[20] _Letters ... between the King, Queen, Prince and Princess of Wales, on the occasion of the birth of the young Princess, 1737._
The Prince, through Lord Baltimore, expressed a desire to make a personal explanation to the Queen, who, through Lord Grantham, declined to receive it; and later the Princess, doubtless prompted by her husband, wrote to the King and Queen to express a desire for reconciliation, but in vain, for, in the sovereign"s eyes, their son"s offence was rank. Indeed, the King went so far as to print the correspondence between himself and the Prince of Wales, to which the latter made the effectual reply of publishing the not dissimilar letters of his father, when Prince of Wales, to George I. This reduced the King to impotent fury: he declared he did not believe Frederick could be his son, and insisted that he must be "what in German we call a _Wechselbalch_--I do not know if you have a word for it in English--it is not what you call a foundling, but a child put in a cradle instead of another."
What induced Frederick to risk the life of his wife and his unborn child, and to put to hazard the succession was a mystery at the time, and must for ever remain without satisfactory explanation. That it was done solely to annoy his parents seems insufficient reason, though it is all that offers, and Hervey suggests the hasty nocturnal removal was effected to prevent the presence of the Queen at the birth. This certainly seems insufficient to account for the unwarrantable proceeding, but no other solution offers itself.
The Prince of Wales had in 1730 taken a lease from the Capel family of Kew House (the fee of which was many years after purchased by George III from the Dowager Countess of Ess.e.x), and there he and his wife repaired for a while after being evicted from St. James"s Palace; but soon they came back to London, and held their court, first at Norfolk House, St. James"s Square, placed at their disposal by the Duke of Norfolk, and later at Leicester House, Leicester Square. The King expressed a wish that no one should visit his son, and actually caused it to be intimated to foreign amba.s.sadors that to call on the Prince of Wales was objectionable to him; but this injunction was so generally disregarded that he took the extraordinary step of issuing, through his Chamberlain, a threat.
"His Majesty, having been informed that due regard has not been paid to his order of September 11, 1737, has thought fit to declare that no person whatsoever, who shall go to pay their court to their Royal Highnesses, the Prince and Princess of Wales, shall be admitted into his Majesty"s presence, at any of his royal palaces.
"(signed) Grafton."
Even this measure failed of its effect, for while those who sought the King"s favour had not been to Leicester House, the Opposition, knowing they had nothing to lose, were not affected by this command. Indeed, the Opposition, delighted to have so influential a chief, flocked around Frederick; and Bolingbroke,[21] Chesterfield, Pulteney,[22] Dodington, Carteret,[23] Wyndham,[24] Townshend[25] and Cobham,[26] were soon numbered among his regular visitors; while Huish has compiled a long list of peers[27] who frequently attended his _levees_.
[21] Henry St. John, first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751).
[22] Sir William Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath (1684-1764).
[23] John Carteret, afterwards Earl Granville (1690-1763).
[24] Sir Charles Wyndham, afterwards second Earl of Egremont (1710-1763).
[25] Sir William Townshend, second son of Charles, second Viscount Townshend (1702?-1738).
[26] Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham (1669?-1749).
[27] Dukes of Beaufort, Bedford, Argyle, Bridgwater and Roxburghe; Marquis of Carnarvon; and Earls of Derby, Denbigh, Westmoreland, Winchelsea, Thanet, Sandwich, Carlisle, Aylesbury, Litchfield, Scarborough, Coventry, Oxford, Aylesford, Halifax, Macclesfield, Darnley, Barrymore, Inclagreen and Gronard.
The Prince made a very determined bid for popularity among all cla.s.ses.
