Caroline the Illustrious, vol. 1 (of 2)

by W. H. Wilkins

While these events were taking place, King George had remained at Hanover, heedless of the discontent in England. He returned to London in November, 1719, and a few days later opened Parliament in person. Caroline, true to her policy of keeping up appearances, waited upon the King to congratulate him upon his safe return, and he gave her audience, but controversial matters were not touched upon, and though rumours of reconciliation arose from the interview they were rumours merely. On the contrary, the principal Government measure was aimed indirectly at the Prince of Wales. Stanhope brought forward the Peerage Bill, to limit the royal prerogative in the creation of new peerages. The Prince of Wales had made use of some rash and unguarded expressions as to what he would do when he came to the throne, and the King was induced by jealousy of his son to consent to this limitation of his royal prerogative. The measure was strongly opposed in both Houses, but the head and front of the opposition was Walpole, who had identified himself with the opposition court of Leicester House. He made an eloquent speech in the House of Commons against the measure, with the result that it was defeated by a large majority. The Government did not resign, but they saw the advisability of conciliating Walpole and the malcontent Whigs, and a political reconciliation took place. Walpole and Townshend accepted minor offices in the Government.

Walpole’s accession to the Ministry took the heart out of the Whig opposition, with which the Prince of Wales had more or less identified himself. Having failed to upset the Government, Walpole cast in his lot with them. He set to work with such goodwill that, though for a time he held a subordinate office, he soon became the most powerful member of the Government; he was already the man with the greatest authority in the House of Commons. From this time may be dated Walpole’s alliance with Caroline, and he henceforth played a prominent part in her life.

Robert Walpole, the third son of a Norfolk squire, Walpole of Houghton, was born in 1676. His family had belonged to the landed gentry of England since the days of William the Conqueror, but they had never distinguished themselves in any way. Walpole was educated at Eton, where he had as his school-fellow his future rival, Bolingbroke, and thence proceeded to King’s College, Cambridge. On quitting the university he went back to Houghton with a view to becoming a country squire as his father was. The future statesman spent his days at cattle fairs and agricultural shows, with fox-hunting and hard drinking thrown in by way of recreation. Old Squire Walpole was of a very hospitable turn of mind, and kept open house to his neighbours, who often assembled around his jovial board. “Come, Robert,” he used to say, “you shall drink twice to my once; I cannot permit my son, in his sober senses, to be a witness of the intoxication of his father.” Walpole was married at the age of twenty-five to the beautiful and accomplished Catherine Shorter, a daughter of John Shorter, of Bybrook, Kent. His domestic life was not a model one, both husband and wife arranging to go much as they pleased. Walpole, like his enemy Bolingbroke, was profligate and fond of wine and women, and his young wife also had her intrigues. She had one particularly with Lord Hervey, and her second son (Horace Walpole the younger) was said to be really the son of Lord Hervey. He closely resembled the Herveys in his tastes, appearance and manner; especially in his effeminacy, which was characteristic of the men of the Hervey family. He was quite unlike his reputed father, Walpole, who was a burly county squire, with a loud voice, heavy features and no refinement of manner or speech. Walpole’s wife also (so Lady Cowper says) had an intrigue with the Prince of Wales, and Walpole was cognisant of it, if he did not even lend himself to it, with a view to obtaining the goodwill of the Prince. Both Robert Walpole and his wife were often at Leicester House.

Soon after his marriage Walpole succeeded to the family estate, with a rent-roll of some two thousand a year. He was elected a member for Castle Rising, and he sat in the two last Parliaments of William the Third. In 1702 he was returned as member for Lyme Regis, in the first Parliament of Queen Anne, a borough which he continued to represent for nearly forty years. He quickly made his mark in the House of Commons, and his history from this time onward is to a great extent the history of his country. He was a Whig by conviction and education; he had a passion for work, and a fixed ambition which carried him step by step to the highest offices in the State. His zeal in furthering the Whig cause early won for him the hatred of the Tories, and at the instigation of Bolingbroke, when the Tories came into power, Walpole was charged with corruption and other misdemeanours, and thrown into the Tower. It was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to him, for it called public attention to his personality, and awoke the admiration of his friends. So crowded was his room in the Tower that it resembled a levée; some of the first quality of the town went there, including the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. His confinement in the Tower was not a long one. On the accession of George the First Walpole’s attachment to Whig principles and the House of Hanover was rewarded by his being given a place in the Administration of Lord Townshend, who had married his sister. The rest has been told.

