SUPPLEMENT

TO

ht

prectai r

FOR THE

WEEK ENDING SATURDAY, MARCH 7, 1863.

THE PRINCES OF WALES,

IN THEIR

PERSONAL AND POLITICAL RELATIONS TO THE CROWN AND THE NATION.

THE line of demarcation between the heirs apparent of the Crown before and from the time of EDWARD of CAERNARVON, implied by the limitation of our subject-matter to the political po-ition and influence of those who bore the title of PRINCE of WALES, is not so artificial and arbitrary as might be at first sup- posed. The reign of Edward I. may be said to be the epoch from which our present Constitutional Government dates its existence. The elements, indeed, existed long before, and both the spirit of individual freedom and the instinct and habit of orderly government had worked out important results in the general character of the administration. Feudalism had laid the foundations of a powerful aristocracy, in the combined idea of landlordistn and personal and pecuniary aid to the suzerain on ertain fixed conditions. Popular liberty had been developed through new civic charters and old county organizations into a formidable ally, either of the Crown or of the greater Barons. The King had found his interest in interposing the strong arm of his judges between tertitorial oppression and its victims : the Barons had found their interest in a combined action. with the citizen class against the arbitrary " tallages " of the Crown. The result had been a greatly improved administration of justice, and such specifications of the boun- daries of the executive power and of personal and class franchises as could be conveyed by parchment, charters, and confirmations of charters. But during all this time the several powers of the State had acted either separately or as indepen- dent allies. There had been no combined and authoritative national action of a permanent or systematic character. This only began to exist when the general council of the greater Barons by tenure was superseded by the limited and more definite assembly of Barons by writ of summons, and when representatives of the gentry and frerholders of the counties and of the citizens of the boroughs met "in Parliament," in assemblies, or an assembly, co- ordinate with the preceding, in the name of the middle classes. Here began the parliamentary and constitutional life of England, And for this event no earlier date can be assigned with any proba- bility than the reign of Edward I. It is, then, from that era only that a settled political position can be assigned to the heir apparent, and that his responsibilities can be properly estimated. And, therefore, it is that any remarks on these points begin naturally as well as accidentally with the name of the son of Edward, and the first titular " Prince of Wales."

It seems to be true, also, that the political significance of an heir apparent to the throne during the life of the reigning king, is very much bound up with the system of free and parliamentary -government. Under a limited monarchy, such as the English, the sovereign necessarily loses much as respects liberty of per- sonal action as well as irresponsibility; but an English Prince of Wales gains in those very respects, and from the same causes. By being a subject himself he acquires many of the privileges of the citizens of a free State, while drawing around him the sym- pathies and deference inseparable from his high expectations. In .countries where the sovereign is despotic the case must be dif- ferent, unless the king is personally incapable, in which event the power of the prince may swell into that of a virtual regent, and no longer fall within the scope of our present subject. But in a regular government, in which the king is efficient as well as absolute, the prince must almost necessarily be a political nullity, or a mere dependent organ of the government. If he attempts to be an independent head, he is either crushed by the royal power, or subverts the throne. There is no place for any free action, except that which is revolutionary, under such a system, and he shares in the disabilities of his future subjects

with far less of their personal freedom. In the East a State prison has been the vestibule to the throne through which many an heir apparent has had slowly to pass. Elsewhere his opinions must be whispered in corners, or buried in his own breast. But, under the protection of the free government of England, the Prince of Wales enjoys a liberty and independence of action which perhaps has proved a dangerous school for some of our sovereigns, and has contributed not a little to spoil them for the more jealously guarded and delicate func- tions of an English king. The Princes of Wales, indeed, have been always, more or less, the spoilt children of the nation, or, at any rate, of some powerful section of the nation. Much has been for- given to youth—and to youth in such an elevated rank. Small amiabilities have been exaggerated into solid virtues, and gross vices palliated and softened away into unimportant indiscretions. The gates of society and the avenues of political parties lie temptingly open to such a prince. He may enter them in almost any character that he chooses. He may range through every grade of society in the choice of his personal associates; he may share the counsels of any political clique, however extreme or factious. Popular odium, which is quick enough in pursuing the aberrations of the Crown, has been slow and capricious in asso- ciating itself with those of the heir apparent. Particular circum- stances, or the contrast suggested by the conduct of the sove- reign, may sometimes precipitate and sharpen the popular judg- ment; but a Prince of Wales has nearly always a locus penitentix, iu the popular mind, in his future reign ; and hope tells many a flattering tale before she is finally put to silence as a discredited prophet iu his favour. In short, the tutelage of the heir apparent begins in this country where it ends in others—with his accession to the throne.

