A.D. 1761.]

ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE KING'S INTENDED MARRIAGE.

no means of government bribery were omitted to procure one of tory tendencies, and favourable to the Bute cabal. The sale of boroughs was extensively and undisguisedly practised, and the mode, now so common, of evading the direct charge of bribery by giving an absurdly great price for some article to an elector, was lavishly introduced. Foote, in his play of "The Nabob," happily hit off this custom. He makes a voter say-" When I took up my freedom, I could get but thirty guineas for a new pair of jack-boots; whilst my neighbour over the way had a fifty-pound note for a pair of wash-leather breeches!"

5

however, became dreadfully outraged by their children, even during their own day, nor had George III. that unexceptionable right to declare that his sons had abandoned the example of their father, which our historians too generally assume. Lord Mahon finds no spot of sensual taint in his youthful character; the writer of the "Pictorial History" goes further. He says:-" On ascending the throne, George III. was only in his twenty-third year, yet he presented few of the graces, and none of the liveliness of youth. At the same time, he was wholly free from the vicos or irregularities which commonly attended that age with persons in his situation."

On the 8th of July an extraordinary privy council was summoned. All the members, of whatever party, were That is, that George had not kept his mistress, according desired to attend, and many were the speculations as to the to the regular custom of his forefathers. It is too true that important object. The general idea was that it involved the there is nothing so remarkable in the English people as their continuation or the termination of the war. It turned out to co-existent propensities to king-worship and freedombe for the announcement of the king's intended marriage. The worship. A moral and religious nation, abhorring licenlady selected was Charlotte, the second sister of the duke of tiousness, and severe in its punishment of the invaders of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a prince of a petty state, but of the domestic purity, we have, as a rule, been ready to tolerate most enormous pretensions to the antiquity and unadulterated in our monarchs a contempt for the conjugal virtues. Nay, blood of his lineage. In this respect the young princess his so far have our countrywomen forgotten in kings and sister, who was yet only seventeen, and of no beauty or princes their stern and inexorable judgments against the fortune, thought herself infinitely the superior of her intended frailties of their sex, that they have often honoured if not husband, the king of England, the lofty purity of whose even envied the position of a prince's concubine. They genealogy had been so grievously debased by such encroach-have eagerly wrangled for the universal distinction; they ments as those of the Woodvilles, Tudors, Hydes, and the have boasted of it; they have paraded it before the world like plebeians. Like George himself, she was by no means when they have got it; and there is no cause which has overdone with education; she could play upon the harpsi- tended to diffuse demoralisation through English society so chord, and that was the sum-total of her accomplishments. much as this. We need not glance back to the days of the Like the Hanoverian monarchs, whose line she was destined Tudors and the Stuarts, or point to the highest places of to perpetuate, she had no taste whatever for literature and the peerage, for the proofs of it: the princes of Hanover, a the arts; she had read little, and of that little next to no heavy and dull race, were always surrounded by a sort of English. In fact, whatever may have been the advantage harem of this kind. George I. had, besides English ones, in a protestant point of view, the importation of German a troop of German ones, notorious for their impudent princesses has been a practice especially pernicious in many rapacity. other respects. German men are generally well educated, German women generally as ill.

The contempt of the female mind in Germany is one of the worst features of that country; hence the wretched education and the wretched moral character of our princes, except in our present excellent queen, who have had German mothers. The mother of George III. and of the duke of Cumberland, whose connection with Bute was the scandal of the age, could only turn out ill-educated sons. Walpole says that George III. was brought up in duplicity, and that his first act, the command to his groom to utter a falsehood, in order to enable him to secure his grandfather's hoards, was expressive of his character. Lord Malmesbury shows us what a wretched education queen Caroline, the consort of George IV., had, and how certain were the most disastrous consequences to succeed. The want of moral truth in queen Charlotte was propagated in the licentious character of her sons.

