A History of the Four Georges, Volume II

by Justin McCarthy

Lord Hervey is inclined to think that it was not the friends of the prince, but rather Walpole himself, who got these letters printed. Hervey does not see what good the publication could do to the prince and the prince's cause, but suggests that it might be a distinct service to Walpole and Walpole's master to show that the reigning king in his early days had been treated with even more harshness than he had just shown to his own son, and with far less cause to justify the harshness. Still it seems to us natural for the prince's friends to believe it would strengthen him in popular sympathy if it were brought before men's minds that the very same sort of treatment of which George the Second complained when it was visited on him by his own father he now had not scrupled nor shamed to visit upon his son. Among other discoveries made at this time with regard to the more secret history of the late reign, it was found out that George the First actually entertained and encouraged a project for having the Prince of Wales, now George the Second, put on board {110} some war-vessel and "carried off to any part of the world that your Majesty may be pleased to order." This fact—for a fact it seems to be—did not get to the public knowledge; but it came to the knowledge of Lord Hervey, who probably had it from the Queen herself, and it is confirmed by other and different testimony. A Prince of Wales kidnapped and carried out of civilization by the command of his royal father would have made a piquant chapter in modern English history.

[Sidenote: 1737—Bishop Hoadley and the Test Act]

The prince and princess went to Kew in the first instance, and then the prince took Norfolk House, in St. James's Square, for his town residence, and Cliefden for his country place. The prince put himself forward more conspicuously than ever as the head of the Patriot party. It was reported to Walpole that in Frederick's determination to make himself popular he was resolved to have a Bill brought forward in the coming session of Parliament to repeal the Test Act. The Test Act was passed in the reign of Charles the Second, 1673, and it declared that all officers, civil or military, of the Government must take the sacrament according to the forms of the Church of England, and must take the oaths against the doctrine of transubstantiation. This Act was, of course, regarded as a serious grievance by the Dissenters of all denominations. Some few eminent Churchmen, like Dr. Hoadley, Bishop of Winchester, had always been opposed to the narrow-minded policy of the Act. Hoadley, indeed, had made himself a sort of leader of the dissenting communities on this subject. For that and other reasons he had been described as the greatest Dissenter who ever wore a mitre. When the report got about that an attempt was to be made to have the Test Act repealed, Walpole, with his usual astuteness, sent for the bishop, knowing very well that, if such a determination had been come to, Dr. Hoadley would be among the very first men to be consulted on the subject. Walpole expressed his mind very freely to Hoadley. A coldness had long existed between them, which Walpole's gift of the Bishopric of Winchester had not removed. {111} Hoadley had thought Walpole slow, lukewarm, and indifferent about movements in reform of Church and State, which Hoadley regarded as essential parts of the programme of the Whig party. Walpole was perfectly frank with him on this occasion, and explained to him the difficulty which would come up in English affairs if the Prince of Wales were encouraged to seek popularity at the expense of the King and Queen by making himself the champion of the Dissenters' grievances. Hoadley met Walpole in a spirit of similar frankness. He declared that he always had been and always should be in favor of the repeal of the Test Act, but that he disapproved altogether of the prince being set up in opposition to the King; and he believed that even the repeal of the Test Act would be bought at too dear a cost if it were the means of bringing the King into a distressing family quarrel. Therefore the bishop declared that he would give no encouragement to such a scheme, of which, he said, he had lately heard nothing from the prince; and that, whatever kindnesses he might receive from Frederick, he should never forget his duty to George. Walpole was delighted with Hoadley's bearing and Hoadley's answer, and seemed as if he never could praise him enough. No one can question Hoadley's sincerity. We must only try to get ourselves back into the framework and the spirit of an age when a sound patriot and a high-minded ecclesiastic could be willing to postpone indefinitely an act of justice to a whole section of the community in order to avoid the risk of having the Sovereign brought into disadvantageous comparison with the Sovereign's eldest son. Walpole approved of the Test Act no more than Hoadley did, although the spirit of his objection to it was far less positive and less exalted than that of Hoadley. But Walpole was, of course, an avowed Opportunist; he never professed or pretended to be anything better. There is nothing surprising in the fact that he regarded an act of justice to the Dissenters as merely a matter of public convenience, to be performed when it could be performed without disturbing anybody of {112} importance. Hoadley must have looked at the subject from an entirely different point of view; it must have been to him a question of justice or injustice; yet he, too, was quite ready to put it off indefinitely rather than allow it to be made the means of obtaining a certain amount of popular favor for the Prince of Wales as opposed to his father the King. We shall see such things occurring again and again in the course of this history. The agreement of Walpole and Hoadley did, indeed, put off the repeal of the Test Act for a pretty long time. The brand and stigma on the Protestant Dissenters as well as on the Roman Catholics was allowed to remain in existence for nearly another century of English history. We are now in 1737, and the Test Act was not repealed until 1828. Historians are sometimes reproached for paying too much attention to palace squabbles; yet a palace squabble becomes a matter of some importance if it can postpone an act of national justice for by far the greater part of a century.

