The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick

CHAPTER VI. THE REIGN OF WILLIAM IV

William Henry, Duke of Clarence, Admiral of the Fleet, and third son of George III, born August 21st, 1765, succeeded his brother George IV. as King of England, on the 26th of June, 1830. The new King was then 65 years of age, and had been married, July 11th, 1818, to Adelaide Amelia Louisa Teresa Caroline, Princess of Saxe-Meiningen. Mrs. Dorothy Jordan, with whom William had lived, and who had borne him ten children, had fled to France to avoid her creditors, and had there died, neglected by the world, deserted by William, and in the greatest poverty. This Mrs. Jordan was sold to William by one Richard Ford, her former lover, who, amongst other rewards of virtue, was created a Knight, and made Police Magistrate at Bow Street. Mrs. Jordan's children bore the name of "Fitzclarence," and great dissatisfaction was expressed against the King, who, too mean to maintain them out of his large income, contrived to find them all posts at the public cost. At the date of William IV.'s accession, the imperial taxation was about £47,000,000; to-day it has increased at least £25,000,000.

The annual allowances to the junior branches of the Royal Family in 1830, formerly included in the Civil List, and now paid separately, were as follows: —

The Duke of Cumberland £21,000. He had no increase on his marriage; the House of Commons rejected a motion to that effect; but an allowance of £6,000 a year for his son, Prince George, had been issued to him since he became a resident in this country. This is the Duke of Cumberland, who so loved his brother, William IV., that he intrigued with the Orangemen to force William's abdication, and to get made King in his stead.

The Duke of Sussex received £21,000.

The Duke of Cambridge, father of the present Duke, had £27,000. He obtained an increase on his marriage of £6,000 a year. This Prince was charged with the government of the family territory, the kingdom of Hanover, and consequently resided but little in England.

Princess Augusta, £13,000.

The Princess Elizabeth of Hesse Homburg, £10,000.

Princess Sophia, £13,000.

The Duchess of Kent, including the allowance granted in 1831, for her daughter, the Princess Victoria, heir-presumptive to the Throne, £22,000.

The Duke of Gloucester, including £13,000 which he received as the husband of the Princess Mary*, £27,000.

The Princess Sophia of Gloucester, his sister, £7,000.

Queen Adelaide had £100,000 a year, and the residence at Bushey granted to her for life.

Mrs. Fitzherbert, as the widow of George IV., was in receipt of £6,000 a year, and the ten Fitzclarences also enjoyed places and pensions.

The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel were the King's Ministers; and, although there was some personal hostility between William and the Iron Duke, they were at first his willing coadjutors in opposing either reduction of expenditure, or any kind of political or social reform. The quarrel between William as Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Wellington had arisen when William was Lord High Admiral. William had given improper orders to a military officer, named Cockburn, which the latter had refused to obey. The Duke of Wellington refused to sacrifice Cockburn, and ultimately the Duke of Clarence resigned his office as Lord High Admiral, for which, says the Rev. Mr. Molesworth, "he was ill-qualified, and in which he was doing great mischief."

In November, 1830, Earl Grey, Lord Brougham, Lord Melbourne, and Lord Althorp came into office as leaders of the Whig party. With slight exception, in 1806, the Whigs had not been before in office during the present century, and very little indeed since 1762. The Whigs encouraged the Radical Reformers so far as to insure their own accession to power; but it is evident that the Whig Cabinet only considered how little they could grant, and yet retain office. In finance, as well as reform, they were disloyal to the mass of the people who pushed them into power.

The Duke of Wellington and his Ministry resigned office in November, 1830, because the House of Commons wished to appoint a Select Committee to examine the Civil List. King William IV., according to the words of a letter written by him to Earl Grey, on December 1st, 1830, felt considerable "alarm and uneasiness" because Joseph Hume and other Radical members wished to put some check on the growing and already extravagant royal expenditure. He objects "most strenuously," and says, referring in this especially to the Duchy of Lancaster: "Earl Grey cannot be surprised that the King should view with jealousy any idea of Parliamentary interference with the only remaining pittance of an independent possession, which has been enjoyed by his ancestors, during many centuries, as their private and independent estate, and has now, as such, lawfully devolved upon him in right of succession. That he should feel that any successful attempt to deprive the Sovereign of this independent possession will be to lower and degrade him into the state and condition of absolute and entire dependence, as a pensioner of the House of Commons; to place him in the condition of an individual violating or surrendering a trust which had been held sacred by his ancestors, and which he is bound to transmit to his successors. The King cannot indeed conceive upon what plea such a national invasion of the private rights, and such a seizure of the private estates, of the Sovereign could be justified."

