Chapter IV, of Cassells Illustrated History of England, Volume 7 page 5

Mr. Twiss, in an apologetic strain, says: " The trial, when at length resolved on, was a step taken, not, as was alleged, for the final destruction of a long persecuted victim, but for the defence of the country against claims which, while the charges remained unanswered, could not decently be granted, and the ministers who, at an earlier period, had rightly declined to take any steps against her for the mere satisfaction of the thing, no less rightly refused to connive at the triumph which she was seeking by violence and agitation to achieve, at the expense not only of the king, her consort, but of the crown, the constitution, and the state. Heavy blame, undoubtedly, there was upon the side opposed to her; but it lay not with the administration, who reluctantly and unavoidably instituted the trial, but with him whose original maltreatment of her had induced, and did assuredly go far to extenuate, whatever indiscretions and errors she afterwards committed, "

If the ministers were influenced by considerations of morality and decency, they should, with much more reason, have declined to have anything to do with the coronation of the king, who was incomparably the greater and more scandalous sinner of the two. They could have resigned, as Mr. Canning did, like an honourable man. It was much more incumbent upon lord Eldon than upon him to act in this manner. For when he was the queen's confidential adviser, he was a party to the preparation and intended publication of "the book," which consisted of documents, vindicating the character of the princess of Wales, and seriously aspersing the character of her royal consort. It was printed in a private press, in the house of Mr. Perceval, on the west side of Lincoln's Inn Fields. Lady Hester Stanhope, in a conversation with her physician, in the year 1837, referring to this subject, said "I prevented the explosion the first time, and I will tell you how. One day the duke of Cumberland called on me, and, in his accustomed manner, began, ' Well, lady Hester, it will be all out to-morrow. We have printed it, and tomorrow it will be all out. I knew what he meant, and said to him, ' Have you got the chancellor's leave? I, for my part, don't like the business at all.' ' Why don't you like it? ' asked the duke. ' Because,' answered I, 11 have too much respect for royalty to desire to see it made a subject for Grub Street songs.' I did not say this so much on the prince of Wales's account as for the sake of the princess. I dreaded the other disclosures to which a business like this might lead. The duke turned away, and I saw that the same idea struck him; for, after a pause, he resumed his position, and answered, ' You are quite right, lady Hester; by ____, you are quite right; but what am I to do? We are gone too far. What am I to do? ' 'Why, I think,' rejoined I, 'the best thing you can do is to ask the chancellor.' " Lady Hester afterwards states that Air. Perceval gave ten thousand pounds out of the secret service money for a single copy of the book that had been stolen from his table. Some copies, however, got into circulation surreptitiously, and the Phœnix, a Sunday newspaper, announced the publication of the book in its columns. The attorney-general filed an information in the Court of Chancery, praying that the publication might be prevented, and that, by a decree, the proprietor of the journal might be required to give up the book, The injunction was granted, and a singular fact connected with this strange business was, that the injunction was granted by lord Eldon, one of the authors of the book, which he intended for general circulation, with the view of blackening the character of the prince of Wales, and damaging the whig leaders by whom he was surrounded. Although the book was suppressed, the princess was received at court, and continued to be treated with great kindness and respect by lord Eldon and his colleagues, because the old king was her friend. But when her husband, whose conduct they had reprobated, became king, and was very gracious to lord Eldon, the latter gentleman gallantly cut the connection with his former royal protege, and zealously assisted her immaculate consort to degrade and ruin her, because, forsooth, her character was not sufficiently pure to be at the head of 'the society which his character so admirably adorned!

On the 6th of November the second reading of the bill was carried by a majority of twenty-eight, the numbers being one hundred and twenty-three to. ninety-five, which the government considered equivalent to a finding of guilty. It appears from these numbers that a large proportion of their lordships abstained from voting. The bishops had an insuperable objection to the divorce clause; but in committee it was sustained by a majority of one hundred and twenty-nine to sixty-two, the opposition having nearly all voted for the clause, with a view of defeating the bill in its last stage. Consequently, for the third reading, on the 10th of November, the majority was only nine, the numbers being one hundred and eight to ninety-nine. Upon this announcement lord Liverpool rose and said, that upon so slender a majority he could not think of pressing the measure further, and so he begged leave to withdraw the bill. The truth is, he had no option. It had not the slightest chance of passing through the lower house, where ignominious defeat awaited the government.

