By George! She’s Come Home To Roost.

George IV made himself quite ill over how to rid himself of his wife, Queen Caroline. If he couldn’t do it before his father died, while she was merely a princess, how can he do it once she was queen?

In June, 1820, Queen Caroline decided to return to England. It was not a sudden decision, but once she made up her mind to do so, nothing could stop her. Her demand for a royal yacht to pick her up in Calais was ignored. Brougham was there to beg her to reconsider. “I earnestly implore you to refrain from rushing into certain trouble and possible danger.” He told her. To no positive effect.

With no yacht available, she crossed the Channel on a packet boat. A large crowd of “tradesmen and fishermen carrying banners and shouting suitable slogans,” escorted her to her hotel. The next day she left for London via Canterbury, gathering crowds the whole way. She entered London over Westminster Bridge. According to one witness, Thomas Denman, “Her progress was slow through the countless populace, her traveling equipage mean and miserable, her attendants appeared ill-calculated to cocilitate good-will in this country. Hardly a well-dressed person was to be seen in the crowd. Two or three men on horseback assumed a rather more respectable appearance, but one of them was my bankrupt cousin.”

The ill-dressed crowds soon turned into that most dreaded of beasts, The Drunken London Mob. Shouting “Long Live Queen Caroline” windows in the homes of Cabinet Members were smashed. The Duke of Wellington was prevented from entering his own home by a mob of boozy louts. The windows of his carriage were smashed with paving stones while he was in it. It was downhill from there.

Wrote Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt; “The fermentation increases much. It has got amongst the soldiery, who skirmish in their barracks.” Her Majesty had been back in England for about a week at this point. Lord Grey was convinced the entire country was on the verge of a “Jacobian Revolution more bloody than that of France.” The Queen finally settled in at Brandenburg House, in Hammersmith. The King, at the urging of his Cabinet, retired to the Royal Lodge at Windsor Park. Not surprisingly, he was condemned as being “a coward, afraid of showing himself.” It was from here that he implored the House of Lords to get on the stick and bring his wife to trial.

A Secret Committee examined documents. Shock! Horror! The documents contained allegations “of the most licentious conduct on the part of the Queen.” Something would have to be done, but…seeing as the fellow the Queen was having it off with was Italian (yuck!) and all the alleged encounters took place neither in England nor in any of it’s possessions, Her Majesty could not be charged with High Treason.

At this point, nearly everyone in government, Tory or Whig, wanted this matter dealt with quickly and quietly. Things were spinning out of control and it was by no means a sure thing that the Army wouldn’t join the mob. Both Houses urged compromise on the part of both Their Majesties. Neither would budge an inch.

At length, MP William Wilberforce, a man who’s integrity was beyond question and enjoyed access to both the King and Queen, tried to broker a deal wherein The Queen would accept a sizable annuity in exchange for leaving the country with all of her royal titles intact and The King would drop his demand for a public inquiry into Her Majesties conduct. It seemed the best course to follow for all involved. Because she could not be charged with High Treason, the King’s favorite charge, His Majesty stood to lose more that he could possibly gain by insisting on a trial.

And surely Her Majesty must be aware that when the full extent of her Continental Naughtiness became public knowledge, the mob that so loved her today might very well become the mob that would tear her to pieces the next. According to one historian; “She had rejected it, to the evident satisfaction of the mob who abused Wilberforce as “Dr. Cantwell” for ever having put it forward.” History would prove much kinder to William Wilberforce than either of Their Majesties, to put it mildly.

One thing was becoming abundantly clear, people of all classes were sympathizing with the Queen. His Majesty had no one but himself to blame. Since the age of sixteen he had been behaving like a pampered twit. Having it off with God alone knew how many women, married and unmarried, servants and Ladies, actresses and whores. Spending hundreds of thousands of pounds, millions in today’s money, on his grandiose houses, losing tens of thousands more at the track, more thousands on lavish dinner parties and booze by the hogshead. And all that loot, every shilling, taxpayer money.

Ominously, more and more soldiers were showing signs of taking the Queens side. A battalion of the 3rd Guards refused to rack their muskets and put up their ammunition. They were quickly ordered out of the city. “On their way through Brentford they were heard drunkenly calling out “God Save the Queen.” In Brighton, a town the King considered his own, a theater manager would not allow the singing of “God Save the King” for fear of sparking a riot. “Brighton ladies were apt to say; “Well, if my husband had used me as hers has done, I should have thought myself entitled to act as she has done.”

And that pretty well summed up the mood of the entire country, city and village. The King didn’t care. Actually, that’s not true, he did care. It pained him mightily to be the subject of such abuse. But getting rid of his wife had become an obsession. He was willing to risk revolution to be shut of her. And revolution was what the more sober members of government thought was staring them in the face.