He put himself at the head of "The Patriots," and in 1739 recorded his first vote as a peer of Parliament against the Address and in favour of the war policy; subsequently, when war was declared, taking part with the Opposition in the public celebrations. He encouraged British manufactures, and neither he nor the Princess wore, or encouraged the wearing of, foreign materials. He gave entertainments to the n.o.bility at his seat at Cliefden in Buckinghamshire, and visiting Bath in 1738, cleared the prison of all debtors and made a present of 1,000 towards the general hospital. Nor did he neglect letters and art, for which he had some slight regard. He patronised Thomson and Vertue the engraver, employed Dr. Freeman to write a "History of the English Tongue" as a text-book for Prince George and the younger princes;[28] sent two of his court to Cave, the publisher, to inquire the name of the author of the first issue of "The Rambler"; and exchanged badinage with Pope, whom he visited at Twickenham. Pope received him with great courtesy and expressions of attachment. ""Tis well," said Frederick, "but how shall we reconcile your love to a prince with your professed indisposition to kings, since princes will be kings in time?" "Sir," said the poet, "I consider Royalty under that n.o.ble and authorized type of the lion: while he is young and before his nails are grown, he may be approached and caressed with safety and pleasure."[29]
[28] Besides Augusta, Frederick by his wife had issue: George III; Edward Augustus, Duke of York and Albany (1739-1767); William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh (1743-1805), Henry Frederick, Duke of c.u.mberland (1745-1790); Frederick William (1750-1765); Caroline Matilda (1751-1775); who married Christian VII, King of Denmark; and Louisa Anne (1749-1768).
[29] Galt: _George III, his Court, and Family_.
Frederick became very popular. "The truth is," Mr. McCarthy has said unkindly but with undoubted truth, "that the people in general, knowing little about the Prince, and knowing a great deal about the King, naturally leaned to the side of the man who might at least turn out to be better than his father."[30]
[30] Justin McCarthy: _History of the Four Georges_.
There was a general impression that he had been ill-treated, and there was a disposition among the lower cla.s.ses to make amends for such a slight as having to live as a private gentleman at Norfolk House, without even the usual appanage of a sentry.
"Some I have heard who speak this with rebuke, Guards should attend as well the prince as duke.
Guards should protect from insult Britain"s heir, Who greatly merits all the nation"s care.
Pleas"d with the honest zeal, they thus express, I tell them what each statesman must confess; No guard so strong, so n.o.ble, e"er can prove, As that which Frederick has--_a people"s love_."
"My G.o.d, popularity makes me sick; but Fritz"s popularity makes me vomit," exclaimed the Queen, perhaps after hearing that when Frederick a.s.sisted to extinguish a fire, the mob cried, "Crown him! crown him!" "I hear that yesterday, on his side of the House, they talked of the King"s being cast aside with the same _sang froid_ as one would talk of a coach being overturned; and that my good son strutted about as if he had been already King. Did you mind the air with which he came into my Drawing-room in the morning, though he does not think fit to honour me with his presence or _ennui_ me with that of his wife"s of a night. I swear his behaviour shocked me so prodigiously that I could hardly bring myself to speak to him when he was with me afterwards; I felt something here in my throat that swelled and half choked me." The King was as bitter, and refused to admit Frederick to the Queen"s deathbed. "His poor mother is not in a condition to see him act his false, whining, cringing tricks now," while the Queen declared that she was sure he wanted to see her only to have the delight of knowing she was dead a little sooner than if he had to await the tidings at home.
An attempt in 1742 to bring to an end the crying scandal of the open enmity between the King and the heir-apparent was made by Walpole, who thought, by detaching the Prince from the Opposition, to strengthen his steadily decreasing majority. The Bishop of Oxford[31] was sent to Norfolk House to intimate that if the Prince would make his peace with his father through the medium of a submissive letter, ministers would prevail upon the King to increase his income by 50,000, pay his debts to the tune of 200,000 and find places for his friends. The terms were tempting, but the Prince, knowing that Walpole"s position was precarious, declined them, stating that he knew the offer came, not from the King, but from the minister, and that, while he would gladly be reconciled to his father, he could do so without setting a price upon it. "Walpole," he declared, "was a bar between the King and his people, between the King and foreign powers; between the King and himself." The refusal was politic, for Walpole was most unpopular. "I have _added_ to the debt of the nation," so ran the inscription on a scroll issuing from the mouth of an effigy of Walpole, sitting between the King and the Prince; "I have _subtracted_ from its glory; I have _multiplied_ its embarra.s.sments; and I have _divided_ its Royal Family." The Prince"s refusal to entertain the overture was a blow to the minister, who contended against a majority in the House of Commons, until February 2, 1742, when he declared he would regard the question of the Chippenham election as a vote of confidence, and, if defeated upon it, would never again enter that House. He was beaten by sixteen, and on the 18th inst.
took his seat "in another place" as the Earl of Orford.
[31] Thomas Secker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
"The Bishop, who had been bred a Presbyterian and man-midwife, which sect and profession he had dropped for a season, while he was president of a very free-thinking club, has been converted by Bishop Talbot, whose relation he married, and had his faith settled in a prebend of Durham."--Horace Walpole.