William IV. reminds Earl Grey, that the Chancellor of the Duchy is sworn to do all things "for the weal and profit of the King's Highness. And his Majesty has fair reason to expect that a pledge so solemnly taken will be fulfilled, and that he will be supported in his assertion of these private rights, not only of himself, but of his heirs and successors, as they have devolved upon him, separate from all other of his possessions jure coronæ, and consequently, as his separate personal and private estate, vested in his Majesty, by descent from Henry VII. in his body natural, and not in his body politic as King."

Earl Grey naturally promised to prevent Radical financial reformers from becoming too annoying to Royalty. The Whigs love to talk of economy out of office, and to avoid it when in place.

Daniel O'Connell appears to have much troubled the King. Directly after the Dublin meeting in December, 1830, Sir Henry Taylor says: "The King observed, that he would have been better pleased if this assembly of people had not dispersed quietly at his bidding, as the control which he has successfully exercised upon various occasions in this way, appears to his Majesty the most striking proof of the influence he has acquired over a portion of the lower classes in Ireland."

It is pretended in the Cabinet Register for 1831, and was stated by Lord Althorp in Parliament, "that his Majesty most nobly and patriotically declined to add to the burdens of his people by accepting an outfit for his royal consort, though £54,000 had been granted by Parliament to the Queen of George III., as an outfit to purchase jewels, etc." This is so little true, that it appears from the correspondence between the King and Earl Grey, that a grant for the Queen's outfit had been agreed to by the outgoing Tories, and would have been proposed by the new Whig Government, had not one of the Cabinet (probably Lord Brougham) decidedly objected, on the ground "that proposing a grant for this purpose would have a bad effect on the House of Commons, and on public opinion;" and by a letter dated February 4th, 1831, from the King, it is clear that he only abandoned the claim when he found he could not get it. There is not a word about "the burdens of the people," although many at that time were in a starving condition. On the contrary, the secretary of the King says on the 6th of February, that "the disinclination shown in the House of Commons" to grant the outfit had "produced a very painful impression on his Majesty."

The King, afraid of the spread of Reform opinions, says that he "trusts that the Lord-Lieutenants and Deputy-Lieutenants of counties will be cautioned to scrutinize the ballots for the militia as far as possible, so as to endeavor to exclude from its ranks men of dangerous and designing character, whose influence might prove very pernicious upon newly-established corps, and before they shall have acquired habits of discipline and subordination." And to show his desire for Reform, he urges the Ministers to check the public gatherings, saying, "I am ignorant to what extent it may be in contemplation to increase the military means, either by calling out the militia partially, or by any addition to the regular force; but I am convinced that the latter would be not only the most efficient, but the cheapest; and it would have the advantage of being applicable to all purposes."

The Reformer King – for this pretence has been made – in another letter says: "His Majesty is satisfied that he may rely upon Earl Grey's strenuous support in his determination to resist all attempts which may be made to sap the established rights of the Crown, and to destroy those institutions under which this country has so long prospered, while others have been suffering so severely from the effects of revolutionary projects, and from the admission of what are called Radical remedies… He is induced thus pointedly to notice the proposal of introducing Election by Ballot, in order to declare that nothing should ever induce him to yield to it, or to sanction a practice which would, in his opinion, be a protection to concealment, would abolish the influence of fear and shame, and would be inconsistent with the manly spirit and the free avowal of opinion which distinguish the people of England. His Majesty need scarcely add that his opposition to the introduction of another, yet more objectionable, proposal, the adoption of Universal Suffrage, one of the wild projects which have sprung from revolutionary speculation, would have been still more decided."

How William IV. could ever have been suspected of being favorable to Reform is difficult to comprehend. As Duke of Clarence he had spoken in favor of the Slave Trade, and had declared that "its abolition should meet with his most serious and most unqualified opposition." When the Reform Bill actually became law, although William IV. did not dare to veto it, he refused to give the royal assent in person.

