrated in one of the contemporary caricatures (published by John Marshall, junior) under the title of The Queen Caroline Running down the Royal George; while on the ministerial side it is recorded (among others) by a far more elaborate and valuable performance (published by G. Humphrey), called, The Steward’s Court of the Manor of Torre Devon, which contains an immense number of figures, and wherein the queen is seated on a black ram[46] in the midst of one of the popular processions, the members of which carry poles bearing pictorial records of the various events brought out in evidence against her.