By George! The Wrath of a Princess

I believe last week’s post about the newspapers during the Regency was a digression. Mr. Al takes up this week with another look at Princess Caroline and her relationship with George IV.

Things had not been going well for the Princess at all. She had been growing more and more concerned with the public aspects of her life as the Princess of Wales. I should say she had been growing more concerned with her husbands ability to thwart what she felt was her right to a public life.

Part of the problem was that there was very little in the way of law that guaranteed her certain liberties as Princess of Wales. There were traditions, to be sure, but the Prince only bowed to tradition when it suited his purpose. And the Princess was feeling decidedly ill-used by the Whig party. Why, “all that they did was for the gratification of the party, not for my gratification.” Imagine that!

What really brought her feelings in the matter to a head was all the public faldorah attending the visits of the Tsar, the King of Prussia and Prince Metternich. While she was no doubt gratified to hear of the stormy relations between the Tsar and her husband, it was no substitute for being able to attend State Balls as the Princess of Wales.

According to one historian; “ While everyone else was enjoying themselves, she was left at home frustrated, making wax models of her detested husband, sticking horns in their head and pins in their bodies, and gloomily watching them melt in front of the fire.” Oh My God!

When the Tsar saw her at the opera, a public appearance that that horrified her husband, he announced that he intended to visit her wither the Prince liked it or not. Caroline was thrilled. The next day she put on her best dress and waited to receive him. And waited. And waited. He never showed up.

It was the last straw. She hated her husband, hated her so called friends who only wanted to use her, and she hated England. She was convinced that the only way she would enjoy real freedom was to leave the country, maybe for good. Of course, Caroline, being Caroline, talked of her desires to anyone who would listen. When the Prince Regent got wind of it he was beside himself. Could it be true? Would she really leave the country?

It was time for a new plan of action.

Instead of giving her money only when forced to do so, and only as much as he absolutely had to give her, the Prince became generosity itself. Using Lord Castlereagh as the go-between, the Prince offered to increase her annuity to 50,000 pounds, up from the 22,000 she had been receiving. This sum would be made available to her immediately if, and only if, she made real plans to go abroad ASAP.

Lords Brougham and Whitbread were dead set against it. It looked too much like what it was, a bribe. Moreover, a bribe that was designed to appear like a payoff to the Princess to abandon her claims against the Prince Regent. Their Lordships drafted a letter in Caroline’s name to the Speaker of the House of Commons rejecting the Prince’s offer in the strongest possible terms. But before Whitbread could take the letter to Caroline for her signature, she went and did an unfortunate thing.

She contacted Castlereagh directly and accepted the offer. She went further than that. She told His Lordship that she did so; “in order to prove to Parliament that she was never adverse to any proposal coming from the Crown to replace her in the proper splendour adequate to her situation, and to throw no unnecessary obstacles in the way to obstruct the tranquility or impair the peace of mind of the Prince Regent.”

Lord Whitbread was “much chagrined and disappointed.” I’ll bet he was! He informed Her Highness that she had just “surrendered everything.” That they would use her statement, and her acceptance of the bribe, against her “whenever she wished to assert the rights of her station.”

Her Highness didn’t see it that way at all. Her Highness was not the material from which great lawyers are made. To prove that “she meant to relinquish nothing” she was going to attend a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s to which she had been told point blank not to attend. I wonder why the Prince Regent was holding a thanksgiving service so soon after his wife agreed to leave the country?

Caroline demanded a seat in the Cathedral “upon the same level with the seats of the rest of the Royal Family.” The Lord Chamberlain told her that he could not do so without the permission of the Prince Regent. And, surprise! His Royal Highness had “not been pleased to give his authority for this purpose.”

Well, duh! The Prince Regent could hardly be expected to enjoy a thanksgiving service celebrating his liberation from his wife if the “little woman” was in his field of vision, picking her nose and being disagreeable.

Lady Charlotte Lindsey told Brougham the the Princess seemed oblivious to the fact that she had just thrown away everything she stood to gain for a paltry 50,000 pounds a year. His Lordship couldn’t have agreed more. He wrote to Lady Lindsey that he felt “fully justified in giving her up” He went on “I suppose you have heard of Mother P. bitching the thing so completely in snapping eagerly at the cash, and concluding with the civil observation about unwillingness to “impair the Regents tranquility”!!! ect.”

He wrote to Thomas Creevey, “This was all done on the spot and in a moment, and communicated to Sam and me the next day…However, tho she deserves death, yet we must not abandon her, in case Prinny gets a victory after all.”

Their Lordships were about to discover how hard it could be to save Her Highness from herself.

-Mr. Al