In this chapter there is not space enough to go through the history of the Reform agitation of 1832. In Moles-worth's "History of the Reform Bill," and Roebuck's account of the "Whig Ministry," the reader will find the story fully told. It is not enough to say here that the King not only hindered Reform until Revolution was imminent, and the flames of burning castles and mansions were rising in different parts of England, but it may be stated that he condescended to deceive his Ministers; that he allowed his children to canvass peers against the bill, and would have resorted to force to crush the Birmingham Political Union, if he could have thrown the responsibility of this tyranny upon the Cabinet. In the King's eyes the people were "the rabble." We find him "impatient" for the return of the Tories to power, and bitterly discontented when the orderly character of popular demonstrations rendered the employment of the military impossible.

The Earl of Munster, one of the King's ten children by Mrs. Jordan, and who was Governor of Windsor Castle, Colonel in the Army, Aide-de-Camp to the King, Lieutenant of the Tower, Tory and State prisoner, being charged with having "unhandsomely intrigued against Earl Grey's Government," made the curious defence "that for six months before and for twenty-four hours after the resignation" of the Grey Government, "it was from certain circumstances out of his power to act in the matter imputed to him."

It is worthy of notice, as against Mr. Frederic Harrison's opinion, that no English monarch could now really interfere with the course of government in Great Britain, that in April, 1832, William IV. gave written directions to Earl Grey, "that no instructions should be sent" to foreign ambassadors until they had "obtained his previous concurrence." And it is clear, from a letter of the King's private secretary, that William gave these orders because he was afraid there was a "disposition… to unite with France in support of the introduction of liberal opinions and measures agreeably to the spirit of the times." Although the newspapers praised William, he does not seem to have been very grateful in private. In 1832, he declared to his confidential secretary that he had "long ceased to consider the press (the newspaper family) in any other light than as the vehicle of all that is false and infamous."

In January, 1833, in a speech, not written for him, but made extemporaneously after dinner, William IV. said, to compliment the American Ambassador, "that it had always been a matter of serious regret to him that he had not been born a free, independent American." We regret that the whole family have not long since naturalized themselves as American citizens. But such a sentiment from the son of George III., from one who in his youth had used the most extravagant phraseology in denunciation of the American rebels!!

The family insanity, shown in the case of George II. by his persistence in wearing his Dettingen old clothes; more notorious and less possible of concealment in that of George III.; well known to all but the people as to George IV., who actually tried to persuade the Duke of Wellington that he (George) had led a regiment at Waterloo, was also marked in William IV. In April, 1832, the King's own secretary admits "distressing symptoms" and "nervous excitement," but says that the attack "is now subsiding." Raikes, a Tory, and also a king-worshipper, in his, "Diary," under date May the 27th, 1834, says, after speaking of the King's "excitement" and "rather extraordinary" conduct, that "at the levee a considerable sensation was created the other day by his insisting that an unfortunate wooden-legged lieutenant should kneel down." On June 11th, visiting the Royal Academy, the President showed the King, amongst others, the portrait of Admiral Napier, and was astonished to hear his Majesty at once cry out: "Captain Napier may be damned, sir, and you may be damned, sir; and if the Queen was not here, sir, I would kick you downstairs, sir." The King's brother, his Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, died November 20th, 1834. Raikes says of him: "He was not a man of talent, as may be inferred from his nickname of Silly Billy." This is the Royal Family, the head of which, according to Mr. Disraeli, was "physically and mentally incapable of performing the regal functions," and which yet, according to the brilliant statesman, so fitly represents the intelligence and honor of Great Britain!

In 1836, Sir William Knighton died. He had been made private secretary to the late King, and had made his fortune by means of some papers which Colonel Macmahon, confidant of George IV., had when dying, and which came into Knighton's hands as medical attendant of the dying man. Sir W. Knighton was made a "Grand Cross," not for his bravery in war, or intelligence in the State, but for his adroit manipulation of secrets relating to Lady Jersey, Mrs. Fitzherbert, and the Marchioness of Conyngham. Sir William Knighton and the latter lady were supposed to have made free with £300,000; but great larcenies win honor, and Sir W. Knighton died respected.

In August, 1836, William – hearing that the Duke of Bedford had helped O'Connell with money – ordered the Duke's bust, then in the Gallery at Windsor, to be taken down, and thrown in the lime-kilns.

On June 20th, 1837, William IV. died. Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, by William's death, became King of Hanover, and was on the same day publicly hissed in the Green Park. Naturally, in this loving family there was considerable disagreement for some time previous to the King's death between his Majesty and the Duchess of Kent.

