"The King went to the play the night before last; was well received in the house, but hooted and pelted coming home, and a stone shivered a window of his coach, and fell into Prince George of Cumberland's lap. The King was excessively annoyed, and sent for Baring, who was the officer riding by his coach, and asked him if he knew who had thrown the stone; he said it terrified the Queen, and was very disagreeable, as he should always be going somewhere."
On the 24th of February the Queen's birthday drawing-room was held, at which the Princess Victoria made her debût in society. The following is the official account by the Court newsman:—
"Their Royal Highnesses, the Duchess of Kent and the Princess Victoria, with their suite, came in state, in three carriages, escorted by a party of the Life Guards. Their Royal Highnesses were attended by the Duchess of Northumberland, Lady Charlotte St. Maur, Lady Catherine Jenkinson, the Hon. Mrs. Cust, Lady Conroy, Baroness Lehzen, Sir John Conroy, and General Wetherall. The dresses of their Royal Highnesses were made entirely of articles manufactured in the United Kingdom. The Duchess's robe was of silk embroidered with silver, and was made in Spitalfields; the train was of Irish poplin, blue figured with silver. The Princess Victoria was dressed with great simplicity in a frock of English blonde.... The Princess Victoria stood to the left of her Majesty."
We next find the Princess and her mother at Covent Garden Theatre on April 14, witnessing the performance of Spohr's Opera Zamira and Azor.
Before the dissolution of Parliament, the Times newspaper got into a scrape with the House of Lords on account of some remarks in its issues of April 15th, which were as follows:—
"Yet mean, cruel, and atrocious as every civilized mind must consider the doctrine, that Ireland has no need of poor laws, or some equivalent for them,—hateful and abominable as is such a screen for inhumanity,—there are men, or things with human pretensions, nay, with lofty privileges, who do not blush to treat the mere proposal of establishing a fund for the relief of the diseased or helpless Irish, with brutal ridicule and almost impious scorn. Would any man credit that an Irish absentee Lord could say what he is reported to have uttered in the House of Peers last night, when Lord Roseberry presented a petition, praying that a compulsory tax on land might be introduced into Ireland, towards alleviating her poor? We shall not name him, because the House of Lords is armed with a thing called a 'Bar' and other disagreeable appendages. But there are members of that House who surprise nobody by declaring their indifference to 'popular odium'—especially when they are at such a distance from Ireland as to ensure the safety of their persons."
The peer alluded to was the Earl of Limerick, who moved, on the 18th of April, "That the editor of the Times newspaper be ordered to attend at the bar of that House to-morrow." The legal citation would be on the printer, and, accordingly, on the 19th Mr. Lawson attended, and a debate ensued, at the end of which he was ordered into custody of the Usher of the Black Rod, to be produced next morning, and was taken by two messengers of the House to Oliver's Coffee House, where he was kept in durance. But, before their lordships met, he sent them a petition—
"That your petitioner feels the sincerest regret at having given offence to your right honourable House, and to the Earl of Limerick in particular, and craves pardon for the same; and humbly begs, in consequence of this acknowledgment of his error and regret, he may be set at liberty by your right honourable House."
All that day, and a great part of the next, the House debated upon the crime of this wicked man, until it came to the conclusion that the Lord Chancellor should reprimand and discharge him, which was accordingly done; and the Times, in revenge, on the 26th of April, published the following:—
"Epigram.