Lewis Melville

“ I hate the company that can instruct me;
I wish to imitate my King, so nice,
Great prince, who ne'er was known to take advice!
Who keeps no company (delightful plan!)
That dares be wiser than himself, good man!" [104]
Whatever forebodings may have been entertained by those behind the scenes, George III was at his succession very popular, and whenever he showed himself in public was heartily greeted by his loyal subjects. ”

“ George III's courage was undeniable, and no threat could make him connive at any action likely to lessen the royal prerogative. "My spirits, I thank heaven, want no rousing," he wrote to Lord Chatham in May, 1767. "My love to my country, as well as what I owe to my own character and to my family, prompt me not to yield to faction. Though none of my ministers stand by me, I cannot truckle." [267] Lord North, too, was well acquainted with the royal firmness and intrepidity: "The King," he said, "would live on bread and water to preserve the constitution of his country. ”

“ If George III married Hannah Lightfoot, then, as there was then no Royal Marriage Act, Hannah Lightfoot was Queen of England. There is, however, no evidence to establish even a justifiable suspicion of a marriage between the Prince of Wales and Hannah Lightfoot. It is incredible that the Great Commoner should have been a witness, and it is not to be believed that in disguise he sought for the girl. Still, Pitt may not have been a witness and neither with or without disguise may he have sought for Hannah, and yet the story may not be without some foundation. ”

“ In the year 1759, on the late Princess of Wales's birthday, November 30, I ought to have been in my nursery, and I shall ever think it was unfair to bring me into the world while a child. Au reste, I am delighted to hear the King is so well, for I am excessively partial to him. I always consider him as an old friend that has been in the wrong; but does one love one's friend less for being in the wrong even towards oneself? ”

“ Historians have found something to praise in George I, and the bravery of George II on the field of battle has prejudiced many in favour of that monarch. George III has been extolled for his domestic virtues, and his successor held up to admiration for his courtly manners, while William IV found favour in the eyes of many for his homely air. Of all the Hanoverian princes in the direct line of succession to the English throne, alone Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, lacks a solitary admirer among modern writers. ”

“ One other quotation from a letter from Lady Sarah to the same correspondent may perhaps be allowed. "I am one who will keep the King's marriage-day with unfeigned joy and gratitude to Heaven that I am not in her Majesty's place! It was the happiest day for me, in as much [as] I like to attend my dear sick husband better than a King. I like my sons better than I like the royal sons, thinking them better animals, and more likely to give me comfort in my old age; and I like better to be a subject, than subject to the terrors of royalty in these days of trouble. ”

“ I am ready to hope for everything from their new-born zeal, and from the future steadiness of their allegiance. But hitherto they have no claim on your favour. To honour them with a determined predilection and confidence, in exclusion of your English subjects who placed your family, and, in spite of treachery and rebellion have supported it, upon the throne, is a mistake too gross even for the unsuspecting generosity of youth. ”

“ In the Lords the Duke of Richmond had moved that the regency should consist of the Queen, the Princess Dowager and all the descendants of the late King usually in England, and Lord Halifax accepted the Duke's words with the single omission of the Princess Dowager, to which amendment the House agreed. "The astonishment of the world is not to be described," Walpole wrote to Lord Hertford, "Lord Bute's friends are thunderstruck; the Duke of Bedford almost danced about the House for joy." ”

“ I am most truly sensible of the dear King's great strictness, at my arrival in England, to prevent my making many acquaintances; for he was always used to say that, in this country, it was difficult to know how to draw a line on account of the politics of the country and that there never could be kept up a society without party, which was always dangerous for any woman to take part in, but particularly so for the royal family ”

“ CHAPTER III THE PRINCE COMES OF AGE
"The boy is good for nothing but to read the Bible to his mother," George II said one day of his grandson; and he sought for measures that should emancipate the young man and tend to enlarge his knowledge of the world. His first attempt in this direction, made in 1755 when he was in Hanover, fluttered the dovecots of Leicester House, for the rumour flew that the King was about to propose a marriage between the Prince of Wales and a princess of the House of Brunswick. ”

“ Old Samuel Johnson thought the pleasure manifested at the accession of George III, "of whom we are so much inclined to hope great things that most of them begin already to believe them," was due in great part to the fact that "we were so weary of our old King." He was, moreover, not very enthusiastic at the prospect. "The young man is hitherto blameless, but it would be unreasonable to expect much from the immaturity of juvenile years and the ignorance of princely education. ”

“ Nothing but an intractable temper in your friend Pitt can prevent a most admirable and lasting system from being put together, and this crisis will show whether pride or patriotism be predominant in his character; for you may be assured he has it in his power to come into service of his country, upon any plan of politics he may choose to dictate, with great and honourable terms to himself and to every friend he [Pg 286] has in the world, and with such a stretch of power as will be equal to everything but absolute despotism over the King and kingdom. ”

