Society in the early Georgian era, though marred by excess in eating and drinking and by coarseness in conversation, which the example of the King had made fashionable, was characterised by a spirit of robust enjoyment. Judging from the letters, journals, plays, poems and caricatures of the period, social life was exceedingly lively and varied, though too often disfigured by bitter party animosities, scurrilous personal attacks and brutal practical jokes. The tone was not high. The beaux and exquisites were given to drunkenness, vice and gambling; the belles and ladies of quality to scandal, spite and extravagance, to a degree unusual even among the rich and idle, and the marriage vow seemed generally to be held in light estimation. But we should not be too hasty in assuming that the early Georgian era was necessarily much worse than the present day. If there was more grossness there were fewer shams. Its sins were very much on the surface; it indulged in greater freedom of manners and licence of speech, and many leaders of society, from the King downwards, led lives which were notoriously immoral; but there were plenty of honest men and virtuous women in those days as now, probably more in proportion, only we do not hear so much about them as the others. In many respects life was purer, simpler and more honest than it is to-day, beliefs were more vital, and the struggle for existence far less keen.

Such was the London to which Caroline came, and such was the society which she, as the first lady in the land, might influence for good or evil. Let it be recorded that in her own life and conduct she did what she could to set a good example. She was a good wife and a good mother, no word of scandal was ever whispered against her, and in her own circle she strove to encourage the higher and intellectual life, and to purify and refine some of the grosser elements around her. More than that she could not do, for it must be remembered that the duty of moral responsibility was not greatly accounted of in the days of the early Georges.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK II, CHAPTER II:

[55] Diary of Lady Cowper.

[56] The Princess of Wales.

[57] The Flying Post, 21st February, 1716.

CHAPTER III.
THE REACTION. 1715.

As the tide of popular feeling seemed flowing in favour of the new King, the Government took advantage of it to dissolve Parliament, which had now sat for nearly six months since the death of Queen Anne. This Parliament behaved with dignity and circumspection at a crisis of English history. The majority of the members of the House of Commons were Tory, but, despite a certain element of Jacobitism, they had shown their loyal acquiescence in the Hanoverian succession in a variety of ways. They had voted to George the First a civil list of £700,000 per annum, of which £100,000 was for the Prince of Wales; they had even agreed, though with wry faces, to pay £65,000 which the King claimed as arrears due to his Hanoverian troops. The Tories had certainly earned more consideration from the King than they received. But the fiat had gone forth that there was to be no commerce with them, and Ministers were determined to obtain a Whig majority. To this end they not only employed all the resources of bribery and corruption by lavish expenditure of secret service money, but were so unconstitutional as to drag the King into the arena of party politics. In the Royal Proclamation summoning the new Parliament, the King was made to call upon the electors to baffle the designs of disaffected persons, and “to have a particular regard to such as showed a fondness to the Protestant succession when it was in danger”. This was perhaps to some extent justified by a manifesto which James had issued the previous August from Lorraine, in which he spoke of George as “a foreigner ignorant of the language, laws and customs of England,” and said he had been waiting to claim his rights on the death “of the Princess our sister, of whose good intentions towards us we could not for some time past well doubt”. This manifesto compromised the late Queen’s Ministers, and the Government determined to challenge the verdict of the country upon it.

The Jacobites were quite willing to meet the issue. Riots broke out at Birmingham, Bristol, Chippenham, Norwich and other considerable towns in the kingdom. In the words of the old Cavalier song, it was declared that times would not mend “until the King enjoyed his own again,” and James’s health was drunk at public and private dinners by passing the wine glass over the water bottle, thus transforming the toast of “The King,” into “The King over the water”. The hawkers of pamphlets and ballads openly vended and shouted Jacobite songs in the streets, and many of them were prosecuted with great severity. Two forces, opposite enough in other ways, the Church and the Stage, were found to be united against the Government, and a Royal Proclamation was issued commanding the clergy not to touch upon politics in their sermons, and forbidding farces and plays which held Protestant dissenters up to ridicule.

The violence of the Jacobites played into the hands of the Government and considerably embarrassed the moderate section of the Tory party, who, under the leadership of Sir Thomas Hanmer, were opposed to the restoration of a Roman Catholic prince, and were willing to support the monarchy as represented by the House of Hanover, provided that they had some voice in the government of the country. But the Whigs pressed home their advantage, and raised the cry of “No Popery,” with which they knew the nation as a whole thoroughly agreed. The Tories could only fall back on their old cry, “The Church in danger,” declaring that George the First was not a bonâ-fide member of the Church of England, but a Protestant Lutheran, and pointing to the fact that he had brought with him his Lutheran chaplain. But this was clearly inconsistent, for though the King was not a sound Churchman, he was not a man to make difficulties about religious matters, and he had unhesitatingly conformed to the Church of England, and had attended services in the Chapel Royal and received the sacrament, together with the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Church would be obviously in far greater danger from a Roman Catholic prince who refused to acknowledge the validity of Anglican sacraments or orders, and who regarded the Church of England as heretical.