which they had paid for a carriage and house

rent.

That this is a true statement there can be little doubt; otherwise that part of the public press which had been so long labouring to destroy her character would doubtless have satisfactorily contradicted it.

Although, as above intimated, it may not be necessary to repeat the odious particulars of the Queen's sufferings, it will give consistency and interest to these supplementary sheets to take a rapid review of some of the leading facts of her eventful life, before we proceed to detail circumstances not recorded in other volumes. This sketch cannot be better drawn than as we find it done in one of the newspapers of the day, soon after the Queen's death.

After having denominated Caroline Queen of England the most unfortunate of the whole female sex, the writer here alluded to proceeds thus:

"Born to a high estate-a Princess by birth, and a Queen by marriage-the daughter and sister of an hero-the mother of our throne's heiress and the cousin of our country's Sovereign; she lived an outcast, an exile, and a proscript, and died in a strange land, having survived all that were dear to her, and abandoned by all who were bound to her. Her whole married life was one complete and continued series of misery: at its very outset she was banished from the nuptial bed, and that without any cause assigned by the person who was most

interested in alleging a cause, except the want of inclination.' This is most material, because, whatever might have been her errors, whether real or imaginary in after life, they must be all dated from this period. At that time she was confessedly innocent: no human being dared to allege the contrary. She was very young-her character scarcely formed, and her mind, almost like wax, capable of any impression which might have been stamped on it. Had she been at that time tended by a mother-in-law's care, and moulded by a husband's virtuous love, it is impossible to foresee what might not have been the happy consequences to England. Judging by the spirit invariably shewn by the late Princess Charlotte, we might have had heroes to extend our empire and irradiate our name, and the glory of the Henrys and the Edwards might have revived upon our records. But she was banished-irrevocably banished-and these bright anticipations fled along with her. Thus then was she placed, in the very threshold of existence, in the most trying situation in which it was possible for a human being to be placed;she was a widow, with her husband living-she was a solitary female, with the proscription of a court upon her and she was a stranger, denounced and deserted in the land to which she had been seduced from her own happy home, under the most specious and beguiling promises. The honour of a people and the oath of a Prince were pledged for her protection: she believed, and was abandoned.

Her choice, under such exclusion, was that which would naturally occur to a spirit deeply woundedit was retirement from the world. But even solitude had no privacy for the proscribed; and Blackheath proved to her that friends were but informers, servants traitors, visitors spies, and seclusion itself proof presumptive of a guilty inclination. Trial succeeded trial, and the disproved calumny, and the convicted perjury, were but the precursors of renewed suspicion and revived investigation. When every charge of criminality was discountenanced and rejected, her national manner was tortured into proof of indiscretion. Hideous guilt at last dwindled into constructive levity, and her conduct was censured upon the very evidence which had been disbelieved in the charge against her life! Time, which changeth all things, produced no change towards her: her friends, her advocates, came into office as if only to prove that her continued proscription was the tenure by which they held it; and she, still an exile, still an outcast, saw with amazement the man, to whom she had confided her cause and fortunes, become the confidential adviser of her accusers! Thus did continued persecution and incessant treachery, in some degree, force her into banishment; but her departure from England was marked by a proof of at least amongst modern Princes, singular disinterestedness. An outcast now from her husband's bed, and by compulsion driven from her adopted country, she was a wanderer, with the world before

her; but wherever she wandered, persecution followed her it journeyed with her by land-it met her upon the seas-it entered the sacred privacy of her home-it stooped to every meanness and assumed every shape, now picking her locks in the person of an ambassador, and now peeping through her keyhole with the eye of a menial;-it vilified her by day, it haunted her by night. Whether she assumed the garb of a country, enjoyed the amusements of a court, or resigned her ease and comfort to attend the bed of sickness, it misconstrued her cheerfulness and blasphemed her charity ! A splendid bribe was voluntarily offered her, upon the terms of implied self-condemnation, with protracted persecution, and perhaps a shameful death, for the alternative. With a noble disdain, with a Royal spirit, with an instant contempt, utterly irreconcilable with aught but conscious innocence, she dashed aside the wages of her debasement, and rushed, with the air and accent of defiance, into the very den of her accusers. The result was inevitable. The people of England, alike generous and just, formed a moral phalanx round her, and every echo in the island reverberated her triumph. This was her concluding earthly trial. She survived it only to witness the refusal of her last privilege; and when persecution was almost weary insulting, and calumny almost hoarse with reviling her, she died, forgiving her enemies and declaring her innocence."

We

of

may now proceed to lay before the reader

the particulars of " the refusal of her last privilege," viz. that of being crowned with her royal husband, on the 19th of July, 1821.

66

George III. the truly patriot King-the faithful husband and affectionate friend of the distressed and the persecuted, died on the 29th of January, 1820; and his successor, the present King George IV. was proclaimed with the customary ceremonies. On the 6th of May following, a royal proclamation was issued from the palace of Carlton House, declaring " his Majesty's pleasure touching his Royal Coronation;" and appointing the 1st of August for the ceremony. This was accompanied by another proclamation, nominating commissioners to hear and determine the petitions and claims of those persons, who, " by ancient customs and usages, as also in regard of divers tenures of sundry manors, lands, and other hereditaments, were bound to perform certain services on the day of Coronation."

Under the authority of the latter proclamation, "The Court of Claims," as it is termed, assembled on Thursday, the 18th of May, in the Painted Chamber, behind the House of Lords, where they received various petitions and decided many claims. The Commissioners met again by adjournment on three subsequent days—namely: 26th of May, the 8th of June, and the 16th of June.*

* The reader will find ample details of the proceedings of this ancient Court, as also of the whole ceremonial of the Coronation, in Huish's account of that august, ceremony,