“Malgré tout le danger que j’ai essuie dans cette tempête ma chère Caroline, et malgré tout ce que j’ai souffert en etant malade à un point que je ne croisois, pas quel le corps humain pourroit souffrir, je vour jure que je m’éxposorois encore et encore pour avoir le plaisir d’entendre les marques de votre tendresse que cette situation m’a procuré. Cette affection que vous temoignez, cette amitié, cette fidelité, cette bonté inépuisable que vous avez pour moi, et cette indulgence pour toutes mes foiblesses sont des obligations que je ne sçaurai, jamais récompenser, que je ne sçaurai mériter, mais que je ne sçaurai jamais oublier non plus.”
CHAPTER XVI.
Parliament and the Prince’s Income.
It has been stated that the Prince of Wales’s popularity had been steadily growing ever since his marriage. It was much increased about this time, just before the King’s return, by his determined action at a fire which occurred near the Temple, the latter cluster of old buildings being said to have been saved by his timely intervention, which limited the loss to five or six houses.
He appears to have worked among the crowd, and to have excited its admiration to a remarkable degree. Some unwise persons raised a cry of “Crown him! Crown him!!” and this being duly reported to his mother, the Queen, caused her the gravest anxiety, and the most unreasonable anger.
Hervey, as usual, poured oil, not upon the troubled waters, but upon the fire of her wrath; he suggested that owing to the King being so much hated and the Prince so popular, the latter believed that his favour with the people helped to keep his father on the throne.
To this the Queen replied bitterly that owing to the reports of the Prince’s popularity—brought to her principally by Lord Hervey, who was her news-carrier-in-chief—that popularity, instead of keeping the King upon the throne, was likely to depose him. But a far greater cause of dissension between the Prince of Wales and his parents was now looming very near. It cannot be doubted that when Lord Bolingbroke, to use his own words, “left the stage,” he gave to the Prince detailed instructions for a move to be made in Parliament for an increase of his income; that increase which he, together with the bulk of the nation, considered he was fully entitled to under the settlement of the Civil List on his father ascending the throne of England. The subtle talent of the great diplomatist had mapped all this out long before he left these shores, possibly as a Parthian shaft at his enemies whom he left behind triumphant. Be this as it may, a glance at the Prince’s position will, however, fully justify the course he took.
Before his marriage, it appears that he received from his father £24,000 a year, not in any fixed or settled income, but as the King chose to give it to him. It must be remembered that the cost of living for royal personages was then much more than it is at present, the expenses for dress and the personnel of the Household were far in excess of anything we know of in our day. In those times as much as five hundred pounds were given for one court suit, and the ladies’ dresses were in proportion as regards cost.
On the Prince’s marriage, no jointure was settled on his wife, who brought him a paltry dowry of five thousand pounds, but the King increased his allowance to £50,000 a year.
This on the face of it appeared a wonderful addition, but it must be remembered that the Prince was very much in debt, and that the expenses of the marriage itself were enormous; they could not possibly have been otherwise in the case of a Prince of Wales.
As regards the increase in his household, the expenses were at once doubled, as the Princess had practically a new household of her own, with ladies-in-waiting, gentlemen-in-waiting, women of the bedchamber, gentlemen ushers, and a host of others required by the Court etiquette of the time. What would have been a large income for a nobleman was totally inadequate for the Prince of Wales, and as a result he commenced at once to fall deeper and deeper into debt. It is not surprising with these facts facing him, and with the knowledge that his father—who most of this time was engaged in squandering enormous sums of good English gold on German women—received from George the First, the full sum of £100,000 per annum allotted by Parliament as the income of the Prince of Wales. These thoughts, together with the prospect of greatly increased expenses in the future must have been very galling—for the probability of a child being born to them must have been known to the Prince and Princess at this time, though not disclosed until later. It is not to be wondered at then that the Prince thought over Bolingbroke’s counsels, and eventually decided to take a strong step to obtain that increase in his income to which he was evidently fully entitled by Act of Parliament, and which he would have received in the ordinary way but for the fact of the hatred and meanness of his parents towards him. For the hatred at least a good reason will be shown in its proper place.