The sport on the hills delighted the Prince. The primitive life and guileless character of the people vastly interested the Queen, who has left on record her account of several curious excursions she made, and of the gathering of clansmen at Braemar, which she witnessed. Writing on the 12th of September, 1850, her Majesty says in her “Leaves from a Journal of Our Life in the Highlands,” “We lunched early, and then went at half-past two o’clock, with the children and all our party, except Lady Douro, to the Gathering at the Castle of Braemar, as we did last year. The Duffs, Farquharsons, the Leeds’s, and those staying with them, and Captain Forbes and forty of his men who had come over from Strath Don, were there. Some of our people were there also. There were the usual games of ‘putting the stone,’ ‘throwing the hammer’ and ‘caber,’ and racing up the hill of Craig Cheunnich, which was accomplished in less than six minutes and a half; and we were all much pleased to see our gillie Duncan,[27] who is an active, good-looking young man, win. He was far before the others the whole way. It is a fearful exertion. Mr. Farquharson brought him up to me afterwards. Eighteen or nineteen started, and it looked very pretty to see them run off in their different coloured kilts, with their white shirts (the jackets or doublets they take off for all the games), and scramble up through the wood, emerging gradually at the edge of it, and climbing the hill.
“After this we went into the Castle, and saw some dancing; the prettiest was a reel by Mr. Farquharson’s children and some other children, and the ‘Ghillie Callum,’ beautifully danced by John Athole Farquharson, the fourth son. The twelve children were all there, including the baby, who is two years old.
“Mama, Charles, and Ernest joined us at Braemar. Mama enjoys it all very much; it is her first visit to Scotland. We left after the dancing.”
The Court returned to Windsor late in the autumn, and one of the first dismal communications made to her Majesty was that of the death of the Queen of the Belgians on the 11th of October. “Victoria is greatly distressed,” writes Prince Albert to Stockmar. “Her aunt was her only confidante and friend. Sex, age, culture, feeling, rank—in all these they were so much on a par, that a relation of unconstrained friendship naturally grew up between them.” This friendship, it may be added, survived even the treachery of Queen Louise’s father, Louis Philippe, in the matter of the Spanish marriages.
The end of the year 1850 was marked by another amazing epidemic of bigotry on the part of the people and the Government, which was very distressing to the serene and evenly balanced minds of the Queen and her husband. This was known as the “Papal Aggression movement,” and it is in these days difficult to understand how a sensible nation could have been swept into its vortex.
On the 24th of September the Pope issued a Brief re-establishing the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England. In other words, he substituted Bishops and Archbishops deriving their titles from their sees, for the Vicars Apostolic who govern Romish missions in heathen lands. He partitioned England into sees, very much as the Wesleyans had mapped it into circuits and districts. The act was purely one of ecclesiastical administration, and of no concern to any body but the small Roman Catholic community in England. But prominent leaders of the Church began to talk about it in extravagant terms, as if it constituted the spiritual annexation of England to Rome, and as if it were a formal assertion of the authority of the Pope over that of the Queen. The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Dr. Nicholas Wiseman, and Father (now Cardinal) Newman, were particularly indiscreet in their references to the Papal Brief. Dr. Wiseman, for example, issued a pompous Pastoral “Given out of the Flaminian Gate of Rome,” on the 7th of October, boasting that “Catholic England had been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament, from which its light had long vanished.”
Dr. Ullathorne, the Bishop of Birmingham, was one of those prelates who had the sense and tact to see what mischief would spring from Cardinal Wiseman’s folly, and he did his best to explain the real meaning of the Papal Brief. But his voice was like that of one crying in the wilderness. Did not Father Newman, preaching at Dr. Ullathorne’s enthronisation, say that “the people of England, who for so many years have been separated from the see of Rome, are about, of their own free will, to be added to the Holy Church”? Was it not clear, despite the reasonable explanations of Dr. Ullathorne and others, that what the Papists really meant was that the Reformation was now reversed, and that England was reconquered for Rome? Outraged Protestantism, arguing in this fashion, without distinction of party or sect, accordingly rose in its wrath, and hurled angry defiance at the Pope. The bigots, taking advantage of this outburst of popular passion, demanded that the law should step in and punish the insolent priesthood, who thus challenged the prerogatives of the Crown.
On the 4th of November, Lord John Russell addressed to the Bishop of Durham a letter, almost equalling Cardinal Wiseman’s in its folly. The Prime Minister, in fact, gave expression to the worst phase of contemporary excitement, and fully endorsed the ridiculous notion that a prelate, who had but recently been restored to, and even then was kept on, his throne in Rome by foreign bayonets, had established his supremacy over England, in a manner inconsistent with the authority of the Queen. This Durham letter further stimulated the frenzy of intolerance into which England plunged. Meetings were held everywhere protesting against Papal aggression, and transmitting loyal addresses to the Queen. Guy Fawkes’ Day was celebrated with more
