The next day, Sunday, King George held his first levée, at which he particularly noticed Marlborough and the Whig Lords, but ignored Ormonde and Lord Chancellor Harcourt altogether, and barely noticed Oxford, “of whom your Majesty has heard me speak,” said Dorset in presenting him. Bolingbroke was not received at all. The Whigs were jubilant; it was evident that the King had no intention of conciliating the Tories. As it was Sunday, a great many citizens came down from London by road and water to catch a glimpse of the new King, and in the afternoon a large crowd assembled outside the palace of Greenwich and cheered for hours. To quote one of the journals of the day: “His Majesty and the Prince were graciously pleased to expose themselves some time at the windows of their palace to satisfy the impatient curiosity of the King’s loving subjects”.[46]
On the morrow, Monday, George the First made his public entry into London, and his “loving subjects” had ample opportunity of seeing their Sovereign from Hanover, whose “princely virtues,” in the words of the Address of the loyal Commons, “gave them a certain prospect of future happiness”. It was king’s weather. The September sun was shining brightly when at two o’clock in the afternoon the procession set out from Greenwich Park. It was not a military procession after the manner of royal pageants in more recent years, though a certain number of soldiers took part in it, but it was an imposing procession, and more representative of the nation than any military display that could have been devised. In it the order of precedence set forth by the Heralds’ Office was strictly followed. The coaches of esquires came first, but as no esquire was permitted to take part in the procession who could not afford a coach drawn by six horses and emblazoned with his arms, it could not fully represent the untitled aristocracy of England. Then followed the knights bachelors in their coaches, with panels painted yellow in compliment to the King, though in truth he was of a very different calibre to the last foreign monarch who affected that colour, William of Orange. Then came the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General, and after them the baronets and younger sons of barons and viscounts. Then followed the majesty of the law as represented by the Barons of the Exchequer, his Majesty’s Judges, the Lord Chief Justice, and the Master of the Rolls. The Privy Councillors, such as were not noble, came next, and then the eldest sons of barons, the younger sons of earls, the eldest sons of viscounts, and, all by himself, the Speaker of the House of Commons, in wig and gown. The barons and the bishops came next, fully robed, followed by the younger sons of dukes, the eldest sons of marquesses, the earls, the Lord Steward, the two lords who jointly held the office of Earl Marshal, the eldest sons of dukes, the marquesses, the Lord Great Chamberlain, the dukes, the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord President of the Council, the Lord High Treasurer, the Archbishop of York and the Lord Chancellor. From some unexplained cause the Archbishop of Canterbury was absent.
Then, the climax and focus of all this splendour, came King George himself and Prince George Augustus in an enormous glass coach, decorated with gold, emblazoned with the royal arms, and drawn by eight horses with postillions. The Duke of Northumberland, the Gold Staff, and Lord Dorset, who had now been made a gentleman of the bedchamber, were on the front seat. The King leaned forward and bowed to the cheering crowds from time to time, with his hand upon his heart, but his countenance showed never a smile. The Prince, on the other hand, was all smiles, but having been commanded by his royal sire not to bow, he had perforce to sit upright, and content himself with smiling. Immediately after the royal coach came other coaches bearing the King’s suite of faithful Hanoverians, including his two mistresses en titre, Schulemburg and Kielmansegge, whose quaint appearance was the signal of some ribald remarks from the mob, which, fortunately for the German ladies, they did not understand. The whole of the way was lined with cheering crowds, and men and boys climbed up the trees along the route to wave flags and shout “God save the King”.
As the procession entered London cannon roared from the Tower. There was a temporary halt in Southwark, where the Lord Mayor and City Fathers, in brave array, were drawn up to meet the King. The Recorder stepped up to the royal coach and read a long speech, in which he assured his Majesty of the impatience with which the citizens of London, and his subjects generally, awaited “his Royal presence amongst them to secure those invaluable blessings which they promised themselves from a Prince of the most illustrious merit”. The King listened stolidly, and bowed his head from time to time, or gave utterance to a grunt, which presumably was intended to convey the royal approval, but as George understood barely a word of English, the loyal address could hardly have been intelligible to him. The procession then moved slowly over London Bridge, through the City, by St. Paul’s, where four thousand children sang “God save the King,” and so wended its way to St. James’s. The roadway was lined with troops, and people looked down from windows and balconies, shouted and threw flowers; flags waved and draperies hung down from nearly every house, triumphal arches crossed the streets, the bells of the churches were ringing, and the fountains ran with wine. But the King throughout the day remained stolid and unmoved; the English crowd might shout for King George as loud as they pleased, but he knew full well in his heart that, given the same show and a general holiday, they would have shouted as loud for King James.
