The next morning the Princess was escorted from Greenwich in one of the royal coaches to Lambeth, and thence she proceeded down the river to Whitehall in a barge. At Whitehall she landed, and was carried through St. James’s Park in a sedan chair to the garden entrance of St. James’s Palace, where the Prince of Wales, who had preceded her, was waiting. The Prince led his betrothed up to the great drawing-room, where the King and Queen and all the court were ready to receive her, and curious to see what she was like. The King had been waiting more than an hour, for the Princess was late, and he was consequently impatient, and not in the best of tempers, but the young girl by her tact overcame any awkwardness that might have attended her reception. She prostrated herself at the King’s feet, and made a similar obeisance to the Queen. Her behaviour throughout this trying ceremony was marked by such propriety and discretion, that she immediately created a favourable impression, and did away with any prejudice against her.
The Princess was not allowed much time to rest after her journey, for the marriage was arranged to take place that night, at nine o’clock in the Chapel Royal, St. James’s. Before the ceremony the King and Queen, to avoid vexed questions of precedence, dined in private, but the Duke of Cumberland and the Princesses were commanded to dine with the Prince and his betrothed. Unfortunately the harmony of this family party was marred by quarrels over minute questions of ceremony. The King, with a view to overcoming any difficulties, had ordered the Duke and the Princesses to go “undressed,” that is, informally, and in other clothes than those they were to wear later at the wedding. The Prince resented this as a slight upon himself and his bride, and in return began disputing as to where, and how, his brother and sisters should sit at dinner. He demanded that they should be seated upon stools without any backs, whilst he and his bride occupied armchairs at the head of the table; also that he and his bride should be served on bended knee, while the others should be waited upon in the ordinary manner. The King and Queen had anticipated some of those difficulties, and had coached the Princesses beforehand in what they were to do. So they flatly refused to go into the room where dinner was served until the stools had been carried away and chairs put in their places, but they so far yielded the other point as to order their personal servants to wait upon them in the usual manner. Thus the wedding dinner passed off, if not exactly harmoniously, without any more childish disputes, though the Princesses went without their coffee as it was offered to them by a servant of the bride. The dinner, and the altercations in connection with it, occupied the best part of the afternoon, and the bride had scarcely time to dress for the wedding.
The wedding procession was formed at eight o’clock, and it took some time to marshal. The peers and peeresses, and other personages invited to the wedding, met in the great drawing-room of St. James’s, and then walked in order of precedence to the chapel. The Bishop of London performed the marriage ceremony, and the joining of hands was made known to the public by the firing of guns in St. James’s Park. The following extract from a contemporary print gives the best account of the ceremony:—
“Her Highness was in her hair, wearing a crown with one bar, as Princess of Wales, set all over with diamonds; her robe likewise, as Princess of Wales, being of crimson velvet, turned back with several rows of ermine, and having her train supported by four ladies, all of whom were in virgin habits of silver, like the Princess, and adorned with diamonds not less in value than from twenty to thirty thousand pounds each. Her Highness was led by his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, and conducted by His Grace the Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain of the Household, and the Lord Hervey, Vice-Chamberlain, and attended by the Countess of Effingham, and the other ladies of her household. The marriage service was read by the Lord Bishop of London, Dean of the Chapel; and, after the same was over, a fine anthem was performed by a great number of voices and instruments. When the procession returned, his Royal Highness led his bride; and coming into the drawing-room, their Royal Highnesses kneeled down and received their Majesties’ blessing. At half-an-hour after ten their Majesties sat down to supper in ambigu, the Prince and the Duke being on the King’s right hand, and the Princess of Wales and the four Princesses on the Queen’s left. Their Majesties retiring to the apartments of the Prince of Wales, the bride was conducted to her bedchamber, the bridegroom to his dressing-room, where the Duke undressed him, and his Majesty did his Royal Highness the honour to put on his shirt. The bride was undressed by the Princesses, and, being in bed in a rich undress, his Majesty came into the room, the Prince following soon after in a night-gown of silver stuff, and cap of the finest lace. The Quality were admitted to see the bride and bridegroom sitting up in bed surrounded by all the Royal Family.”[114]
The King had grumbled because there were few new clothes at his birthday drawing-room, but no such complaint could be made on this occasion, for the splendour and richness of the costumes had never been excelled. The Georgian beau was a gorgeous being; the men seemed to outshine the ladies. We read:—
“His Majesty was dressed in a gold brocade, turned up with silk, embroidered with large flowers in silver and colours, as was the waistcoat; the buttons and stars were diamonds. Her Majesty was in plain yellow silk, robed and faced with pearls, diamonds, and other jewels of immense value. The Dukes of Grafton, Newcastle, and St. Albans, the Earl of Albemarle, Lord Hervey, Colonel Pelham and many other noblemen, were in gold brocades of from three to five hundred pounds a suit. The Duke of Marlborough was in a white velvet and gold brocade, upon which was an exceedingly rich point d’Espagne. The Earl of Euston and many others were in clothes flowered or sprigged with gold; the Duke of Montagu in a gold brocaded tissue. The waistcoats were universally brocades, with large flowers. ’Twas observed most of the rich clothes were the manufacture of England, and in honour of our own artists. The few which were French did not come up to these in richness, goodness, or fancy, as was seen by the clothes worn by the Royal Family, which were all of the British manufacture. The cuffs of the sleeves were universally deep and open, the waists long, and the plaits more sticking out than ever. The ladies were principally in brocades of gold and silver, and wore their sleeves much lower than hath been done for some time.”[115]
After her marriage the Princess of Wales maintained the favourable impression she created at first, a notable feat considering that she had been brought up in the seclusion of her mother’s country house in Saxe-Gotha, and had come to a Court far more splendid than any she could have ever dreamed of. Walpole, who noted how she had won the King’s approval and gained the Prince’s esteem, declared that these “were circumstances that spoke strongly in favour of brains which had but seventeen years to ripen”. Lord Waldegrave testified that the Princess distinguished herself “by a most decent and prudent behaviour, and the King, notwithstanding his aversion to his son, behaved to her not only with great politeness, but with the appearance of cordiality and affection”. Even old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who hated Queen Caroline, and generally had a bad word to say for every one, relented in favour of the Princess, declaring that she “always appeared good-natured and civil to everybody”. The Princess’s subsequent conduct justified these praises, and she showed herself as the years went by to be a clever woman, with considerable force of character.