Immediately after Walpole"s downfall, messages were exchanged between Norfolk House and St. James"s, and on February 17 father and son met and embraced at the palace. The Prince"s friends came into office, and so happy was the Prince that he testified to his joy by liberating four-and-twenty prisoners from his father"s Bench--the amount of their debts being added to his own. He was indeed so overcome with delight at his virtue in being reconciled to his father that he ventured upon a joke when Mr. Vane, who was notoriously in the court interest, congratulated him on his reappearance at St. James"s. "A vane," quoth he to the courtier, "is a weatherc.o.c.k, which turns with every gust of the wind, and therefore I dislike a vane." Witty, generous Prince!
The reconciliation was shortlived, and thereafter, for the rest of his life, Frederick was again in opposition to the court; but of these later years there is little or nothing to record, save that he solicited in vain the command of the royal army in the rebellion of "45. In March, 1751, he caught cold, and on the 20th inst., while, by his bedside, Desnoyers was playing the violin to amuse him, crying, "_Je sens la mort_," he expired suddenly--it is said from the bursting of an abscess which had been formed by a blow from a tennis ball. The King received the news at the whist table, and, showing neither surprise nor emotion, he crossed the room to where the Countess of Yarmouth sat at another table, and, after saying simply, "_Il est mort_," retired to his apartments. "I lost my eldest son," he remarked subsequently, "but I am glad of it."
The writers of the day were fulsome in their praise of the deceased Prince. Robert Southy says, Frederick died "to the unspeakable affliction of his royal consort, and the unfeigned sorrow of all who knew him;" and he sums him up as "a tender and obliging husband, a fond parent, a kind master, liberal, candid and humane, a munificent patron of the arts, an unwearied friend to merit, well-disposed to a.s.sert the rights of mankind, in general, and warmly attached to the interests of Great Britain."[32] In fact, Sir Galahad and the Admirable Crichton in one! Southy was not alone in his outspoken admiration, for Mr. McCarthy reminds us of a volume issued by Oxford University, "_Epicedia Oxoniensia in obitum celsissimi et desideratissimi Frederici Principis Walliae_. Here all the learned languages, and not the learned languages alone, contributed the syllables of simulated despair. Many scholastic gentlemen mourned in Greek; James Stillingfleet found vent in Hebrew; Mr. Betts concealed his tears under the cloak of the Syriac speech; George Costard sorrowed in Arabic that might have amazed Abu l"Atahiyeh; Mr. Swinton"s learned sock stirred him to Phoenician and Etruscan; and Mr. Evans, full of national fire and the traditions of the bards, delivered himself, and at great length, too, in Welsh."[33] Amusing, too, was a sermon preached at Mayfair Chapel, in the course of which the preacher, lamenting the demise of the royal personage, declared that his Royal Highness "had no great parts, but he had great virtues; indeed, they degenerated into vices; he was very generous, but I hear his generosity has ruined a great many people; and then his condescension was such that he kept very bad company."
[32] Robert Southy: _Authentic Memoirs of George the Third_.
[33] Justin McCarthy: _History of the Four Georges_.
Very differently spoke those who knew the Prince. "He was indeed as false as his capacity would allow him to be, and was more capable in that walk than in any other, never having the least hesitation, from principle or fear of future detection, in telling any lie that served his future purpose. He had a much weaker understanding, and, if possible, a more obstinate temper than his father; that is, more tenacious of opinions he had once formed, though less capable of ever forming right ones. Had he had one grain of merit at the bottom of his heart, one should have had compa.s.sion for him in the situation to which his miserable poor head soon reduced him, a mother that despised him, sisters that betrayed him, a brother set up against him, and a set of servants that neglected him, and were neither of use nor capable of being of use to him, or desirous of being so."[34] So said Lord Hervey, and, though his known enmity to Frederick makes one reluctant to accept his estimate, yet it must be admitted that his remarks are borne out by others well qualified to judge. "A poor, weak, irresolute, false, lying, dishonest, contemptible wretch, that n.o.body loves, that n.o.body believes, that n.o.body will trust, and that will trust everybody by turns, and that everybody by turns will impose upon, betray, mislead, and plunder." Thus Sir Robert Walpole, who, during the Prince"s lifetime, thought that, if the King should die, the Queen and her unmarried children would be in a bad way. "I do not know any people in the world so much to be pitied," he said to Hervey, "as that gay young company with which you and I stand every day in the drawing-room at that door from which we this moment came, bred up in state, in affluence, caressed and courted, and to go at once from that into dependence upon a brother who loves them not, and whose extravagance and covetousness will make him grudge every guinea they spend, as it must come out of a purse not sufficient to defray the expenses of his own vices."