It was eight o’clock in the evening before the procession broke up at St. James’s Palace, and even then the festivities were not over, for bonfires were lighted in the streets and squares, oxen roasted whole, and barrels of beer broached for the people, who enjoyed themselves in high good humour until the small hours of the morning. The day was not to end without some blood being spilled. A dispute took place that night at St. James’s between one Aldworth, the Tory member of Parliament for Windsor, and Colonel Chudleigh, a truculent Whig. The colonel called Aldworth, who had been in the royal procession, a Jacobite. Aldworth resented this as an insult, and, both being the worse for wine, the quarrel grew. Nothing would settle it but to fight a duel with swords, and the pair set off at once with seconds to Marylebone Fields. Aldworth was killed, “which is no great wonder,” writes an eye-witness, “for he had such a weakness in both his arms that he could not stretch them, and this from being a child it is suppos’d not to be a secret to Chudleigh”.[47]
The King and Prince slept that night in St. James’s Palace. Did the ghosts of their Stuart ancestors mock their slumbers?
The next day King George held a levée, which was largely attended, and the day after he presided over a meeting of the Privy Council, when George Augustus was created Prince of Wales. In the patent the King declared that his “most dear son is a Prince whose eminent filial piety hath always endeared him to us”. Yet, though the Prince was nominally a member of the Privy Council, the King was careful not to allow him the slightest influence in political affairs, or to admit him to his confidence or to that of his Ministers.
We get glimpses of the King during the first few weeks of his reign in contemporary letters of the period. We find him and the Prince supping with the Duke of Marlborough, whose levées were more largely attended than ever, and whose popularity was far greater than that of his royal guests. The duke improved the occasion by offering to sell the Prince of Wales Marlborough House, and showed him how easily it might be joined to St. James’s Palace by a gallery; the King would not hear of it.[48] We also find the King supping at Madame Kielmansegge’s with Lady Cowper, for whom he evinced undisguised, if not altogether proper admiration, and the lovely Duchess of Shrewsbury, whose conversation, if we may believe Lady Cowper, “though she had a wonderful art of entertaining and diverting people, would sometimes exceed the bounds of decency”. On this occasion she entertained his Majesty by mocking the way the King of France ate, telling him that he ate twenty things at a meal, and ticking them off on her fingers. Whereupon the astute Lady Cowper said: “Sire, the duchess forgets that he eats a good deal more than that”. “What does he eat, then?” said the King. “Sire,” Lady Cowper answered, “he devours his people, and if Providence had not led your Majesty to the throne, he would be devouring us also.” Whereupon the King turned to the duchess and said, “Did you hear what she said?” and he did Lady Cowper the honour of repeating her words to many people, which made the Duchess of Shrewsbury very jealous.
The Duchess of Shrewsbury was by birth an Italian, the Marchesa Paleotti, and scandal said that she had been the duke’s mistress before she became his wife. The Duchess of Marlborough made many slighting remarks about her when she first appeared at Queen Anne’s Court, where she was coldly received. But after the Hanoverian accession she came to the front and stood high in the favour of King George, who loved a lady who was at once lively and broad in her conversation. Lady Wentworth declared that “the Duchess of Shrewsbury will devour the King, for she will not let any one speak to him but herself, and she says she rivals Madame Kielmansegge”. Be that as it may, the King found great pleasure in her society, and often went to her little supper parties to play “sixpenny ombre”. She had a great advantage over the English ladies in that she could speak admirable French. The King later obtained for her a post in the household of the Princess of Wales, not without some reluctance on the part of the Princess.
The King lost no time in forming his Government. All the members, with the possible exception of Lord Nottingham, the President of the Council, who, despite his leaning to High Church principles, had long been identified with the Whigs, were of the Whig party. Lord Townshend was confirmed in Bolingbroke’s place as chief Secretary of State, and must henceforth be regarded as Prime Minister. He was not a statesman of first-rate ability, but he was a just man and free from the prevailing taint of corruption; his considerable position among the Whigs had been strengthened by his marriage with Robert Walpole’s sister. Robert Walpole was given the minor appointment of Paymaster-General to the Forces, but he was promoted the following year to the post of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. The second Secretary of State, James Stanhope (afterwards Earl Stanhope), was a much stronger personality than Townshend; he had shown himself a dashing soldier, and he was an accomplished scholar.