At first her position was exceedingly difficult in consequence of the strained relations between the Prince and his parents. She necessarily saw more of the Queen than of the King, and though the Queen’s kindness to her never wavered, there was always a barrier of reserve between them, for the Prince had now come to dislike his mother even more than his father. Just before his marriage the Queen had had a difference with her son over the question whether Lady Archibald Hamilton was, or was not, to be one of the ladies in waiting to the Princess; the Prince wishing her to be appointed, and the Queen declaring that it was not proper that the Prince’s mistress should be one of his wife’s household. She was undoubtedly right, but the Prince might have retorted, and he probably did, that he was only following precedent, since Lady Suffolk had filled a similar position in the household of his parents. The matter was compromised by only three ladies in waiting being appointed by the Queen, and the Princess was left free to nominate one other when she arrived. The Prince gained such an ascendency over his wife that the first thing she did was to appoint Lady Archibald Hamilton, who soon became her constant companion. Lady Archibald was not a wise adviser to the young Princess even in minor matters, or perhaps she deliberately set about to make her look ridiculous. The Princess was quite ignorant of the customs of the English Court, and was imbued by her husband with a strong sense of what was due to her as Princess of Wales. Either at his bidding or Lady Archibald’s suggestion, she took to walking in Kensington Gardens with two gentlemen-ushers going before her, a chamberlain leading her by the hand, a page holding up her long train, and her maids of honour and ladies in waiting following behind. The Queen met this grotesque procession one morning when she was out on her walks, and burst into peals of laughter. The poor Princess of Wales, who was not conscious of having done anything wrong, begged to know the reason of her Majesty’s merriment, whereupon the gentle Princess Caroline so far forgot her gentleness as to tell her sister-in-law, tartly, that it was ridiculous for her to walk out like a tragedy queen, when she was merely taking the air privately in the gardens.
If the King and Queen had thought to pacify their eldest son by yielding to his wish to be married, they quickly found themselves mistaken. The Prince accepted this concession only as an instalment, and immediately began to ask for more. He did not consider his demand for a separate establishment met by his being given apartments in the royal palaces, and he refused to be contented with anything less than the full sum voted for him by Parliament. The King stoutly refused to yield more and expressed himself very forcibly on, what he called, his son’s ungrateful conduct. Thus baffled, the Prince began to raise money right and left by giving bills and bonds payable on the death of his father and his own accession to the throne, and the money-lenders were willing to advance him money on these conditions at an extortionate rate of interest. When the King heard of this he became greatly frightened lest the rapacity of the usurers should cause them to hasten his death by assassination. The Queen feared for the King’s safety too, and had long talks with Walpole and Lord Hervey on the subject. Lord Hervey, who hated the Prince, offered to bring forward a bill in the House of Lords making it a capital offence for any man to lend money on the consideration of the King’s death, but Walpole wisely pooh-poohed the idea. He strongly objected to bringing the disputes of the Royal Family before the public, and told the Queen he could see no way of keeping the Prince in order except through the good influence of the Princess of Wales. The Queen then tried to discuss matters with the Princess, but, coached by her husband, she would not listen. She was very sorry she said, but her Majesty must excuse her, she must decline to take any part in the controversy. Whatever her husband did was right in her eyes and it was her duty to obey him, whom she had sworn to obey. This drew from the Queen the expression: “Poor creature, if she were to spit in my face I should only pity her for being under such a fool’s direction, and wipe it off”. She pitied the Princess rather than blamed her, and allowed this little incident to make no difference to her behaviour towards her. The Princess no doubt had done wisely and the Prince showed his appreciation by treating his wife with courtesy and kindness, and the marriage, which had begun inauspiciously, turned out better than any one expected.