The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick
It was in 1732 that the Earl of Aylesford, a Tory peer, declared that standing armies in time of peace were "against the very words of the Petition of Rights," and that "all the confusions and disorders which have been brought upon this kingdom for many years, have been all brought upon it by means of standing armies." In 1733 Earl Strafford affirmed that "a standing army" was "always inconsistent with the liberties of the people;" and urged that "where the people have any regard for their liberties, they ought never to keep up a greater number of regular forces than are absolutely necessary for the security of the Government." Sir John Barnard declared that the army ought not to be used on political questions. He said: "In a free country, if a tumult happens from a just cause of complaint, the people ought to be satisfied; their grievances ought to be redressed; they ought not surely to be immediately knocked on the head because they may happen to complain in an irregular way." Mr. Pulteney urged that a standing army is "a body of men distinct from the body of the people; they are governed by different laws; blind obedience and an entire submission to the orders of their commanding officer is their only principle. The nations around us are already enslaved by those very means; by means of their standing armies they have every one lost their liberties; it is indeed impossible that the liberties of the people can be preserved in a country where a numerous standing army is kept up."
In 1735 sixteen Scottish peers were elected to sit in the House of Lords, and in a petition to Parliament it was alleged, that the whole of this list of sixteen peers was elected by bribery and corruption. The petition positively asserted "that the list of sixteen peers for Scotland had been formed by persons high in trust under the crown, previous to the election itself, The peers were solicited to vote for this list without the liberty of making any alteration, and endeavors were used to engage peers to vote for this list by promise of pensions and offices, civil and military, to themselves and their relations, and by actual promise and offers of sums of money. Several had received money, and releases of debts owing to the crown were granted to those who voted for this list. To render this transaction more infamous, a battalion of troops occupied the Abbey-Court of Edinburgh, and continued there during the whole time of the election, while there was a considerable body lying within a mile of the city ready to advance on the signal." This petition, notwithstanding the gravity of its allegations, was quietly suppressed.
Lady Sundon, Woman of the Bedchamber and Mistress of the Robes to Queen Caroline, received from Lord Pom-fret jewelry of £1,400 value, for obtaining him the appointment of Master of the Horse.
With a Civil List of £800,000 a year, George II. was continually in debt, but an obedient Ministry and a corrupt Parliament never hesitated to discharge his Majesty's obligations out of the pockets of the unrepresented people. Lord Carteret, in 1733, speaking of a Bill before the House for granting the King half a million out of the Sinking Fund, said: "This Fund, my Lords, has been clandestinely defrauded of several small sums at different times, which indeed together amount to a pretty large sum; but by this Bill it is to be openly and avowedly plundered of £500,000 at once."
On the 27th of April, 1736, Prince Frederick was married to the Princess Augusta, of Saxe Gotha, whom King George II. afterwards described as "cette diablesse Madame la Princesse." In August of the same year, a sharp open quarrel took place between the Prince of Wales and his parents, which, after some resumptions of pretended friendliness, ended, on September 10, 1737, in the former being ordered by the King to quit St. James's palace, where he was residing. On the 22d of the preceding February, Pulteney had moved for an allowance of £100,000 a year to Prince Frederick. George II. refused to consent, on the ground that the responsibility to provide for the Prince of Wales rested with himself, and that "it would be highly indecorous to interfere between father and son." On the Prince of Wales taking up his residence at Norfolk House, "the King issued an order that no persons who paid their court to the Prince and Princess should be admitted to his presence." An official intimation of this was given to foreign ambassadors.
