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I was a conqueror, but yet not proud; And careless, even when Napoleon bow'd.

The rescued Kings came kiss my garments' hem: The rescued Kings I never heeded them.

My guns roared triumph, but I never heard: All England thrilled with joy, I never stirred.

What care had I of pomp, of fame, or power-- A crazy old blind man in Windsor Tower?"

FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES

Frederick was born at Hanover on January 6, 1707, was there educated; and there, after the accession of George II to the English throne, remained, a mere lad, away from parental control, compelled to hold a daily Drawing-room, at which he received the adulation of unscrupulous and self-seeking courtiers in a dull, vulgar, and immoral Court. George II, remembering his behaviour to his father, was in no hurry to summon his son to England; and Frederick might have remained the ornament of the Hanoverian capital until his death, but that the English thought it advisable their future king should not be allowed to grow up in ignorance of the manners and customs of the land over which in the ordinary course of nature he would reign. Neither the King nor the Queen had any affection for the young man; and they were so reluctant to bring him into prominence, or even into frequent intercourse with themselves, that they disregarded the murmur of the people, and were inclined even to ignore the advice of the Privy Council--when news from Hanover caused them hurriedly to send for him.

Created Duke of Gloucester, 1717; Duke of Edinburgh, 1727; Prince of Wales, January 9, 1729.

John Hervey, younger son of John Hervey, first Earl of Bristol, styled after the death of his elder brother, Baron Hervey of Ickworth .

George William Hervey, second Earl of Bristol .

Frederick, who had left Hanover in debt, had been further embarrassed in London, and, to free himself from financial trouble discussed with Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, a marriage between himself and her granddaughter, Lady Diana Spencer, conditional on the dowry being ?100,000. The ambitious old lady was favourable to the scheme--it has been said, and perhaps with truth, that it was her proposal--and arrangements were made for the ceremony to take place privately at the Lodge in Windsor Great Park; but Sir Robert Walpole heard of it--that wily statesman learnt most secrets--and told the King, who forbade the marriage.

Afterwards married John, fourth Duke of Bedford.

George Bubb Dodington, afterwards Baron Melcombe of Melcombe Regis .

Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield .

When the Princess Royal was married, the Prince of Wales presented himself before the King, and made three demands--permission to serve in the Rhine campaign, a settled and increased income, and a suitable marriage. George II gave an immediate and decided refusal to the first, but consented to consider the other proposals. As a result of negotiations arising from this conversation, the Prince of Wales married on April 26, 1736, Augusta, daughter of Frederick, Duke of Saxe-Gotha. There were great national rejoicings, and "I believe," said Horace Walpole, "the Princess will have more beauties bestowed on her by all the occasional poets than ever a painter would afford her. They will cook up a new Pandora, and in the bottom of the box enclose Hope that all they have said is true." Indeed, a salvo of eulogistic addresses in rhyme greeted the nuptial pair, headed by William Whitehead, the Laureate, who, on such occasions, could always be relied upon to write ridiculously fulsome lines.

"Such was the age, so calm the earth's repose, When Maro sung, and a new Pollio rose. Oh! from such omens may again succeed Some glorious youth to grace the nuptial bed; Some future Scipio, good as well as great; Some young Marcellus with a better fate; Some infant Frederick, or some George to grace The rising records of the Brunswick race."

The new Princess of Wales was a mere girl, straight from her mother's country house, and ignorant of courts, but not lacking self-possession nor good sense. "The Princess is neither handsome nor ugly, tall nor short, but has a lively, pretty countenance enough," and she found favour in the eyes of her husband, who, though attracted by her, was not content to be faithful. "The chief passion of the Prince was women," says Horace Walpole; "but, like the rest of his race, beauty was not a necessary ingredient." Soon after he came to England he had an intrigue with Anne Vane, the eldest daughter of Gilbert, Baron Barnard, and one of the Queen's maids of honour. "Beautiful Vanelia" was not immaculate, and she gave birth to a child in her apartments in St. James's Palace; the first Lord Hartington and Lord Hervey both believed themselves to be the father, but she, to make the most of her opportunity, wisely accredited the paternity to the Prince of Wales, who thus earned the undying hatred of Hervey. The proud father then turned his attention to Lady Archibald Hamilton , who had ten children, was neither young nor beautiful, but clever enough to let her husband believe she was faithful, although the intimacy between her and her royal lover was patent to all the world besides.

