By George! What Goes Around Comes Around.

During the course of the tempestuous relationship between Prince George and Princess Caroline, Lady Jersey has been a bone of contention. Let’s see how she comes out.

Caroline had a small problem with the Prince’s document. By and large, it seemed to point to Princess Caroline as the source of all the rankles and disquiet. Needless to say, this was not her view. As if she wanted that bitch Lady Jersey in charge of her bedchamber! No. She could not let this stand. She informed the Prince, through go-betweens, that since she could not count on her husband to protect her good name, she had to turn to the only man in England who would. Uncle George. To that end, she had written to the king, informing him of all that the Prince had done to destroy their marriage.

Upon hearing the news,The Prince sent a note to mom begging for an audience with her first thing in the morning. Once in her presence he laid out his version of events and what he planned to do about it. The Queen didn’t think the Prince had a leg to stand on. If she knew anything, she knew her husband. The King would never agree to a separation. The Prince felt he had to try.

He wrote a very long letter to the King, explaining himself and putting forward his plan to end the marriage. On May 31st, the King sent him this reply:

“You seem to look on your disunion with the Princess as merely of a private nature, and totally put out of sight that as Heir Apparent of the Crown your marriage is a public act, wherein the Kingdom is concerned; that therefore a separation cannot be brought forward by the mere interference of relations. The Public would have to be informed of the whole business, and the Public were “certainly not prejudiced” (the Kings quotation marks) in the Princes favor. Parliament would have to be informed, and Parliament would think itself obliged to secure out of his income the jointure settled on her in case of her husbands death.”

He went on to say that he was “certainly by no means inclined to think the Princess has been happy in the choice of conduct she had adopted; but if the Prince had attempted to guide her she might have avoided those errors that her uncommon want of experience (!!!!) and perhaps some defects of temper had given rise to.”
This was so NOT what the Prince wanted to hear.

Of course, word of the Princes marital woes made all the London papers. And, of course, the Prince was the villain. While this made the Prince understandably angry, it was nothing new to him. As far as he was concerned, it was just more of the same that he had been getting the whole of his adult life. Lady Jersey, on the other hand, wasn’t used to it at all. Things were being printed about her that were causing her a great deal of grief.

Worse, much worse, the Better Sorts were siding with Caroline. It’s hard to imagine that a woman as smart as Lady Jersey had never stopped to consider the public relations aspect of hitching her star to a guy as unpopular as the Prince. Perhaps she believed his unpopularity was strictly a middle and lower class phenomenon. If that was the case, she was dead wrong.

According to Lady Farington; “Lady St Asaph told Lady Beaumont that she was at a very large assembly at the Duchess of Gorden’s to which Lady Jersey had been invited-when Lady Jersey came the ladies made a line for her (got out of her way) and let her pass unspoken to.” Lady Jersey was realizing, too late, that she had painted herself into a very tight corner indeed.