On the 20th of November, 1737, Queen Caroline died, never having spoken to her son since the quarrel. "She was," says Walpole, "implacable in hatred even to her dying moments. She absolutely refused to pardon, or even to see, her son." The death-bed scene is thus spoken of by Thackeray: "There never was such a ghastly farce;" and as sketched by Lord Hervey, it is a monstrous mixture of religion, disgusting comedy, and brutishness. "We are shocked in the very chamber of death by the intrusion of egotism, vanity, buffoonery, and inhumanity. The King is at one moment dissolved in a mawkish tenderness, at another sunk into brutal apathy. He is at one moment all tears for the loss of one who united the softness and amiability of one sex to the courage and firmness of the other; at another all fury because the object of his regrets cannot swallow, or cannot change her posture, or cannot animate the glassy fixedness of her eyes; at one moment he begins an elaborate panegyric on her virtues, then breaks off into an enumeration of his own, by which he implies that her heart has been enthralled, and her intelligence awed. He then breaks off into a stupid story about a storm, for which his daughter laughs at him, and then while he is weeping over his consort's death-bed, she advises him to marry again; and we are – what the Queen was not – startled by the strange reply, 'Non, faurai des maitresses,' with the faintly moaned out rejoinder, 'Cela, n'empeche pas.'" So does the Edinburgh reviewer, following Lord Hervey, paint the dying scene of the Queen of our second George.
After the death of the Queen, the influence of the King's mistresses became supreme, and Sir R. Walpole, who, in losing Queen Caroline had lost his greatest hold over George, paid court to Lady Walmoden, in order to maintain his weakened influence. In the private letters of the Pelham family, who succeeded to power soon after Walpole's fall, we find frequent mention of the Countess of Yarmouth as a power to be gained, a person to stand well with. "I read," says Thackeray, "that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious King's favorite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for £5,000. (He betted her £5,000 that he would not be made a bishop, and he lost, and paid her.) Was he the only prelate of his time led up by such hands for consecration? As I peep into George H.'s St. James's, I see crowds of cassocks rustling up the back-stairs of the ladies of the Court; stealthy clergy slipping purses into their laps; that godless old Bang yawning under his canopy in his Chapel Royal, as the chaplain before him is discoursing."
On the 23d of May, 1738, George William Frederick, son of Frederick, and afterwards George III., was born.
In 1739 Lady Walmoden, who had up to this year remained in Hanover, was brought to England, and formally installed at the English Court. In this year we bound ourselves by treaty to pay 250,000 dollars per annum for three years to the Danish Government. "The secret motive of this treaty," says Mahon, "as of too many others, was not English, but Hanoverian; and regarded the possession of a petty castle and lordship called Steinhorst. This castle had been bought from Holstein by George H. as Elector of Hanover, but the Danes claiming the sovereignty, a skirmish ensued… The well-timed treaty of subsidy calmed their resentment, and obtained the cession of their claim." Many urged, as in truth it was, that Steinhorst was bought with British money, and Bolingbroke expressed his fear "that we shall throw the small remainder of our wealth where we have thrown so much already, into the German Gulf, which cries Give! Give! and is never satisfied."
On the 19th of May, 1739, in accordance with the wish of the King, war was declared with Spain, nominally on the question of the right of search, but when peace was declared at Aix-la-Chapelle, this subject was never mentioned. According to Dr. Colquhoun, this war cost the country, £46,418,680.
George II. was, despite the provisions of the Act of Settlement, continually in Hanover. From 1729 to 1731, again in 1735 and 1736, and eight times between 1740 and 1755. In 1745 he wished to go, but was not allowed.
On the 2d of October, 1741 (the Pelham family having managed to acquire power by dint, as Lord Macaulay puts it, of more than suspected treason to their leader and colleague), the Duke of Newcastle, then Prime Minister, wrote his brother, Henry Pelham, as follows: "I must freely own to you, that I think the King's unjustifiable partiality for Hanover, to which he makes all other views and considerations subservient, has manifested itself so much that no man can continue in the active part of the administration with honor." The Duke goes on to describe the King's policy as "both dishonorable and fatal;" and Henry Pelham, on the 8th of October, writes him back that "a partiality to Hanover is general, is what all men of business have found great obstructions from, ever since this family have been upon the throne." Yet these are amongst the most prominent of the public defenders of the House of Brunswick, and a family which reaped great place and profit from the connection.