The boy was christened Cornwell Fitz-Frederick, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, February 26, 1736.

Realising the advisability to be off with the old love before he was on with the new, Frederick sent Lord Baltimore to Miss Vane, commanding her to live abroad for a period, on pain of forfeiting the allowance of ?1,600 that he had made her since her dismissal from court--"if she would not live abroad, she might starve for him in England." Miss Vane sent for Hervey, who recommended her to refuse obedience--a step that infuriated the Prince with the adviser; but eventually she reminded her erstwhile lover of all she had sacrificed for the love she bore him, and this so tickled his vanity that not only did he permit her to retain her son and the income, and to remain in England, but gave her a house in Grosvenor Street wherein to live.

Following the example of George II, who had appointed his mistress, Mrs. Howard, to be woman of the bedchamber to his wife, Frederick made Lady Archibald Hamilton a lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Wales. Lady Archibald, however, was soon replaced in his favour by Lady Middlesex, who, although not good-looking, was the possessor of many accomplishments; but she had to be content to share his affections with Miss Granville and various opera dancers and singers.

The Prince, being unable to secure an increased income from his father, resorted to the usual princely device of borrowing money wherever he could get it. "They have found a way in the city to borrow ?30,000 for the Prince at ten per cent. interest, to pay his crying debts to tradespeople; but I doubt that sum will not go very far," wrote the Duchess of Marlborough. "The salaries in the Prince's family are ?25,000 a year, besides a good deal of expense at Cliefden in building and furniture; and the Prince and Princess's allowance for their clothes is ?6,000 a year each. I am sorry there is such an increase in expense more than in former times, when there was more money a great deal: and I really think it would have been more for the Prince's interest if his counsellors had advised him to live only as a great man, and to give the reasons for it; and in doing so he would have made a better figure, and been safer, for nobody that does not get by it themselves can possibly think the contrary method a right one." The debts accumulated so rapidly, that there was really some show of reason for Lord Hervey saying to the Queen that there actually "was danger of the King's days being shortened by the profligate usurers who lent the Prince of Wales money on condition of being paid at his Majesty's death, and who, he thought, would want nothing but a fair opportunity to hasten the day of payment; and the King's manner of exposing himself would make it easy for the usurers to accomplish such a design."

The Queen had determined to be present at the birth.--"She cannot be brought to bed as quick as one can blow one's nose," she had told the King, "and I will be sure it is her child." Both were furious at being circumvented, and the King expressed his anger in no measured terms. "See now, with all your wisdom, how they have outwitted you," the King addressed his wife. "This is all your fault. There is a false child will be put upon you, and how will you answer it to all your children? This has been fine care and fine management for your son William: he is much indebted to you." The Queen drove to St. James's without delay, saw the child, and abandoned her suspicions. "God bless you, poor little creature," she said as she kissed it, "you have come into a disagreeable world." Had it been a big, healthy boy, instead of a girl, she said, she might not so readily have accepted the paternity claimed for it.

"The King has commanded me," Lord Essex wrote from Hampton Court to the Prince of Wales on August 3, "to acquaint your Royal Highness that his Majesty most heartily rejoices at the safe delivery of the Princess; but that your carrying away of her Royal Highness from Hampton Court, the then residence of the King, the Queen, and the Royal Family, under the pains and certain indication of immediate labour, to the imminent danger and hazard both of the Princess and her child, and after sufficient warnings for a week before, to have made the necessary preparations for this happy event, without acquainting his Majesty, or the Queen, with the circumstances the Princess was in, or giving them the least notice of your departure, is looked upon by the King to be such a deliberate indignity offered to himself and to the Queen, that he resents it to the highest degree."

William Capel, third Earl of Essex.

A lengthy correspondence ensued, wherein, on the one hand, the Prince excused himself on the ground that the Princess was seized with the pains of labour earlier than was expected, and that at Hampton Court he was without a midwife or any assistance; and, on the other, the King declined to accept these reasons as true, refused to receive his son, and ordered him to leave St. James's as soon as possible, summing up the situation in a final letter, dated September 10.

"GEORGE R.