Apart from these defects of an overwhelming pride of pedigree, and of the narrowness of her education, the young princess had a considerable amount of amiability, good sense, and domestic taste. These she shared with her intended husband, and whilst they made the royal couple always retiring, at the same time they caused them to give, during their lives, a certain moral air to their court. This morality,

George II. is said to have had little natural disposition to gallantry, but actually thought it an honour to bow to them! So far had our customs sanctioned royal vice. He was, in fact, led by his education, and the evidence of public opinion, to adopt adultery as a royal grace. And now George III. is held up by some historians as a perfect model of chastity and propriety. "Though so young," says one writer, "so healthy and robust, and though his predecessor had been so old, he was the first prince of his house to do without a mistress! A few months after his accession he married, and from that time his fidelity to his consort was as remarkable as his previous continence."

This is a singular statement for a writer of a history of England, and especially regarding a prince of our time. We should be glad to be able to confirm that eulogy; but, with all George's domestic and public virtues, and he had many, we should justly forfeit all claim to confidence if we did not state the real facts. To say nothing of a certain flirtation with lady Sarah Lennox-recorded by lord Orford just previous to George's marriage-which, probably, was innocent enough, there is another affair, which involves a grave charge against the pattern king. When prince of Wales he fell in love with a beautiful quakeress of the name She resided at a linendraper's shop, of Hannah Lightfoot. at the corner of Market Street, St. James's Market. The

name of the linendraper was Wheeler. "As the prince," listening for something. A pipe and tabor appeared in the says Beckford, in his "Conversations," published in the street, stopped and played awhile before the house, and "New Monthly Magazine," "could not obtain her affections scarcely had it ceased, when Hannah Lightfoot was found to exactly in the way he most desired, he persuaded Dr. have disappeared. On making search for her, her friends Wilmot to marry them, which he did at Kew Chapel, in learned that she had left the house and been seen to enter a 1759; William Pitt, afterwards lord Chatham, and Ann close carriage, which stood in the next street, which then Taylor, being the parties witnessing, and, for aught I drove rapidly away. The suspicion fell immediately upon know, the document is still in existence." the prince. The distracted husband gave chase; and, overWe have already understood that the documentary taking the prince, I believe, at Kew Palace, demanded,

evidence of this marriage was carefully preserved in the family of the descendants. Whether this be so or no, however, we have often been informed by a quakeress, who resided in London at the time, that the friends of Hannah Lightfoot, aware of the attentions of the prince, were extremely anxious to get her married to a young man of her own society, who was passionately attached to her. The day was fixed-nay, it is asserted the marriage had actually taken place-when, soon after the return of the bridal party from the ceremony, Hannah Lightfoot was observed to be restless, went to the window several times, and appeared to be in an absent state, as if

it is said, on his knees, and with the most passionate pleading, the restoration of his wife, but in vain.

Now, if it was the fact that George actually thus carried off the wife of another man on his wedding-day, it is a black stain on his memory which no panegyric can wash out. If Hannah Lightfoot was thus married previously, she was not his legal wife, otherwise she had as fair a claim to the queenly crown as Elizabeth Woodville, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Jane Seymour, Catherine Parr, and Anne Hyde; for it is remarkable that the law forbidding royal marriages with subjects was not then made, but was afterwards passed by George himself. Of his marriage with

prevent the junction of the Russians under Butterlin and the Austrians under Laudohn. He boldly threw himself betwixt these two armies, and for a long time defeated their attempts at a junction. At length, on the 12th of August, his enemies accomplished their union near Striegau,

Hannah Lightfoot there is, of course, a large amount of conflicting opinion, and it depends entirely on the truth of this wedding-day elopement, whether Charlotte was a wife at all, or a queen at all. If the carrying off had taken place before the wedding ceremony with the young quaker, Hannah Lightfoot would have been de jure and de facto queen of in spite of him. There appeared now no other prospect but England. It would appear that George III. laid up for himself troubles of the deepest dye by this marriage-troubles affecting the happiness of his favourite daughter, and, probably, the leading cause of his own insanity. Into these, as of a distant date, we enter not here; but we may surmise that these circumstances, not less than the scandalous conduct of his brother, the duke of Cumberland, led him to pass the royal marriage act, forbidding the marriage of any member of the royal family with a subject, except with the express consent of the sovereign.

