REINHARDSBRUNN, NEAR GOTHA.
Early on the morning of the 18th of December the remains of the Prince were taken from St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, to Frogmore, the ceremony being conducted in extreme privacy. The coffin was first placed in a hearse, which was followed by the Prince of Wales and Prince Louis of Hesse in a mourning coach. The Lord Chamberlain, the Dean of Windsor, Sir Charles Phipps, Colonel Grey, and other officials and domestics of the Royal Household formed the rest of the procession. The ceremony was very brief, simple, and solemn, and when the coffin was placed within the sarcophagus, the Princes laid upon it floral wreaths, which the Princesses had woven with their own hands for their father’s grave.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.
England in 1863—The Prince of Wales Summoned as a Peer of Parliament—His Introduction to the House of Lords—Cession of the Ionian Islands to Greece—Mr. Disraeli’s Policy—The Prince of Wales’s Income—The Dowry of the Princess—Approaching Marriage of the Prince of Wales—The Voyage of the “Sea-King’s Daughter”—Reception of the Princess Alexandra at Gravesend—Her Entry into London—The Scene in the City—The West End en fête—Loyalty of Clubland—Accident to the Royal Party at Slough—The High Churchmen and the Queen—Objections to a Royal Marriage in Lent—The Dispensing Power of the Primate—A Visit to Frogmore—The Queen at the Prince of Wales’s Marriage—The Scene in St. George’s Chapel—The Wedding Presents—The Ceremony—The Wedding Guests hustled by Roughs—Riots in Ireland—Illuminated London—Foreign Policy—The Polish Question—The Russian Rebuff to Lord Palmerston—Napoleon III. Proposes a Congress of Sovereigns—Lord Russell Condemns the Proposal—The Death-Knell of the Anglo-French Alliance—France and Mexico and the Archduke Maximilian.
But for the controversy that was waged in the Press over the Civil War in America, and the sufferings of Lancashire, where the people were lying under the blight of the Cotton Famine, the year 1863 would have presented a record of unruffled calm. The classes and the masses still wrangled over the rights and wrongs of the Southern States; but the leaders of political parties, adhering to the policy of neutrality, discouraged all projects for interfering between the belligerents. The organs of public opinion in the Northern States bitterly condemned England because her aristocracy displayed strong Southern sympathies. The organs of public opinion in the Southern States reviled the English Government because Lord Russell refused to join the Emperor of the French in recognising the Southern Confederacy. For some mysterious reason France, whose policy was thus absolutely hostile to the Federal Government, was not only popular in the South but in the North. Both belligerents were, however, surprised to find that events falsified the anticipations which they had based on the effect of the Cotton Famine. So far from forcing England to interfere in the struggle, the destruction of her cotton industry was seen to produce local suffering rather than national disaster. The foundations of British trade, in fact, had, by the fiscal policy of Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone, been laid so broad and so deep, that the nation easily withstood the shock from the ruin of its most productive branch of manufacture. Losses in the cotton trade were more than balanced by increased gains in other forms of commercial enterprise, and on New Year’s Day the revenue had increased so unexpectedly, that Mr. Gladstone not only began to dream of surpluses, but was busy hatching projects for a fresh reduction of taxation. Indeed, the lavish subscriptions to the fund for relieving distress in the cotton districts indicated how little the Cotton Famine had affected the aggregate amount of disposable wealth in the country. By the end of January this princely fund had reached three-quarters of a million sterling—a sum which did not, of course, represent the unestimated contributions of manufacturers who, like Mr. John Bright, ran their mills on short time at a loss, rather than turn their workpeople into the streets.