Of the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Macaulay says: "No man was so unmercifully satirized. But in truth he was himself a satire ready made. All that the art of the satirist does for other men, nature had done for him. Whatever was absurd about him stood out with grotesque prominence from the rest of the character. He was a living, moving, talking caricature. His gait was a shuffling trot, his utterance a rapid stutter; he was always in a hurry; he was never in time; he abounded in fulsome caresses and in hysterical tears. His oratory resembled that of Justice Shallow. It was nonsense, effervescent with animal spirits and impertinence. Of his ignorance many anecdotes remain, some well authenticated, some probably invented at coffee-houses, but all exquisitely characteristic. 'Oh, yes, yes, to be sure! Annapolis must be defended; troops must be sent to Annapolis. Pray, where is Annapolis?' 'Cape Breton an island! Wonderful! show it me in the map. So it is, sure enough. My dear sir, you always bring us good news. I must go and tell the King that Cape Breton is an island.' And this man was, during near thirty years, Secretary of State, and during near ten years First Lord of the Treasury! His large fortune, his strong hereditary connection, his great Parliamentary interest, will not alone explain this extraordinary fact. His success is a signal instance of what may be effected by a man who devotes his whole heart and soul without reserve to one object. He was eaten up by ambition. His love of influence and authority resembled the avarice of the old usurer in the 'Fortunes of Nigel.' It was so intense a passion that it supplied the place of talents, that it inspired even fatuity with cunning. 'Have no money dealings with my father,' says Martha to Lord Glenvarloch, 'for, dotard as he is, he will make an ass of you.' It was as dangerous to have any political connection with Newcastle as to buy and sell with old Trapbois. He was greedy after power with a greediness all his own. He was jealous of all colleagues, and even of his own brother. Under the disguise of levity, he was false beyond all example of political falsehood. All the able men of his time ridiculed him as a dunce, a driveller, a child who never knew his own mind for an hour together; and he overreached them all round."
In 1742, under the opposition of Pulteney, the Tories called upon Paxton, the Solicitor to the Treasury, and Scrope, the Secretary to the Treasury, to account for the specific sum of £1,147,211, which it was proved they had received from the minister. No account was ever furnished. George Vaughan, a confidant of Sir Robert Walpole, was examined before the Commons as to a practice charged upon that minister, of obliging the possessor of a place or office to pay a certain sum out of the profits of it to some person or persons recommended by the minister. Vaughan, who does not appear to have ventured any direct denial, managed to avoid giving a categorical reply, and to get excused from answering on the ground that he might criminate himself. Agitation was commenced for the revival of Triennial Parliaments, for the renewal of the clause of the Act of Settlement, by which pensioners and placemen were excluded from the House of Commons, and for the abolition of standing armies in time of peace. The Whigs, however, successfully crushed out the whole of this agitation. Strong language was heard in the House of Commons, where Sir James Dashwood said that "it was no wonder that the people were then unwilling to support the Government, when a weak, narrow-minded prince occupied the throne."
A very amusing squib appeared in 1742, when Sir Robert Walpole's power was giving way, partly under the bold attacks of the Tories, led by Cotton and Shippen; partly before the malcontent Whigs under the guidance of Carteret and Pulteney; partly before the rising power of the young England party led by William Pitt; and somewhat from the jealousy, if not treachery, of his colleague, the Duke of Newcastle. The squib pictures the King's embarrassment and anger at being forced to dismiss Walpole, and to Carteret, whom he has charged to form a ministry: —
"Quoth the King: 'My good lord, perhaps you've been told That I used to abuse you a little of old, But now bring whom you will, and eke turn away, Let but me and my money at Walmoden stay."Lord Carteret, explaining to the King whom he shall keep of the old ministry, includes the Duke of Newcastle: —
"Though Newcastle's false, as he's silly I know, By betraying old Robin to me long ago, As well as all those who employed him before, Yet I leave him in place, but I leave him no power. "For granting his heart is as black as his hat, With no more truth in this than there's sense beneath that, Yet, as he's a coward, he'll shake when I frown; You called him a rascal, I'll use him like one. "For your foreign affairs, howe'er they turn out, At least I'll take care you shall make a great rout; Then cock your great hat, strut, bounce, and look bluff, For, though kick'd and cuff'd here, you shall there kick and cuff "That Walpole did nothing they all used to say, So I'll do enough, but I'll make the dogs pay; Great-fleets I'll provide, and great armies engage, Whate'er debts we make, or whate'er wars we wage! "With cordials like these the monarch's new guest Reviv'd his sunk spirits, and gladdened his breast; Till in rapture he cried, 'My dear Lord, you shall do Whatever you will – give me troops to review.'"In 1743, King George II. actually tried to engage this country, by a private agreement, to pay £300,000 a year to the Queen of Hungary, "as long as war should continue, or the necessity of her affairs should require." #The King, being in Hanover, sent over the treaty to England, with a warrant directing the Lords Justices to "ratify and confirm it," which, however, they refused to do. On hearing that the Lord Chancellor refused to sanction the arrangement, King George H. threatened, through Earl Granvillie, to affix the Great Seal with his own hand. Ultimately the £300,000 per annum was agreed to be paid so long as the war lasted, but this sum was in more than one instance exceeded.