The intelligence of this result was received by the public with transports of joy. A person who was present gives a very graphic and touching description of the scene when the finale was announced. He says: - "No occurrence where I was only a spectator ever affected me so much. Ï shall never forget what was my emotion when it was announced to me that the bill of pains and penalties was to be abandoned. I was walking towards the west end of the long corridor of the house of lords, wrapped in reverie, when one of the door-keepers touched me on the shoulder and told me the news. I turned instantly to go back into the house, when I met the queen coming out alone from her waiting-room, preceded by an usher. She had been there unknown to me. I stopped involuntarily; I could not proceed, for she had a ' dazed ' look, more tragical than consternation; she passed me. The usher pushed open the folding doors of the great staircase; she began to descend, and I followed instinctively two or three steps behind her. She was evidently all shuddering, and she took hold of the banisters, pausing for a moment. Oh, that sudden clutch with which she caught the railing! Never say again to me that any actor can feel like a principal. Four or five persons came in from below before she reached the bottom of the stairs, I think alderman Wood was one of them; but I was in indescribable confusion - the great globe itself seemed shaking under me. I rushed past, and out into the hastily assembling crowd. I knew not where I was, but in a moment a shouting in the balcony above, on which a number of gentlemen from the interior of the house were gathering, roused me. The multitude then began to cheer. Every one instantly, between Charing Cross and Whitehall, turned and came rushing down, filling Old and New Palace Yards, as if a deluge was unsluiced. The generous exultation and hurry of the people were beyond all description; it was a conflagration of hearts."

London was illuminated for three successive nights; Edinburgh, Dublin, Manchester, Liverpool, and all the great towns followed the example. " For several days," says Alison, "the populace in all the cities of the empire seemed to be delirious with joy. Nothing had been seen like it before since the battle of Waterloo; nothing approaching to it after since the reform bill was passed." Meetings were immediately called in every direction to present addresses both to the king and queen: to the former, to congratulate him on the escape of his illustrious consort, and to call upon him to dismiss his present ministers; and to the latter, to felicitate her on the restoration of those dignities from which she had been so long excluded. Not only public meetings of citizens and civic bodies, but trades of all kinds assembled and adopted addresses expressing their exultation at her triumph, and tendering their homage.

The members of the government were scarcely less rejoiced at getting rid of the matter than the nation was at their defeat. The most thinking men of their party became greatly alarmed at the state of public feeling, and were in constant dread of a revolution. The most violent language was used by the democratic leaders, and the press abounded with libels against the government, whose chief members were hooted and pelted as they passed through the street. This alarming state of things had arrived at its height towards the end of September. The duke of York, who was then at Brighton, was violent against the queen. He felt confident that the troops must be called out, and he thought he could trust them. On them alone he depended for the preservation of the throne. The king, at this time, rarely showed himself to any of his subjects. His conduct was an excitement to popular hatred. Mr. W. H. Freeman tie, who was well informed as to all that was going forward in the highest quarters, describes the state of things in letters to the marquis of Buckingham. " You have no idea," he says, " of the state of the town. The funds fell to-day. As to the king forming a government, after the resignation of all his present servants, with the avowed object of persecuting the queen, it would be impossible; it would be making her the popular object, and throwing the country in a flame. Be assured that the king on this subject is no less than mad!" "In the months of October and November," observes the duke of Buckingham, " it became evident that the frenzy outside the houses of parliament was exerting its influence within its walls. The aspect of affairs looked blacker every hour." "Matters here are in a critical state," writes lord Sidrnouth to Mr. Bathurst, on the 27th of October. " Fear and faction are actively and not unsuccessfully at work; and it is possible that Ave may be in a minority, and that the fate of the government may be decided." Plumer Ward, in his diary, has this entry, under date of November 2nd: - "Called upon (Wellesley) Pole. He was at breakfast, and we had a long chat. lie thought everything very bad - ministers, opposition, king, queen, country - and, what was more, no prospect of getting right. All ties were loosened. Insolence and insubordination out of doors; weakness and wickedness within. ' The whigs,' he said, ' were already half radicals, and would be entirely so, if we did not give way.' I said his brother, the duke of Wellington, felt this too, but would not give way nevertheless. Meantime, the king was as merry as a grig. At first he had been annoyed, but was now enjoying himself at Brighton."

