By George! Taking Care of Caroline.

So Prince George lost his suit against Princess Caroline, who returned most of the way to the King’s good graces. Then to add injury to insult, Fox dies. Last week’s By George! Was pretty eventful. If you missed it, click here.

The government that replaced the “Ministry of all the talents” was familiar to Caroline; The Duke of Portland became Prime Minister. George Canning, a man long suspected of being Caroline’s lover, became Foreign Secretary. Spencer Perceval became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lord Eldon became Lord Chancellor, and Secretary of War went to Lord Castlereagh. One of their first acts was to make official what had already unofficially taken place. That there was no longer any reason for Princess Caroline to excluded from royal functions.

On April 21st 1807, a formal request was made to provide the Princess “some apartments” in one of the royal palaces “more convenient to court.” The King agreed and found rooms for her at Kensington Palace, with the understanding that rooms at St James would be made available as a vacancy appeared. Now, most of us, if we had passed through such an ordeal, would be thankful for the opportunity to prove ourselves worthy. Caroline was genuinely grateful to be back in Their Majesties good graces. But she still didn’t see anything wrong with her behavior.

I suspect that Caroline was simply incapable of understanding her responsibilities. She never evidenced the slightest grasp of the fact that she, as a Princess of Wales, effectively had no private life. Everything she did, in public and behind closed doors, was fair game. She refused to accept that and behaved, till her dying day, as though no one had a right to question her behavior. To be fair, Charles the First believed the same thing; but look what happened to him.

She continued to “dress very ill, shewing too much of her naked person.” Said one Lady. She also continued to flirt outrageously with young men. She also began spending money. Now that she had been received back into the court, the Prince was pressured to increase her allowance to 12,000 pounds a year. With the loss of his political allies, the Prince had no choice but to agree. Parliament also voted Caroline 5,000 pounds on top of that. She also received 34,000 pounds to refurbish her house and…49,000 pounds to settle her debts.

The Prince and Caroline may have been totally unsuited for one another, but in some ways they were like two peas in a pod. The government decided to forestall any future expenditure on Caroline by pointing out to the Prince that he, as her beloved husband, should be paying ALL her bills. This suggestion was ill-received and he refused to do so. Spencer Perceval, who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer had His Highness by the short and curlies, further pointed out that His Highness was being VERY generously compensated by the government already.

Should Caroline’s bills go unpaid, the public would hold him, not Caroline or the government, responsible. Did His Highness wish to become more unpopular than he already was? The Prince agreed to pay all of Caroline’s bills, even though he couldn’t afford to pay his own. As if The Prince didn’t already have enough problems in the wife department, Caroline’s father, the Duke of Brunswick, was killed while fighting the French at the battle of Auerstadt in 1806.

Caroline could now loudly proclaim, “My daddy was a war hero!” Her husband, on the other hand, couldn’t even be trusted to stick with his regiment when it was camped outside Brighton. When he learned that he would never be made general nor be allowed to serve overseas, he hoofed it to London to sulk in the austere confines of Carlton House. A move that was duly noted by the press. 1807 wasn’t a total wash however, in that year the Prince found himself, once again, in love.

– Mr. Al