that they would completely surround him. But, with great address, Frederick threw himself into the fortified camp of Bunzelwitz, under the guns of Schweidnitz, where he had a strong garrison. This camp was defended by a chain of formidable works, four-and-twenty terrible batteries, with mines, deep ditches, and chevaux-de-frise. The allies attempted to blockade him there and starve him out; but he obtained corn from the depôts in Schweidnitz, whilst the country round, being laid waste, the enemy themselves were assailed by famine. They were daily in expectation of The earl of Harcourt was dispatched to Strelitz to demand abundance of provisions from Poland in five thousand the hand of the princess. He was followed by the duchesses wagons; but Frederick had dispatched a flying column, of Hamilton and Ancaster, and lady Effingham, to attend under general Platen, to intercept these, which he did upon her during her journey. Lord Harcourt was received, effectually, besides destroying three of their largest magazines as may be supposed, with overwhelming courtesy at Strelitz, on the Polish frontiers. At this news the allies quitted their being always attended by a body-guard, as the representative blockade of the Prussian king. Butterlin retired into of England, of which the princess was about to be queen. Pomerania, and Laudohn to the neighbourhood of Freiburg. On the 8th of September Charlotte arrived at St. James's, At the end of September Frederick quitted his strong camp, and that afternoon the marriage took place, the ceremony and marched towards Upper Silesia, but Laudohn instantly being performed by the archbishop of Canterbury. The advanced into the vacated position. Instead of taking next day the royal couple held a crowded drawing-room and Laudohn in the rear, as he intended, Frederick now saw ball, in which the queen was reported to have conducted her- that general execute the boldest manoeuvre of the whole self extremely well. On the 22nd the coronation took place war. In the night of the 1st of October, which was extremely with the greatest splendour; and it is noted, not only as a dark, he led his troops silently against the walls of Schweidsign of the popularity of the sovereigns, but of the advancing nitz. General Zastrow that night was giving a ball to his wealth of the country, that the platform from St. Margaret's officers. The usual precautions were relaxed, and Laudohn, roundhouse to the abbey door, which at George II.'s coro- rushing into the covered way, killed the sentinels, scaled the nation let for forty pounds, now let for two thousand four outworks, waded the fosse, and mounted the city walls hundred pounds. There was one remarkable spectator of before the alarm was given. The garrison, four thousand this scene, whose feelings must have been strange; the man- strong, rushed to the defence, and fought bravely; but they who, had his family ruled wisely, should have there been were overpowered, and, before daybreak, the Austrians were crowned himself-was Charles Stuart. in full possession of this the great fortress of Silesia, which it had cost the Prussians months of blockade and hard fighting to subdue.

We must now step back a little to observe the war on the continent from the opening of the present campaign. Frederick of Prussia lay encamped during the winter in Silesia, surrounded by difficulties and enemies. His resources of both money and men appeared well nigh exhausted. The end of autumn, 1760, brought him the news of the death of George II., and, from what he could learn of the disposition of his successor and his chief advisers, it was certain that peace would be attempted by England. This depressing intelligence was confirmed in December by the English parliament indeed voting again his usual subsidy, but reluctantly, and he found it paid with still more reluctance and delay. Whilst thus menaced with the total loss of the funds by which he carried on the war, he saw, as the spring approached, the Russians and Austrians advancing against him with more than double his own forces. He had not fifty thousand men, whilst Butterlin, the Russian general, commanded sixty thousand, and Laudohn, the Austrian, seventy thousand. Prince Henry was menaced in Saxony by marshal Daun, and another Russian army, in Pomerania, was marching to the siege of Colberg.

This was a stunning blow to Frederick, but he affected to bear it philosophically, whilst the gallant Laudohn was rather censured than applauded by his own court for his exploit. He had undertaken the daring enterprise without consulting the empress or the Aulic council, and the absurd etiquette of Austria was highly offended by it. It required the better sense of the emperor to prevent a formal censure being passed on the hero.

The capture of Schweidnitz enabled the Austrians to winter in Silesia, which they had never yet done during the war; and the Russians under Butterlin also found, to their great satisfaction, on arriving in Pomerania, that they could winter in Colberg. The Russian division under Romanzow had besieged Colberg both by land and sea, and, spite of the attempts of the Prussians under Platen and Knobloch, sent by Frederick to relieve it, it had been compelled to surrender. Under these discouraging circumstances Frederick took up his winter quarters at Breslau. His affairs never wore a darker aspect. He was out-generaled and more disInder these circumstances, Frederick endeavoured to comfited this campaign than by a great battle. His enemies