Parliament was opened by Commission on the 8th of February—the first paragraph in the Queen’s Speech announcing the approaching marriage of the Prince of Wales to the Princess Alexandra. The offer of the Crown of Greece to Prince Alfred was alluded to, and the continuance of the Civil War in America, with its attendant Cotton Famine in Lancashire, deplored. But as to legislation, the Royal Speech said nothing definite. All promises were conveyed in Lord Palmerston’s stereotyped formula, that “various measures of public usefulness and improvement” would be submitted for the consideration of Parliament. The debates on the Address attracted less popular interest than the ceremonial proceedings of the House of Lords, when, on the first day of the Session, the Prince of Wales took his seat in that august Assembly. The scene on that occasion was a memorable one. In the side galleries near the Throne the Duchess of Cambridge, the Princess Mary of Cambridge, and a brilliant array of Peeresses had secured places. The Foreign Ambassadors and Ministers and Members of the House of Commons were also well represented. After the Royal Speech was read the Commissioners retired, and at about a quarter to four the Lord Chancellor, in his ordinary black silk robe, wig, and three-cornered hat, entered the House, preceded by the Great Seal, and seated himself on the woolsack. The Bishop of Worcester having read the prayers, a brilliant procession of Peers was then seen defiling from the Prince’s Chamber, and it marched with slow and stately formality up the floor of the House, led by Sir Augustus Clifford, Usher of the Black Rod, who was followed by Sir Charles Young, arrayed in the robes of the Garter-King-at-Arms. He was followed by an equerry carrying the coronet of the Prince of Wales on a gorgeously embroidered cushion. Then came the Prince himself, wearing the scarlet and ermine robes of a Duke over a general officer’s uniform, and decorated with the insignia of the Garter, the Golden Fleece, and the Star of India. Accompanying him were the Dukes of Cambridge and Argyll, the Earls of Derby and Granville, Earl Spencer and Lord Kingsdown, Lord Willoughby d’Eresby, Hereditary Grand Chamberlain, and Lord Edmund Howard, representing the infant Duke of Norfolk, as Hereditary Grand Marshal. As the procession entered the House, the Peers rose and remained standing during the ceremony—the Lord Chancellor alone retaining his seat, and wearing his cocked hat. The Prince bowed, and advancing to the woolsack, delivered his patent of nobility and writ of summons to the Lord Chancellor. He then returned to the table where Sir J. Shaw-Lefevre, Clerk of the Parliaments, administered the oath to him, as Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay, Earl of Chester and Carrick, and Lord of the Isles. Having signed the roll, the procession passed round behind the woolsack, till the Prince reached the right-hand side of the Throne, where he took his seat formally on the Chair of State reserved for the Heir-Apparent to the Crown. As he seated himself he placed his hat on his head. Then uncovering he rose, advanced to the woolsack, and shook hands with the Lord Chancellor, who very slightly raised his hat as he went through the formal salutation. The procession then left the House, and business was suspended till five o’clock, when the Prince reappeared in ordinary walking-dress, with the Duke of Cambridge, beside whom he sat on one of the cross-benches throughout the debate on the Address.
In both Houses the Government was attacked, mainly on account of its foreign policy. The Tories pretended to see in the proposed cession of the Ionian Islands to Greece the premonitory sign of the fall of the British Empire. Their argument turned on a strange misconception, not only of the arrangements made at Vienna in 1815, but of the Queen’s prerogative. The Ionian Islands were never British territory. They formed an independent Republic, placed by the European Powers under the protection of England.[147] But the primary aim of that protectorate was to foster the spirit of Greek nationality, and not to give Corfu to England as a place of arms. When the Ionians therefore desired annexation to Greece, and Greece was able to protect them, England would have been false to the trust she undertook in 1815, if she had maintained her protectorate by force. Earl Grey clearly proved that it was quite within the prerogative of the Queen to cede a protectorate without consulting Parliament. In fact, as the magnificent island of Java, which was a possession and not a protectorate, was given to the Dutch without Parliament being consulted on the subject, it is difficult to understand why the Opposition raised the question of prerogative in this instance. Mr. Disraeli’s complaints that certain Ministers—of whom Mr. Gladstone was one—had made speeches during the recess indicating a