"The professions you have lately made in your letters, of your peculiar regards to me, are so contradictory to all your actions, that I cannot suffer myself to be imposed upon by them. You know very well you did not give the least intimation to me or to the Queen that the Princess was with child or breeding, until within less than a month of the birth of the young Princess: you removed the Princess twice in the week immediately preceding the day of her delivery from the place of my residence, in expectation, as you have voluntarily declared, of her labour; and both times upon your return, you industriously concealed from the knowledge of me and the Queen every circumstance relating to this important affair: and you, at last, without giving any notice to me, or to the Queen, precipitately hurried the Princess from Hampton Court, in a condition not to be named. After having thus, in execution of your own determined measures, exposed both the Princess and her child to the greatest perils, you now plead surprise and tenderness for the Princess, as the only motives that occasioned these repeated indignities offered to me and to the Queen your mother.

"This extravagant and undutiful behaviour in so essential a point as the birth of an heir to my crown, is such evidence to your premeditated defiance of me, and such a contempt of my authority and of the natural right belonging to your parents, as cannot be excused by the pretended innocence of your intentions, nor palliated or disguised by specious words only.

"But the whole tenour of your conduct for a considerable time has been so entirely void of all real duty to me, that I have long had reason to be highly offended with you. And until you withdraw your regard and confidence from those by whose instigation and advice you are directed and encouraged in your unwarrantable behaviour to me and your Queen, and until your return to your duty, you shall not reside in my palace: which I will not suffer to be made the resort of them who, under the appearance of an attachment to you, foment the division which you have made in my family, and thereby weaken the common interest of the whole.

"In the meantime, it is my pleasure that you leave St. James's with all your family, when it can be done without prejudice or inconvenience to the Princess. I shall for the present leave to the Princess the care of my granddaughter, until a proper time calls upon me to consider of her education.

" G. R."

What induced Frederick to risk the life of his wife and his unborn child, and to put to hazard the succession was a mystery at the time, and must for ever remain without satisfactory explanation. That it was done solely to annoy his parents seems insufficient reason, though it is all that offers, and Hervey suggests the hasty nocturnal removal was effected to prevent the presence of the Queen at the birth. This certainly seems insufficient to account for the unwarrantable proceeding, but no other solution offers itself.

The Prince of Wales had in 1730 taken a lease from the Capel family of Kew House , and there he and his wife repaired for a while after being evicted from St. James's Palace; but soon they came back to London, and held their court, first at Norfolk House, St. James's Square, placed at their disposal by the Duke of Norfolk, and later at Leicester House, Leicester Square. The King expressed a wish that no one should visit his son, and actually caused it to be intimated to foreign ambassadors that to call on the Prince of Wales was objectionable to him; but this injunction was so generally disregarded that he took the extraordinary step of issuing, through his Chamberlain, a threat.

"His Majesty, having been informed that due regard has not been paid to his order of September 11, 1737, has thought fit to declare that no person whatsoever, who shall go to pay their court to their Royal Highnesses, the Prince and Princess of Wales, shall be admitted into his Majesty's presence, at any of his royal palaces.

" Grafton."

Henry St. John, first Viscount Bolingbroke .

Sir William Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath .

John Carteret, afterwards Earl Granville .

Sir Charles Wyndham, afterwards second Earl of Egremont .

Sir William Townshend, second son of Charles, second Viscount Townshend .

Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham .

Dukes of Beaufort, Bedford, Argyle, Bridgwater and Roxburghe; Marquis of Carnarvon; and Earls of Derby, Denbigh, Westmoreland, Winchelsea, Thanet, Sandwich, Carlisle, Aylesbury, Litchfield, Scarborough, Coventry, Oxford, Aylesford, Halifax, Macclesfield, Darnley, Barrymore, Inclagreen and Gronard.

The Prince made a very determined bid for popularity among all classes. He put himself at the head of "The Patriots," and in 1739 recorded his first vote as a peer of Parliament against the Address and in favour of the war policy; subsequently, when war was declared, taking part with the Opposition in the public celebrations. He encouraged British manufactures, and neither he nor the Princess wore, or encouraged the wearing of, foreign materials. He gave entertainments to the nobility at his seat at Cliefden in Buckinghamshire, and visiting Bath in 1738, cleared the prison of all debtors and made a present of ?1,000 towards the general hospital. Nor did he neglect letters and art, for which he had some slight regard. He patronised Thomson and Vertue the engraver, employed Dr. Freeman to write a "History of the English Tongue" as a text-book for Prince George and the younger princes; sent two of his court to Cave, the publisher, to inquire the name of the author of the first issue of "The Rambler"; and exchanged badinage with Pope, whom he visited at Twickenham. Pope received him with great courtesy and expressions of attachment. "'Tis well," said Frederick, "but how shall we reconcile your love to a prince with your professed indisposition to kings, since princes will be kings in time?" "Sir," said the poet, "I consider Royalty under that noble and authorized type of the lion: while he is young and before his nails are grown, he may be approached and caressed with safety and pleasure."