“ Stolid, unimaginative, and slow of thought, that Prince of Wales, who was afterwards George III, is one of the last persons in the world to be suspected of a love intrigue. Yet, by some strange irony, he has been generally accepted as the hero of an affaire-de-cœur in his youthful days, and this is not the less remarkable because, so far as is known, belief has been induced only by persistent rumour. No direct evidence, personal or documentary, has ever been brought forward in support of the story ”

“ The son of a rich merchant, Wilkes was educated in England and at Leyden, and on his return to England at the age of two-and-twenty, had been persuaded by his father to espouse a wealthy woman ten years his senior. Not unnaturally the marriage was unhappy, and, indeed, Wilkes never even professed to regard it except as a convenience, but notwithstanding this circumstance his behaviour to his wife leaves the deepest stain on his character. ”

“ Bute's private secretary, [Pg 48] who, when his master had, ostensibly, at least, retired from the direction of affairs, was the go between the King and the ex-minister.
"Lord Bute was my schoolfellow," says Walpole. "He was a man of taste and science, and I do believe his intentions were good. He wished to blend and unite all parties. The Tories were willing to come in for a share of power, after having been so long excluded—but the Whigs were not willing to grant that share. Power is an intoxicating draught; the more a man has, the more he desires." ”

“ She was highly sensible how necessary it was that the Prince should keep company with men: she well knew that women could not inform him, but if it was in her power absolutely, to whom could she entrust him? ”

“ In short, one hears of nothing but dissatisfaction, which, in the city, rises almost to treason." Lord Holland, too, noted the prevalent feeling. "A young, civil, virtuous, good-natured King might naturally be expected to have such a degree of popularity as should for years defend the most exceptionable Favourite," he wrote in September, 1762. ”

“ In the evening, if there was no company she would sing to her own accompaniment on the spinet, and play cards with her ladies, while the King amused himself at backgammon, a game to which he was devoted. Nothing could be more genteel and more dull. "The recluse life led here at Richmond—which is carried to such an excess of privacy and economy, that the Queen's friseur waits on them at dinner, and four pounds only of beef are allowed for their soup—disgusts all sorts of persons," Walpole wrote to Lord Hertford ”

“ In the paper it was stated very clearly that the King's Speech was always regarded, not as the personal address of the sovereign, but as the utterance of ministers. "Every friend of his country," said "The North Briton," "must lament [Pg 237] that a prince of so many great and amiable qualities, whom England truly reveres, can be brought to give the sanction of his sacred name to the most odious measures and to the most unjustifiable declarations from a throne ever renowned for truth, honour and unsullied virtue." ”

“ Fox and Sheridan were the intimates of the later years of his minority, and his association with them gave him the pleasure of angering his father: it was his protest against George III for refusing him the income to which he considered himself, as Prince of Wales, entitled. He had, however, no interest in politics, as such, either before or after he ascended the throne; and, indeed, as King, the only measure that interested him was the Bill for the emancipation of the Catholics, which he opposed because resistance to it had made his father and his brother Frederick popular. ”

“ 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 assert the rights of [Pg 28] mankind, in general, and warmly attached to the interests of Great Britain." ”

“ The ministers in this struggle had found a powerful ally in Hogarth, who, though he had been friendly with Wilkes and Churchill, had been high in Bute's favour, even before the accession of George III, and now saw an opportunity to repay his patron. The quarrel between the painter and the agitator had begun with Hogarth's political cartoon, "The Times," in which Wilkes was ignominiously portrayed; and Wilkes, who let no man attack him with impunity, had replied in "The North Briton" with a violent onslaught upon the caricaturist. ”

“ The City have a mind to be out of humour; a paper has been fixed in the Royal Exchange with these words—'No Government! No Scotch Minister! No Lord George [Pg 145] Sackville' [149] —two hints totally unfounded, and the other scarce true. No petticoat ever governed less; it is left at Leicester House—for the King himself, he seems all good nature, and wishing to satisfy everybody; all his speeches are obliging. I saw him on the throne, where he's all graceful and genteel; sits with dignity, and reads his answers to addresses well. ”

“ In Bute's day gross immorality was no bar to employment in the highest offices of state, nor was overt dishonesty a disqualification. We have seen how Lord Halifax was persuaded to accept the Admiralty because of the opportunities to acquire wealth, and it is notorious that the great and able Henry Fox accumulated a vast fortune during his tenure of office of Paymaster-General. Dashwood, who, according to Walpole, was a vulgar fool, who "with the familiarity and phrase of a fishwife, introduced the humours of Wapping behind the veil of the Treasury," was a thoroughly vicious scoundrel ”

“ 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." ”

“ Shortly after his marriage the King sought a residence where he and his consort should live more free from the ceremony and restraint of court life than was possible at St. James's. Kensington Palace he thought too near the metropolis, and he disliked the "stately, unvaried flatness" of Hampton Court. He did, indeed, invite "Capability" Brown to reorganise the artificial grounds of the latter palace, but that despotic gardener declined, "out of respect for himself and his profession," to do anything more than advise that the trees should be allowed to grow in their natural way. ”