The Edinburgh Review, soon after the King's death, while admitting that "his understanding may not have been of as high an order as his good nature," says: "We have learned to forget the faults of the Duke of Clarence in the merits of William IV." Where were these merits shown? Was it in "brooding" – (to use the expression of his own private secretary) – over questions of whether he could, during the commencement of his reign, personally appropriate sums of money outside the Civil List votes? Was it in desiring that Colonel Napier might be "struck off the half-pay list," for having made a speech at Devizes in favor of Parliamentary Reform? Was it when he tried to persuade Earl Grey to make Parliament pay Rundell and Bridge's bill for plate – and this when the masses were in a starving condition? Was it when he declared that he was by "no means dissatisfied" that a proposed meeting was likely to be so "violent, and in other respects so objectionable," as it would afford the excuse for suppressing by force the orderly meetings which, says his secretary, "the King orders me to say he cannot too often describe as being, in his opinion, far more mischievous and dangerous" than those of "a more avowed and violent character"?

CHAPTER VII. THE PRESENT REIGN

Her present Majesty, Alexandrina Victoria, was born May 24th, 1819, and ascended the throne June 20th, 1837, as representing her father, the Duke of Kent, fourth son of George HI. On February 10th, 1840, it being the general etiquette for the Brunswick family to intermarry amongst themselves, she was married to her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg, who received an allowance from the nation of £30,000, to compensate him for becoming the husband of his wife. The Queen, more sensible than others of the arduous position of a Prince Consort, wished her loyal husband to have £100,000 a year. The Government reduced this to £50,000; Joseph Hume and the Radicals reduced it still further to £30,000. For this annual payment the Prince undertook to submit to naturalization, to be the first subject in England, to reside rent free in the Royal Palaces repaired at the cost of the nation. He also, on his own account, and for his own profit, attended to various building speculations at the West End of London, and died very rich. He is known as Prince Albert the Good. His goodness is marked – not by parks given to the people, as in the case of Sir Francis Crossley; not by improved dwellings for the people, as in the case of George Peabody; not by a large and costly market place, freely given, as in the case of Miss Burdett Coutts – Peeress without her patent of Baroness; – but by statues erected in his honor in many cities and boroughs by a loyal people. As an employer of labor, the Prince's reputation for generosity is marked solely by these statues. As a Prince, he felt in his lifetime how much and how truly he was loved by his people; and at a dinner given to the Guards, Prince Albert, in a speech probably not revised beforehand, told the household troops how he relied on them to protect the throne against any assaults. The memory of the Prince is dear to the people; he has left us nine children to keep out of the taxpayers' pockets, his own large private accumulations of wealth being inapplicable to their maintenance.

When her Majesty ascended the throne, poor rates averaged 5s. 4£d. per head per annum; to-day they exceed 7s. During the last fifteen years alone there has been an increase of more than 250,000 paupers in England and Wales, and one person out of every twenty-two is in receipt of workhouse relief. Everybody, however, agrees that the country is prosperous and happy. In Scotland there has been an increase of 9,048 paupers in the last ten years. Two out of every fifty-three Scotchmen are at this moment paupers. In Ireland in the last ten years the out-door paupers have increased 19,504. As, however, we have, during the reign of her present most gracious Majesty, driven away the bulk of the Irish population, there are considerably fewer paupers in Ireland than there are in Scotland. The average Imperial taxation during the first ten years of her Majesty's reign was under £50,000,000 a year. The average taxation at the present day is over £72,000,000 a year. Pauperism and local and Imperial taxation are all on the increase, and, despite agricultural laborers' outcries and workmen's strikes, it is agreed that her Majesty's reign has brought us many blessings.

On March 20th, 1842, the Earl of Munster, eldest son of William IV., and who had been made Constable of Windsor Castle by her Majesty, committed suicide. Although the eldest son of the late King, his position as a natural child excluded him from heaven, according to the Bible, and from all right to the Throne, according to our law.

Her Majesty's eldest daughter, the Princess Royal, Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa, is married to the Prince Imperial, Frederick William, of Germany, and, as it would have been manifestly unreasonable to expect either the Queen or the Prince Consort, out of their large private fortunes, to provide a dowry for their daughter, the English nation pays £8,000 a year to the Princess.