Walpole’s first step after he rejoined Stanhope’s Government was to bring about a reconciliation between the Prince of Wales and the King, and to this end he addressed himself to the Princess of Wales. During the winter of 1719 Walpole had often been twice a day at Leicester House, and he realised, what many were still ignorant of, the great and increasing influence which the Princess exercised over her husband. Moreover, the Princess had recently received the King’s compliments on her birthday for the first time for two years. To the Princess, therefore, Walpole first went with the suggestion of reconciliation, and begged her to induce the Prince to write a submissive letter to the King. Caroline was willing to do all she could to bring about a reconciliation, but she stipulated for one thing above all others—that her children should be returned to her. This Walpole promised, though he must have known at the time that he had no power to make such a promise. The Prince at first blustered and swore, and said that nothing would induce him to make any overtures to the King, and he stipulated that he should have the Regency again, the entrée of the royal palaces, his guards, and, of course, the custody of his children. Walpole told him he would do what he could, and he so “engrossed and monopolised the Princess to a degree of making her deaf to everything that did not come from him”.[109] He then went to the King and told him that the Prince was anxious to submit himself.

The King at first was obdurate, and refused to see his son under any circumstances whatever. “Can’t the Whigs come back without him,” he grumbled to Sunderland. Then he said he would receive him, provided he were brought back “bound hand and foot”. When conditions were hinted, the King at once said that he would have nothing more to do with the matter, and was only persuaded to reconsider his words by his Ministers representing that, unless he could meet them half-way, they would not be able to get his debts paid, which by this time had amounted to £600,000 in excess of the ample Civil List. As the King kept practically no court in England, most of the money must have been spent in Hanover, or given to his Hanoverian minions and mistresses. Ministers argued that a reconciliation would do something to restore public credit, and the long quarrel had seriously affected the popularity of the Royal Family. The Prince was also amenable to this argument, as he, too, was in debt some £100,000, the result, no doubt, of the state he had kept up at Leicester House. Walpole gave the Prince to understand that this sum would be paid, and by way of showing his goodwill, he put him and the Princess in the way of making a little money in South Sea stock.

The Princess was prepared to let everything go if she could only have her children back again, and the Bishop of Norwich went down on his knees to Townshend and Walpole, and swore that the Princess should have her children. She said: “Mr. Walpole, this will be no jesting matter to me; you will hear of this, and my complaints, every day and hour, and in every place, if I have not my children again”. Walpole suggested that the Princess should make overtures to the Duchess of Kendal, who had more influence than any one with the King, and even to this crowning humiliation the Princess stooped, but all to no purpose; the King absolutely refused to agree to any such stipulation. He had become attached, after his fashion, to the three princesses, and he knew that to retain them would be the surest way of wounding the feelings of his daughter-in-law. The Prince, unlike the Princess, was not obdurate on this point, and he was quite willing to let his daughters go for what he considered more substantial benefits. Walpole promised to pay his debts if he would yield this point, and gave him some more South Sea stock; to the Princess he declared that the King was inexorable, and that she must leave everything in his hands, and all would be well. The Princess wept, and said that she was betrayed, and the Prince had been bribed, but her tears and lamentations were all to no effect. It was on this occasion she uttered the exceeding bitter cry: “I can say since the hour I was born, I have not lived a day without suffering”.