[Sidenote: 1737—A question of price]

There was a good deal of talk about this time of the possibility of adopting some arrangement for the separation of Hanover from the English Crown. The fact of the Princess of Wales having given birth to a daughter and not a son naturally led to a revival of this question. The electorate of Hanover could not descend to a woman, and if the Prince of Wales should have no son some new arrangement would have to be made. The Queen was very anxious that Hanover should be secured for her second son, to whom she was much attached, and the King was understood to be in favor of this project. On the other hand, it was given out that the Prince of Wales would be quite willing to renounce his rights in favor of his younger brother on condition of his getting the fifty thousand a year additional for which he had been clamoring in Parliament. Nothing could be more popular with the country than any arrangement which would sever the connection between the Crown of England and the electorate of Hanover. If the prince were seeking popularity, such a proposal coming from him would be popular indeed, provided {113} it were not spoiled by the stipulation about the fifty thousand a year. The Queen's comment upon the rumors as to the prince's intention was that in her firm belief he would sell the reversion of the Crown of England to the Pretender if only the Pretender offered him money enough. Nothing came of the talk about Hanover just then. The King and the Queen had soon something else to think of.

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CHAPTER XXIX.

THE QUEEN'S DEATH-BED.

[Sidenote: 1737—Caroline's death-stroke]

The Queen had long been dying; dying by inches. In one of her confinements she had been stricken with an ailment from which she suffered severely. She refused to let any one, even the King, know what was the matter with her. She had the strongest objection to being regarded as an invalid; and she feared, too, that if anything serious were known to be the matter with her she might lose her hold over her selfish husband, who only cared for people as long as they were active in serving and pleasing him. An invalid was to George merely a nuisance. Let us do Caroline justice. She was no doubt actuated by the most sincere desire to be of service to the King, and she feared that if she were to make it known how ill she was, the King might insist on her giving up active life altogether. Not only did she take no pains to get better, but in order to prove that she was perfectly well, she used to exert herself in a manner which might have been injurious to the health of a very strong woman. When at Richmond she used to walk several miles every morning with the King; and more than once, Walpole says, when she had the gout in her foot, she dipped her whole leg in cold water to be ready to attend him. "The pain," says Walpole, "the bulk, and the exercise threw her into such fits of perspiration as routed the gout; but those exertions hastened the crisis of her distemper." History preserves some curious pictures of the manner in which the morning prayers were commonly said to Queen Caroline. The Queen was being dressed by her ladies in her bedroom; the door of the bedroom was left partly open, the {115} chaplain read the prayers in the outer room, and had to kneel, as he read them, beneath a great painting of a naked Venus; and just within the half-open bedroom door her Majesty, according to Horace Walpole, "would frequently stand some minutes in her shift, talking to her ladies."