Although George II. had induced the country to vote such large sums to Maria Therese, the Empress-Queen, he nevertheless abandoned her in a most cowardly manner when he thought his Hanoverian dominions in danger, and actually treated with France without the knowledge or consent of his ministry. A rhyming squib, in which the King is termed the "Balancing Captain," from which we present the following extracts, will serve to show the feeling widely manifested in England at that time: —
"I'll tell you a story as strange as 'tis new, Which all who're concerned will allow to be true, Of a Balancing Captain, well known hereabouts, Returned home (God save him) a mere king of clouts. "This Captain he takes in a gold ballasted ship, Each summer to terra damnosa a trip, For which he begs, borrows, scrapes all he can get, And runs his poor owners most vilely in debt. "The last time he set out for this blessed place, He met them, and told them a most piteous case, Of a sister of his, who, though bred up at court, Was ready to perish for want of support. "This Hung'ry sister he then did pretend, Would be to his owners a notable friend, If they would at that critical juncture supply her; They did – but, alas! all the fat's in the fire!"The ballad then suggests that the King, having got all the money possible, made a peace with the enemies of the Queen of Hungary, described in the ballad as the sister: —
"He then turns his sister adrift, and declares Her most mortal foes were her father's right heirs: 'G – d z – ds!' cries the world, 'such a step was ne'er taken!' 'Oh, oh!' says Moll Bluff, 'I have saved my own bacon. "'Let France damn the Germans, and undamn the Dutch, And Spain on old England pish ever so much; Let Russia bang Sweden, or Sweden bang that, I care not, by Robert, one kick of my hat! "'Or should my chous'd owners begin to look sour, I'll trust to mate Bob to exert his old power, Regit animos dictis, or numis with ease So, spite of your growling, I'll act as I please!'"The British Nation, described as the owners, are cautioned to look into the accounts of their Captain, who is bringing them to insolvency: —
"This secret, however, must out on the day When he meets his poor owners to ask for his pay; And I fear, when they come to adjust the account, A zero for balance will prove their amount."The final result of all these subsidy votes was to increase our national debt, up to the signing of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, to £76,000,000; while the seven years' war, which came later, brought the debt to £133,000,000, not including in this the capitalized value of the terminable annuities.
On November 22d, 1743, a caricature was published, which had a wide sale, and which represented the King as a fat Hanoverian white horse riding to death a nearly starved British lion.
In 1744, £200,000 was voted, which King George and Lord Carteret, who was called by William Pitt, his "Hanoverian troop minister," had agreed to give the King of Sardinia. £40,000 was also voted for a payment made by the King to the Duke of Arenberg. This payment was denounced by Mr. Lyttelton as a dangerous misapplication of public money.
The votes for foreign subsidies alone, in 1744, were £691,426, while the Hanoverian soldiers cost us £393,773. The King actually tried in addition, in the month of August, to get a further subsidy for his friend, the Elector of Saxony, and another for the King of Poland, and this when Englishmen and Irishmen were lacking bread. Nor was even a pretence made in some instances of earning the money. £150,000 was paid this year to keep Prince Charles in Alsace, and the moment Austria got the money, Prince Charles was withdrawn, and Henry Pelham, writing to the Duke of Newcastle, says, "The same will be the case with every sum of money we advance. The allies will take it, and then act as suits their convenience and security." In the four years from 1744 to 1747, both included, we paid £4,342,683 for foreign troops and subsidies, not including the Dutch and Hessians, whom we hired to put down the rebellion of 1745. In the case of the whole of this war, in which we subsidized all our allies except the Dutch, it is clear that the direct and sole blame rests upon the King, who cared nothing for English interests in the matter. When firmly remonstrated with by Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, his reply was what the Duke of Newcastle describes as "almost sullen silence."