[34] Hervey: _Memoirs of the Court of George II_.
A later generation has not been more kind. "If," said Leigh Hunt, "George the First was a commonplace man of the quiet order, and George the Second of the bustling, Frederick was of an effeminate sort, pretending to taste and gallantry, and possessed of neither. He affected to patronise literature in order to court popularity, and because his father and grandfather had neglected it; but he took no real interest in the _literati_, and would meanly stop their pensions when he got out of humour. He pa.s.sed his time in intriguing against his father, and hastening the ruin of a feeble const.i.tution by sorry amours." "His best quality was generosity," Horace Walpole has recorded; "his worst insincerity and indifference to truth, which appeared so early that Earl Stanhope wrote to Lord Sunderland, "He has his father"s head, and his mother"s heart.""[35]
[35] Horace Walpole: _Memoirs of the Reign of George II_.
What is to be said in his favour? That through his intercession Flora Macdonald, imprisoned for harbouring the Chevalier, received her liberty: that when Richard Glover, the author of "Leonidas," fell upon evil days he sent him five hundred pounds; that he was a plausible speaker,[36] fond of music, the author of two songs, and had sufficient sense of humour to inst.i.tute an occasional practical joke. On the other hand, he was a gambler and a spendthrift without a notion of common honesty; he was unstable and untruthful, a feeble enemy and a lukewarm friend; and is, indeed, best disposed of in the well-known verse:
"Here lies Fred, Who was alive, and is dead.
Had it been his father, I had much rather.
Had it been his brother, Still better than another.
Had it been his sister, No one would have missed her.
Had it been the whole generation, Still better for the nation.
But since "tis only Fred, Who was alive, and is dead, There"s no more to be said."
[36] "As a friend to liberty in general, and to toleration in particular, I wish you may meet with all proper favour; but for myself I never give my vote in Parliament; and to influence my friends or direct my servants in theirs does not become my station. To leave them entirely to their own conscience and understanding is a rule I have hitherto prescribed to myself, and it is my purpose to adhere to it through the whole of my life." This was Frederick"s reply to the Quaker who asked him to use his influence in favour of the bill concerning his sect; and, as Huish remarks, "could anything be more agreeable to the spirit of the British const.i.tution?"
CHAPTER II
BOYHOOD OF GEORGE III
George William Frederick, afterwards George III, was born on June 4, 1738. His advent into the world was so little expected at that time that on the previous day his mother had walked in St. James"s Park, had scarcely returned from that exercise when she was taken ill, and between seven and eight o"clock the following morning gave birth to a seven-months" child. Frederick, therefore, could not be held responsible because again no preparation for an _accouchement_ had been made, nor could he be blamed because the King had only a few hours" notice of the event.
The baby was so weak that it was thought it would not live, and at eleven o"clock at night it was baptized by the Bishop of Oxford,[37] and though it survived, its health was so delicate that it was thought advisable, and indeed imperative, to abandon the strict court etiquette dictating that a royal infant must be reared by a lady of good family, and instead "the fine, healthy, fresh-coloured wife of a gardener" was chosen. The woman was proud of her charge, but inclined to independence, and when told that, in accordance with tradition, the baby could not sleep with her, "Not sleep with me!" she exclaimed. "Then you may nurse the boy yourselves!" As she remained firm on this point, tradition was wisely cast to the winds, with the fortunate result that the young Prince throve l.u.s.tily and soon acquired a sound and vigorous frame of body.[38]
[37] The baptism was repeated publicly on July 3, by the Bishop of Oxford (as Rector of St. James"s parish) at Norfolk House, when the infant Prince was given the names of George William Frederick. The sponsors, the King of Sweden, the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, and the Queen of Prussia, were represented respectively by Lord Baltimore, the Marquis of Carnarvon, and Lady Charlotte Edwin.
[38] Gait: _George III, His Court and His Family_.