But while the debate had been going on, an event happened which gave birth to all that followed. The Duke of Richmond had drawn up a question which he intended to put to the judges, to ascertain who were persons of the Royal Family. He had stated the Princes and Princesses in their order of succession. I happened to be standing on the steps of the throne: the Duke showed me the sketch of his motion. I observed that he had omitted the Princess Dowager; and instantly reflecting, from the behaviour of the Ministers, and from what has just dropped from the Duke of Bedford, that they wished to exclude her from the possibility of being Regent; and concluding, too, that if she was stated as one of the Royal Family, they would be rash enough to oppose it, I said, “My Lord, your Grace is not in Opposition, and do not mean any offence by this motion: why then do not you insert the name of the Princess? By omitting her she will think you purposely intend to affront her.” The Duke was struck with my advice and inserted the Princess’s name. The Ministers, more violent and insolent than even I had expected them to be, plunged headlong into the snare I had laid for them; and as will soon be seen, wantonly, cruelly, and treacherously, gave such provocation, both to the King and Princess, as scarce the most intemperate Opposition could have been guilty of.
The Duke of Richmond then read to the House his intended motion,[107] and proposed that the judges should be ordered to attend on the morrow. Lord Mansfield said it would be better to correct the words of the bill: the judges could not be consulted till some words were settled. He would not point out any words, lest he should pledge his opinion for the passing them. The Duke of Richmond replied, the words had been proposed by the King—and was going to proceed; but Lord Sandwich, already alarmed at the name of the Princess, suddenly moved the House to adjourn.
On the 2nd of May the Duke made his motion. The Chancellor said, he had been too much fatigued to answer his Grace the day before. The question was now, whether the Queen could be naturalized? Himself would be for rejecting the bill if her Majesty could not be Regent. He thought she was naturalized by her marriage, and incorporated one of the Royal Family, the Christian religion having been adopted into the common law. By a law of Edward III. all the King’s children are naturalized whereever born. That her Majesty was not disabled by the acts of William III., or George I. If she was not effectually naturalized, she had got a bad settlement for her jointure. The clause in the Act of Settlement was futile, for one Parliament cannot bind a succeeding one. However, if any doubt remained, he hoped his opinion would not be conclusive, but that the judges would be consulted. He could not tell who were of the Royal Family; but he knew who were not—the Pretender and his sons. He desired to have the Princess understood to be of the Royal Family. The other branches, while they have an establishment abroad, were not within the present Act. If the hereditary Prince should die, and his Princess come over, she would be within the Act. The Duke of Richmond replied, that if there was nothing positive in the common law to show the Queen was ipso facto naturalized, there was in the statute law to prove the contrary: and therefore asked, if part of the clause in the Act of George I. must not be repealed? That clause declaring, that no person naturalized could hold land or office, and enjoining that they should not be naturalized without such a clause. Many doubts, he said, had already been expressed in the House, whether the Princess was of the Royal Family: without doors there were still more doubts. He had been stopped the day before by a trick of adjournment. Lord Mansfield had owned he had an opinion, but would not declare it: it was therefore the more necessary to have that uncertainty cleared away, for which end he had a motion ready drawn in his hand.
The House then resolving itself into a committee, the Duke proposed to state his amendment, unless their Lordships would consult the judges. The Chancellor said, it would be improper to ask the judges who are of the Royal Family, but not whether the Queen was naturalized. The judges could only interpret laws passed. Lord Halifax pretending to plead against delay, laboured to prevent the Duke from stating any question that might declare the Princess of the Royal Family; but Richmond, with inimitable firmness and address, maintained his ground, and moved to insert the words Her Royal Highness the Princess Dowager and others descended from the late King, now resident in England; though Lord Halifax had tried to substitute a distinction between a Royal Family of consanguinity, and a Royal Family of affinity. After a long squabble the Duke’s motion was rejected, and the ministerial party having allowed that the judges might be consulted on the Queen’s naturalization, Lord Folkestone moved to put the question to them on the morrow. Lord Mansfield, from fear of being pressed to give the answer he had given to the King, or to change it, or from some apprehension equally unworthy of his situation, absented himself. The Chancellor appeared there, as has been seen, and contradicted himself.