Matters having gone thus far, the Prince wrote the required letter, which was delivered to the King on St. George’s Day, April 23rd, 1720. On its receipt Craggs was sent back with a message to the Prince to say that the King would see him. The Prince at once took his chair and went to St. James’s Palace, where the King gave him audience in his closet. The Prince expressed his grief at having incurred his royal sire’s displeasure, thanked him for having given him leave to wait upon him once more, and said that he hoped all the rest of his life would be such as the King would have no cause to complain of. The King was much agitated and very pale, and could not speak except in broken sentences, of which the Prince said the only intelligible words were: “Votre conduite, votre conduite”. The audience was over in five minutes, and the Prince then went to see his daughter, the Princess Anne, who was ill of small-pox in another part of the palace. He then set out on his way back to Leicester House, with this difference, that whereas he had come in a private manner, he now departed with the beef-eaters and a guard around his chair, and amid the shouts of the crowd that had assembled outside the palace gates. In Pall Mall he met the Princess, who was on her way to visit her daughter. She had not been told that the King had sent for her husband, and she was much startled to see him there, thinking he had a bad account of the Princess Anne. He said he had seen the King, and told her the great news. They returned together to Leicester House. “He looked grave,” said Lady Cowper of the Prince, “and his eyes were red and swelled as one has seen him on other occasions when he was mightily ruffled. He dismissed all the company at first, but held a drawing-room in the afternoon.” By that time the royal guards were established at the gates of Leicester House, and the square was full of coaches. Inside “there was nothing but kissing and wishing of joy”. The Prince was so delighted that he embraced Lady Cowper five or six times, whereat the Princess burst into a laugh, and said: “So, I think you two always kiss on great occasions”. The Ministers came to offer their congratulations, including the younger Craggs, who was supposed to have inflamed the King’s mind against the Prince, and to have called the Princess an opprobrious name. He now protested to her that he had done nothing of the kind, offering to swear it on his oath. She replied: “Fie! Mr. Craggs; you renounce God like a woman that’s caught in the fact”.

The King received Caroline the next day when she went to visit her daughters at St. James’s. He gave her a longer audience than he had given his son, for they went into his closet and stayed there an hour and ten minutes. When the Princess at length came out of the royal closet, she told her attendants that she was transported at the King’s “mighty kind reception”. But Walpole had another version of the interview, to the effect that the King had been very rough with her and had chidden her severely. He told her she might say what she pleased to excuse herself, but he knew very well that she could have made the Prince behave better if she had wished, and he hoped henceforth that she would use her influence to make him conduct himself properly. These private interviews over, it was decided to celebrate the reconciliation in a public manner. The Ministers gave a dinner to celebrate the Whig and the royal reconciliation at one and the same time; the King held a drawing-room at St. James’s, to which the Prince and Princess went with all their court. The King would not speak to the Prince nor to any of his suite, except the Duchess of Shrewsbury, who would not be denied. When she first addressed him he took no notice, but the second time she said: “I am come, Sir, to make my court, and I will make it,” in a whining tone of voice, and then he relented so far as she was concerned. But otherwise the drawing-room could hardly be described as harmonious. “It happened,” writes Lady Cowper, “that Lady Essex Robartes was in the circle when our folks came in, so they all kept at the bottom of the room, for fear of her, which made the whole thing look like two armies in battle array, for the King’s court was all at the top of the room, behind the King, and the Prince’s court behind him. The Prince looked down, and behaved prodigious well. The King cast an angry look that way every now and then, and one could not help thinking ’twas like a little dog and a cat—whenever the dog stirs a foot, the cat sets up her back, and is ready to fly at him.”

The reconciliation thus patched up was a hollow one, but it served to hoodwink the public, and it depressed the Jacobites, who had been saying everywhere that even outward harmony was impossible. Neither side was satisfied; the King was indignant at having to receive the Prince at all, and unwilling to make concessions. He would not grant the Prince and Princess the use of any of the royal palaces, and refused to let them come back to live under the same roof with him. He gave them leave to see the three princesses when they liked, but he refused to part with them, and the Ministers conveniently ignored the payment of the Prince’s debts, which indeed were not settled until he came to the throne. All that the Prince and Princess regained were the royal guards and the honours paid officially to the Prince and Princess of Wales, the leave to come to court when they wished, and permission to retain the members of their household, which at one time the King had threatened to discharge en bloc. But the great gain to the Government, and to the House of Hanover, was that a formal notification of the reconciliation was sent to foreign courts, and a domestic quarrel, which had become a public scandal, and threatened to become a public danger, was officially at an end.