The duke of Wellington was delighted with the abandonment of the bill. "Well," said he, "we have done exceedingly well, and have avoided all sorts of mischief, I think, with safety and without dishonour. The votes put the question of guilt or innocence out of doubt. The withdrawing is founded on mere expediency, and has nothing to do with the verdict. Had we given up before the third reading, it would have been different."

The king, however, was not at all pleased with the issue; he was angry with his ministers for not complying with his orders, and abused both lords Liverpool and Castlereagh. Mr. W. H. Freemantle dined with him at the princess Augusta's, Frogmore. Writing to lord Buckingham, he says: - "Previous to dinner, I thought his majesty looked dreadfully dejected and thoughtful, but when he had dined (professing to have no appetite), and ate as much as would serve me for three days of fish, but no meat, together with a bottle of strong punch, he was in much better spirits, and vastly agreeable. There were only six people, four of which were ladies. Ile did not sit a quarter of an hour after they left us, and, excepting talking a little on the indecent behaviour of the mountain in the house of commons, and telling an anecdote or two of the women who went up with addresses to the queen, not a word was said of politics."

Lord Eldon was well pleased with the part he played in this prosecution, but he felt greatly mortified at its abortive result, complaining bitterly of a " deadly want of energy," not only in the public but in the administration. If he had his will, he would have gone through with the business, and carried the queen's divorce. We must not, however, ascribe this to an abstract love of justice or hatred of vice, or to zeal for the national honour. It is to be attributed chiefly to his desire to gratify" his royal master, and give effect to his despotic will. " The king may be false," he said, " but he has told me twenty times, and within these forty-eight hours once, that he will take no ministry that will introduce her into the liturgy. I have no reason to believe that the king has sent for lord Spencer."* Lord Eldon flattered himself that the precedent which he established with respect to evidence in such a proceeding, by confining it strictly to the rules observed in courts of justice, and putting questions to the judges as occasion required, might be said to have rendered the trial "a useful proceeding." His biographer differs from him in this. "For surely," says Mr. Twiss, " except as to this one technical and comparatively unimportant result, the whole investigation deserves to be accounted - as the people of England have generally accounted it - among the most unfortunate passages of our domestic history. It was a procedure not only productive of great discredit to the two personages most immediately concerned, but prejudicial to the interests of monarchy itself; injurious to private decorum, which was startled by the grossness of the facts disclosed in the evidence; and degrading to public justice, whose general principles were borne down by the unpopularity of this particular inquisition."!

The duke of Buckingham justly remarks that the task of the government was, from the first, an up-hill one, "which nothing but their devotion to their master's service made them continue; but when a thousand unmistakable signs foretold a rebellion if they persevered, they had no alternative but to put an end to the thing with all convenient dispatch." The truth is, in this case, victory would have been ruin to the victors. By beating a timely retreat, they saved the monarchy. The tory chiefs, however, consoled themselves that they had so damaged the queen's character that even the heads of the great whig families would not wish to have her at the head of the female aristocracy, or to have their wives and daughters at her court. They said: "The stout lady in the magnificent hat and feathers was very well as a source of ministerial embarrassment; but, much as some of them pretended to decry the evidence against her that was elicited during her trial, they took especial care not to allow her anything resembling an intimacy with their wives or daughters." She was, however, visited after the trial by her son-in-law, prince Leopold, and by the duke of Sussex; and for some time the carriages of the highest ladies in the land were at her door. Grateful to Providence for the deliverance she had experienced from the hands of her persecutors, she went in state to St. Paul's to return public thanks to God. But even in this she was subjected to humiliation. An application had been made to have a sermon preached on the occasion, and archdeacon Bathurst solicited the honour of delivering an appropriate discourse, but the authorities of the cathedral refused his request, and the ceremony consisted merely of the reading of the morning service. The bishop of Llandaff went so far as to stigmatise the service as " a mockery of a religious solemnity, at which every serious Christian must shudder."