On the 3rd the Judges, by the mouth of the Lord Chief Justice Pratt, declared that the Queen was naturalized by her marriage, and capable of being Regent; but how great was the astonishment of mankind at what followed! Lord Halifax, hastening impetuously into the House, went up to the Duke of Richmond, and asked if his Grace was satisfied? The Duke replied, “By no means: you have rejected my motion and left my doubt in full force.” “Then, my Lord,” said Lord Halifax, “if you will move it again, I will satisfy you”—and standing up in his place, he delivered an intimation (not a message) that it would be agreeable to his Majesty to have the bill recommitted; which being complied with, Lord Halifax, on the same mysterious authority, proposed to insert the motion of the Duke of Richmond, rejected the day before, specifying the several persons of the Royal Family, only omitting the Princess Dowager.[108] This wonderful proposal took place instantaneously; and, it being early in the day, several Lords and others, whose curiosity was carrying them to see the conclusion of so interesting a scene, met the Ministers returning from the House with exultation at their success; and could scarce believe, and less comprehend, the meaning of so daring and improbable an enterprize.
Daring in truth it was, and perhaps not to be paralleled. The fact happened thus:—Lord Halifax[109] and Lord Sandwich (the latter of whom had probably machinated so treacherous a step) had posted to Buckingham House a little hour before the Lords assembled, and surprising the King alone, had most falsely, and contrary to all likelihood, assured him, that the House of Commons would certainly strike the name of the Princess Dowager out of the bill; and therefore that the most decent and prudent method to save the honour of his Majesty and her Royal Highness would be, for his Majesty to permit it to be hinted to the Lords, that he himself desired their Lordships would omit his mother’s name, before they transmitted the bill to the Commons. The young inexperienced monarch, taken by surprise, alarmed at the insult announced, and not having time, or not having presence of mind to demand time for consulting his mother and his Favourite, answered with good-nature, that he would consent if it would satisfy his people. The traitors seized that assent, and, hurrying away with double rapidity to the House of Lords, procured in the very name of their master that indelible stigma on his own mother!
Intoxicated as they were with presumption, or blind with the thirst of revenge, still it is hard to conceive how the Ministers dared to venture on so provoking and desperate an insult. Could the King pardon such an insult on his understanding, or the Princess submit to such an affront to her dignity and character? Could the Crown retain a shadow of power without discarding such servants? Could the wildness of Opposition have imagined such an act of aspersion, or have found a sufficient number so destitute of hopes and of flattery, as to fix a stain on the whole royal blood? That Sandwich should have conceived a plot so base, especially when surprise and stratagem were to be the ingredients, was not marvellous: that Grenville should have embraced it, and lost all sight of ambition in the glut of his revenge, proved what dominion every bad passion had over him in its turn; that the Duke of Bedford should have closed with it, was but another instance of the empire his associates had over a mind naturally good—that none of the connexion, composed of men devoted to fortune, should have started at a proposition so big with ruin to their hopes of favour, evinced that when they had lost sight of honesty and decorum, they flattered themselves that no position could be so desperate, from which they might not recover by as bad arts as those which brought them into the dilemma. Their subsequent conduct showed that they were determined to storm the Cabinet they could not retain by address.
It is not less worthy of remark that this bill, so carefully planned to save the honour or humour of the Princess, became the instrument of loading her with disgrace; while the Duke of Cumberland and the King’s brothers, who had been sedulously passed over in silence, saw themselves reinstated in the very bill from which the Princess was alone excluded: the Queen, who had been sacrificed to the jealousy of her mother-in-law, was the sole person that reaped both honour and a certain view of power from an act in which she had been so little respected. The Duke of Bedford and Lord Sandwich were overturned by this, as they had been by the last bill of Regency in the preceding reign.[110]