By George! How to Engineer a Royal Reconciliation.

So, in last week’s installment of By George! George III came up with a solution to all George IV’s problems. I shudder to think.

The Prince must have known that his wife had the Kings ear, if not his sympathy. And Caroline gave His Majesty an earful regarding Lady Jersey. The King didn’t need to be convinced of Lady Jersey’s disruptive influence. The Queen had been relating stories to him gathered from a wide cross section of sources. For His Majesty, the solution was obvious. Lady Jersey had to go.

Near the end of June 1796, Princess Caroline got her hearts desire. Sort of. The Queen gave Caroline assurances, in writing, that Lady Jersey would be sacked. But, the Queen continued, with her ladyship out of the picture she expected the Princess to do everything in her power to make a go of her marriage. She and the Prince MUST be reconciled.

Caroline agreed to this and to that end wrote a letter to the Prince. She stated that she looked forward to the day that the two of them would once again be husband and wife under the same roof; that roof being Carlton House. She said that if His Highness would seek out her company she would do whatever it took to be pleasant and agreeable. She also begged the Princes’ forgiveness for past unpleasant behavior. It wouldn’t happen again.

This is the reply from the Prince: “Madam, I have had the honor of receiving your letter this day and propose having the pleasure of being at Carlton House sometime in the course of Monday.” He would be happy to see Carlton House again. That must have made Caroline’s toes tingle. At least it was a start; or so Princess Caroline thought.

The Prince arrived for dinner and was as cold and formal as he could be. To make Reconciliation Night one to remember, he left immediately after dinner to spend the night with Lady Jersey. Lady Jersey had been sacked, but telling the Prince to stay away from her only encouraged him to spend more time with her than ever before.

Her Ladyship, hoping to rub salt in the wound, wrote to Caroline saying that the only reason she had stayed on as long as she had, in a situation “rendered impossible for a person of her rank, or indeed for anyone possessing the honest pride and spirit of an Englishwoman was her duty and attachment to his Royal Highness.”

So there!

It seems clear that the King believed that sacking Lady Jersey would clear the decks for a real reconciliation. While Princess Caroline professed a desire to be reconciled, it would have been very surprising if her heart had been in it. Remember, upon first meeting the Prince, she found him fat, ugly and rude. It never really improved from there. The Prince found Caroline to be physically repugnant and stupid. Nothing that subsequently occurred led him to revise his opinion upward.

It would seem that the only one who thought the marriage would work was the king. And even with him it was more a case of “they have a duty to make it work” rather than a sincere belief that these people belonged together. In George the Third’s happy world, the marriage, any marriage, could be made to work if it’s principle players put aside personal differences and conformed to social standards. That’s what social standards were for! To give everyone a template by which they could form their lives.

It was so simple that the King never considered the possibility of another approach. Besides, he was King wasn’t he? Head of the Supreme Church? Why the hell should he consider another approach? Reconciliation was what the kingdom needed. Reconciliation is what His Majesty personally expected. By God, reconciliation was what he and England were going to get!

The Prince had other ideas. Lady Jersey was sacked, that meant she could no longer reside at Carlton House. But didn’t the poor lass need a roof over her head? Of course she did. Surely the King never intended that a lady of rank should be turned out like a scullery maid. Fortunately a solution was at hand. Jack Payne had a house, “had” being the operative word here. He lost it when he lost his job as the Prince’s private secretary.

And it just happened to be next door to Carlton House. Not even the Prince thought that the King would tolerate such an obvious move. He had to put a positive spin on it. Thank goodness Lady Jersey still had her elderly hubby. Once the Queen got wind of the move she demanded an explanation. The Prince was ready. The move, he wrote to Her Majesty, was done entirely for the benefit of the Earl of Jersey, who happened to be the Prince’s Master of the Horse. An impressive job title.

The Prince didn’t mention that he had yet to pay the Earl for all his services. If indeed he had rendered any. No point in bothering mom with all the trivial details. He told Her Majesty that the Earl “could not be answerable to bring the whole expenditure of the stables within the sum allotted by Parliament unless he were perpetually upon the spot, which he could not be had he to run eternally two or three times a day to and from Grosvenor Square.” You see mom, it’s Parliaments fault! Parliament forced me to move my mistress into the house next to mine.

Alas for the Prince, every tiny crumb of happiness that he happened to chance upon was snatched from his hands by the Bitch of Brunswick. And nothing about the Princess bothered him more than what she might be saying about him. Or, more accurately, what she might be saying to other men about him. Or, perhaps even more accurately, what the Princess might be saying about him to other men before, during or after shagging them.

– Mr. Al