It may be partly from this cause, as well as from the effect of circumstances special to each case, that in casting our eyes down the list of the sixteen Princes of Wales who have preceded Prince Albert Edward, we hardly find a name on which we can dwell with any feeling of satisfaction. Three or four of them, indeed, are scarcely, or nothing, more than names—boy-princes, with whom violence or disease anticipated the first fruits of individual character•; upon two or three others the name or responsibilities of sovereign descended so rapidly that their peculiar position as Prince of Wales was absorbed in the Crown before it had been sensibly appreciated. In the case of Six only is their distinct political action of marked importance in its bearing on the history of the country. And out of these six, who may be said to re- present three types of conduct, of two alone can we speak at all favourably, and those two are, as Sir G. C. Lewis might suggest, the most remote in point of time, and, therefore, the most likely to benefit by the illusion of romance at the expense of the sterner ver- dict of ascertained facts. We may fairly hope that future historians may be able to point to the last name on our list as a notable exception to the general rule, during a period when every fact will be accurately tested, and every motive curiously scrutinized.

We have spoken of the dangers and temptations which beset the career of a Prince of Wales, but it would be taking a onesided view of the subject to disguise the counterbalancing opportunities for good which lie open to him. The prerogatives iuseparable from his position may be liable to great abuse, but they are also pregnant with important and most beneficial conse- quences if rightly used. To ensure such results it is not neces- sary to require any superhuman or exceptional standard of morality or wisdom. A little common sense—a little discretion—a little self-restraint, and a little self-respect, will prove amply suffi- cient for all the practical purposes of the case ; and it says little for the character of preceding Princes of Wales that we should find even this modicum of philosophy almost universally wanting. A Prince of Wales is able to do much from which the Crown is shut out by the rigid restrictions of a limited monarchy. He can see for himself, where the sovereign can only depend on the eyes of others, and can act directly, and with a direct personal effect,

where the sovereign must submit to have his feelings slowly strained through the sieve of ministerial responsibility and official red-tapeism. He is the natural leader of the youth of England, and his influence may be almost unlimited over the feelings and habits of the rising generation, while through them he affects most powerfully the whole social fabric of the country. Besides this sphere of authority and influence attached to his ago, he is the natural complement to the action of the Crown in those mis- cellaneous and undefined departments of social progress in which the dignity and responsibilities of the king forbid him from inter- fering, except in the most cautious and general manner. In almost every case, indeed, the Crown must await and fol- low the expression of national sentiment—the Prince of Wales may anticipate and form it. The public invites and assigns only too much weight to every exposition of his sentiments on important subjects. It is only too glad to find that a Prince of Wales takes an interest in such things, and can think and judge with average ability,—and it is very chary of repressing such incipient proofs of statesmanship or good sense, by canvassing too rigidly the value of the proposition, or the depth of the sentiment. The absence of the screen of ministerial responsibility is an advantage in this point of view to the in- fluence of the Prince of Wales. He does not necessarily speak by rule, and there is not the pretext for criticism afforded by the inference that his words are those of a responsible minister. If you criticize his acts you may be criticizing the Prince of Wales himself—at least, as soon as he has emerged from his minority ; If you praise them, the approbation goes to swell the capital of his personal reputation, and not that of a cabinet of ministers. As a member of the Legislature, in official communication with the " King's Ministers," and yet not prevented from listening in private, as well as in public, to the political divinations of the " King's Opposition," his opportunities of gathering experi- ence for himself, and harmonizing the duties of the royal family to the responsible advisers of the Crown with the claims upon their sympathies as heads of the nation at large, are almost unlimited. When to speak and act, and when to be a silent spectator only may be a difficult lesson to learn ; but the school for learning it is rich in auxiliary " keys to knowledge," and when once learnt, the vocabulary is one which opens up countless channels, direct and indirect, of becoming a national benefactor.

