positively swore, the former to his having observed the fact of the pregnancy of her royal highness, and the latter to all the important particulars contained in her former declaration, and above referred to. Their examinations are annexed to this report, and are circumstantial and positive.

The most material of those allegations, into the truth of which we had been directed to inquire, being thus far sup ported by the oaths of the parties from whom they had pro ceeded, we then felt it our duty to follow up the inquiry by the examination of such other persons as we judged best able to afford us information as to the facts in question.

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We thought it beyond all doubt that, in this course of in quiry, many particulars must be learnt which would be ne cessarily conclusive on the truth or falsehood of these declarations. So many persons must have been witnesses to the appearances of an actually.existing pregnancy; so many cumstances must have been attendant upon a delivery; and difficulties so numerous and insurmountable must have been involved in any attempt to account for the infant in question, as the child of another woman, if it had been in fact the child of the princess; that we entertained a full and confident expectation of arriving at complete proof, either in the affirmative or negative, on this part of the subject.

This expectation was not disappointed. We are happy to declare to your majesty our perfect conviction that there is no foundation whatever for believing that the child now with the princess is the child of her royal highness, or that she was delivered of any child in the year 1802; nor has any-thing appeared to us which would warrant the belief that she was pregnant in that year, or at any other period within the compass of our inquiries.

The identity of the child now with the princess, its parentage, the place and the date of its birth, the time and the circumstances of its being first taken under her royal highness's protection, are all established by such a concurrence both of positive and circumstantial evidence, as can, in our judgment, leave no question on this part of the subject. That child was,

beyond all doubt, born in the Brownlow-street hospital, on the 11th of July, 1802, of the body of Sophia Austin, and was first brought to the princess's house in the month of November following. Neither should we be more warranted in expressing any doubt respecting the alleged pregnancy of the princess, as stated in the original declarations-a fact so fully contradicted, and by so many witnesses, to whom, if true, it must in various ways have been known, that we cannot think it entitled to the smallest credit. The testimonies on these two points are contained in the annexed depositions and letters. We have not partially abstracted them in this report, lest by any unintentional omission we might weaken their effect; but we humbly offer to your majesty this our clear and unanimous judgment upon them, formed on full deliberation, and pronounced without hesitation on the result of the whole inquiry.

We do not, however, feel ourselves at liberty, much as we should wish it, to close our report here. Besides the allegations of the pregnancy and delivery of the princess, those declarations, on the whole of which your majesty has been pleased to command us to inquire and report, contain, as we have already remarked, other particulars respecting the conduct of her royal highness, such as must, especially considering her exalted rank and station, necessarily give occasion to very unfavourable interpretations.

From the various depositions and proofs annexed to this report, particularly from the examinations of Robert Bidgood, William Cole, Frances Lloyd, and Mrs. Lisle, your majesty will perceive that several strong circumstances of this description have been positively sworn to by witnesses, who cannot, in our judgment, be suspected of any unfavourable bias, and whose veracity in this respect we have seen no ground to question.

On the precise bearing and effect of the facts thus appearSng, it is not for us to decide; these we submit to your majesty's wisdom: but we conceive it to be our duty to report on this part of the inquiry as distinctly as on the former facts, that, as on the one hand, the facts of pregnancy and

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delivery are to our minds satisfactorily disproved, so on the other hand, we think that the circumstances to which we now refer, particularly those stated to have passed between her royal highness and Captain Manby, must be credited until they shall receive some decisive contradiction; and if true are justly entitled to the most serious consideration.

We cannot close this report without humbly assuring your majesty, that it was on every account our anxious wish to have executed this delicate trust with as little publicity as the nature of the case would possibly allow; and we entreat your majesty's permission to express our full persuasion, that if this wish has been disappointed, the failure is not imputable to any-thing unnecessarily said or done by us. All which is most humbly submitted to your majesty. (Signed)

ERSKINE,

SPENCER,

GRENVILLE,

ELLENBOROUGH.

J

July 14th, 1806.

67. It does not comport with my plan to enter here into the case of the cruelly-treated princess, who was, during the whole of her married life, dogged by spies, and beset by perjurers and traitors; her case, which forms the great characteristic of the regency and reign of this' "mild" and " generous and "gentleman king; her case, though as we go along we shall find it force itself upon us here and there, must wait for full display, till we come to the date of her death and burial. In this place it is my business to show how this affair of the princess. affected the great and general interests of the..

nation; how it affected the policy of the kingdom, external as well as internal; how clearly it showed that the interests and safety of millions were thought little of in comparison with the indulgence of the passions of one single man.

68. One thing, in this report, will have stricken every reader; namely, that the princess should have the child in her own house four years, and that no complaint should have been made by the prince before now. When we look at the evidence, we find that the originators of the whole story were a Sir JOHN DOUGLAS and HIS WIFE, who had gone to live at Blackheath (near MONTAGUE-HOUSE, the princess's place of residence) in 1801, and who swore positively to the facts of the pregnancy and delivery in 1802. They both swore, also, that they communicated the facts to the prince from a deep sense of duty, as loyal subjects; the four lords say, in this their report, that it was the bounden duty of the prince to communicate to the king matter "so nearly affecting the honour of the

royal family, and, by possibility, the succession to the crown; "but it does not appear to have occurred to those lords to state why the prince had not made the communication to the king at an earlier period! He might not be informed of the facts before. Strange, indeed! What! a child kept in the house of the princess for four years, nursed as if it were her own; and

the prince, her husband, never hear of it, though only at five miles distance from his own palace, though his wife was surrounded by servants that had been, for the greater part, in his own service! But did those Douglases, those loyal people, those people who swore that they communicated the facts to him from a sense of their duty as loyal subjects, did those people suppress their anxiety about the succession to the crown for four years? Did they hide the facts for four years ? and if they did, were they to be believed when they communicated the facts? And how came the FOUR LORDS not to ask (and it does not appear that they did) at what time it was that the Douglases first communicated the facts to the prince? and if the first commonication were in 1806, how came the lords never to ask the Douglases why they did not communicate the facts before the year 1806? And when it became clear that the evidence of the Douglases was false, how came they not to be prosecuted for perjury? And if the tribunal were (as was alleged) not of a nature to bring those, who had sworn falsely before it, under the law for punishing perjury, why did the ministers of that day counsel the king to appoint such a tribunal?

69. Who, then, were the ministers of that day? And here, when we answer this question, we see all the mystery removed; we see why the child lived so quietly for four years; we see why