Frederick became very popular. "The truth is," Mr. McCarthy has said unkindly but with undoubted truth, "that the people in general, knowing little about the Prince, and knowing a great deal about the King, naturally leaned to the side of the man who might at least turn out to be better than his father."

There was a general impression that he had been ill-treated, and there was a disposition among the lower classes to make amends for such a slight as having to live as a private gentleman at Norfolk House, without even the usual appanage of a sentry.

Thomas Secker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.

"The Bishop, who had been bred a Presbyterian and man-midwife, which sect and profession he had dropped for a season, while he was president of a very free-thinking club, has been converted by Bishop Talbot, whose relation he married, and had his faith settled in a prebend of Durham."--Horace Walpole.

Immediately after Walpole's downfall, messages were exchanged between Norfolk House and St. James's, and on February 17 father and son met and embraced at the palace. The Prince's friends came into office, and so happy was the Prince that he testified to his joy by liberating four-and-twenty prisoners from his father's Bench--the amount of their debts being added to his own. He was indeed so overcome with delight at his virtue in being reconciled to his father that he ventured upon a joke when Mr. Vane, who was notoriously in the court interest, congratulated him on his reappearance at St. James's. "A vane," quoth he to the courtier, "is a weathercock, which turns with every gust of the wind, and therefore I dislike a vane." Witty, generous Prince!

Very differently spoke those who knew the Prince. "He was indeed as false as his capacity would allow him to be, and was more capable in that walk than in any other, never having the least hesitation, from principle or fear of future detection, in telling any lie that served his future purpose. He had a much weaker understanding, and, if possible, a more obstinate temper than his father; that is, more tenacious of opinions he had once formed, though less capable of ever forming right ones. Had he had one grain of merit at the bottom of his heart, one should have had compassion for him in the situation to which his miserable poor head soon reduced him, a mother that despised him, sisters that betrayed him, a brother set up against him, and a set of servants that neglected him, and were neither of use nor capable of being of use to him, or desirous of being so." So said Lord Hervey, and, though his known enmity to Frederick makes one reluctant to accept his estimate, yet it must be admitted that his remarks are borne out by others well qualified to judge. "A poor, weak, irresolute, false, lying, dishonest, contemptible wretch, that nobody loves, that nobody believes, that nobody will trust, and that will trust everybody by turns, and that everybody by turns will impose upon, betray, mislead, and plunder." Thus Sir Robert Walpole, who, during the Prince's lifetime, thought that, if the King should die, the Queen and her unmarried children would be in a bad way. "I do not know any people in the world so much to be pitied," he said to Hervey, "as that gay young company with which you and I stand every day in the drawing-room at that door from which we this moment came, bred up in state, in affluence, caressed and courted, and to go at once from that into dependence upon a brother who loves them not, and whose extravagance and covetousness will make him grudge every guinea they spend, as it must come out of a purse not sufficient to defray the expenses of his own vices."

What is to be said in his favour? That through his intercession Flora Macdonald, imprisoned for harbouring the Chevalier, received her liberty: that when Richard Glover, the author of "Leonidas," fell upon evil days he sent him five hundred pounds; that he was a plausible speaker, fond of music, the author of two songs, and had sufficient sense of humour to institute an occasional practical joke. On the other hand, he was a gambler and a spendthrift without a notion of common honesty; he was unstable and untruthful, a feeble enemy and a lukewarm friend; and is, indeed, best disposed of in the well-known verse:

"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."

"As a friend to liberty in general, and to toleration in particular, I wish you may meet with all proper favour; but for myself I never give my vote in Parliament; and to influence my friends or direct my servants in theirs does not become my station. To leave them entirely to their own conscience and understanding is a rule I have hitherto prescribed to myself, and it is my purpose to adhere to it through the whole of my life." This was Frederick's reply to the Quaker who asked him to use his influence in favour of the bill concerning his sect; and, as Huish remarks, "could anything be more agreeable to the spirit of the British constitution?"

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