For the rebellion of 1745 – which came so near being successful, and which would have thoroughly succeeded had the Pretender's son possessed any sort of ability as a leader – there is little room to spare here. The attempt to suppress it in its early stages is thus described in a Jacobite ballad: —
"Horse, foot, and dragoons, from lost Flanders they call, With Hessians and Danes, and the devil and all; And hunters and rangers led by Oglethorpe; And the Church, at the bum of the Bishop of York. And pray, who so fit to lead forth this parade, As the babe of Tangier, my old grandmother Wade? Whose cunning's so quick, but whose motion's so slow, That the rebels marched on, while he stuck in the snow."The hideously disgusting cruelties and horrible excesses committed by the infamous Duke of Cumberland, and the Hessians and Hanoverians under his command, in suppressing the rebellion after the battle of Culloden, are, alas! too well known. Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Session, and a warm supporter of the Brunswicks, remonstrating with the Duke as to the latter's disregard of the laws of the country, his Royal Highness of Cumberland replied with an oath: "The laws of my country, my lord; I'll make a brigade give laws." Scotland has many reasons for loving the House of Brunswick. Lord Waldegrave, who strove hard to whitewash the Duke of Cumberland, says that "Frederick Prince of Wales gave too much credit to the most malignant and groundless accusations, by showing favor to every man who aspersed his brother's character."
In 1747, £456,733 was voted by Parliament for the payment of the King's debts.
In 1748, considerable difficulty arose in consequence of the King's intrigues to obtain, at the expense of England, the Bishopric of Osnaburg as a princely establishment for his favorite son, the Duke of Cumberland, that pious prince, much esteemed in Scotland as "the butcher." The most open hostility subsisted between the Duke of Cumberland and Prince Frederick, and pamphleteering attacks on the former, for his brutality and excesses, were supposed to be encouraged by the Leicester House party.
Amongst the curious scandals of 1749, it is stated that the King – being present at a masked ball, at which Elizabeth Chudleigh, afterwards Duchess of Kingston, figured as "La Belle Sauvage" in a close-fitting dress of flesh-colored silk, requested permission to place his hand on Miss Chudleigh's breast. The latter replied that she would put the King's hand on a still softer place, and immediately raised it to his own royal forehead.
On the 20th March, 1751, Frederick, Prince of Wales, died. The King, who received the news while playing cards with his mistress, Lady Yarmouth, and who had not spoken to his son for years, merely said, "Freddy is dead." On this subject Thackeray preserves for us the following epitaph: —
"Here lies Fred, Who was alive, and is dead. Had it been his father, I had much rather. Had it been his brother, Still better than another. Had it been his sister, No one would have missed her. Had it been the whole generation, Still better for the nation. But since 'tis only Fred, Who was alive, and is dead, There's no more to be said."In 1755 there was the second war, estimated to have cost £111,271,996. In this George II. pursued exactly the opposite course of policy to that taken by him in the previous one. The war during the years following 1739 was for the humiliation of the King of Prussia; the policy in the last war was to prevent his humiliation. Mr. Baxter estimates the debt (exclusive of annuities) at £133,000,000; Dr. Colquhoun, adding the value of the annuities, makes it £146,682,843 at the conclusion of this war.
Towards the close of the reign of George II., who died on October 25th, 1760, his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, by an exhibition of great strategy, combined with much discretionary valor, succeeded in making peace on terms which ensured the repose of himself and his Hanoverian forces during the remainder of the war. At home his Royal Highness was much attacked, some venturing to describe his personal conduct as cowardly, and his generalship as contemptible. It is a sufficient refutation of such a calumny to say that the Duke of Cumberland was as brave a soldier and as able a general as our present Commander-in-Chief, his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge.