The additional influences and responsibilities which accrue to a Prince of Wales through his wife can hardly, in fairness, be handled, exceit with reference to the particular case. A Prince of Wales hats not always had, as fortunately appears to be the case in the preient instance, the opportunity of choosing a partner of his piivileges and duties for himself, even within the limited circle of possible objects of his choice. He can, therefore, not necessarily be held strictly responsible for the results of the introduction of such an element into his life. So much must depend on the cha- racter of the lady herself, as to whether his marriage increases or diminishes his power for good, that little can be said on that head which does not equally apply to the whole lottery of married life. But that the delicate tact of woman may find it more easy to solve some of the less clearly defined problems in the relations between the Prince of Wales and the Crown will be at once admitted as applicable to any princess ; and the social influences which must flow from any well regulated course of action through the imitative feature of female character need not be pointed out. But in its main and most important effects, the influence and position of the Princess of Wales is too con- tingent upon her own character and that of her husband to render any generalizations particularly instructive.

L-1301. -EDWARD OF CAERNARVON.

On the 25th of April, 12F.,4, Eleanor, the wife of Edward I., gave birth at Caernarvon to a son, who received his father's name of Edward. Two male heirs apparent to the Crown had died in infancy—the third, Prince Alphonse, still survived, but had exhibited such symptoms of bodily weakness that the eldest daughter of the King, Eleanor, a healthy girl, already grown up, was looked upon as the eventual successor to the crown. Wales had just been subjugated by the arms of the English monarch, and he was at Ryddlan Castle when he received the joyful news. The messenger was richly rewarded, and Edward hastened to Caernarvon, and, if we may believe the local tradi- tion, presented the infant prince to the Welsh chieftains, with the words, " Bich Dyn 1" "This is your man 1" Other accounts amplify this simple and natural address into a canning juggle of the king's, who presented his infant son to his new subjects as his fulfilment of a promise made to them that they should have for their prince one of their own countrymen, blamelsss in life, and who could not speak a word of English. A Welsh nurse, "Mary of Caernarvon," was sought for the new-born prince, and the wily king evidently tried by every means in his power to engraft his son on the loyal affections of the natives. A few months after the birth of this second son, took place the death of the eldest, Prince Alphonso, " excessively bewailed," says a chronicler of the time, "by the English people, on account of his very great comeliness and worth." Young Edward then became the heir to the Crown, and all hopes, if they ever existed among the Welsh, of a partial independence, must have vanished. We have unusually ample means for elucidating the early life of this prince, not only from the entries in the royal household books, but from a large collection of letters—copies in the hand- writing of his secretary of those written by him in the year 1304. We learn that during his early years he was the object of almost unlimited indulgence. King Edward loved magnificence himself, and he surrounded his son with all the luxuries of the age. At the same time he exercised personally, as well as through the officers of his own household, a complete surveillance over the household of the prince, the money for his daily subsistende issuing from the king's exchequer. But, as within these limits the prince seems to have been left very much to follow the bent of his fancy in his choice of amusements and companions, it is not surprising that frequent collisions took place between the holders of the purse and the youthful dispenser of its contents. Unhappily there was no confidence between the king and prince. The former failed to find in his son the self-reliant and ambitious qualities which formed the staple of his own cha- racter; the prince, on the other hand, stood in too much awe of his father ever to apply to him directly on any subject. The king was naturally passionate and impatient of weakness of any kind. The prince was easy-tempered, self-indulgent, and open to the solicitations of any flatterer. He lost his mother when he was in his sixth year, and her place was filled first by his elder sisters (who, with one exception, soon had husbands and separate establishments), and afterwards by a stepmother. Between these ladies and the prince there seems to have been much reciprocal affection and confidence, he employing them often as intercessors on his behalf with his father. His own leading tastes were music and horses. It m'ght almost seem as if his native air of Wales had inspired him with the love of minstrelsy and minstrels. His love of horses seems to have found an odd partner and abettor in the Archbishop of Canterbury, who actually incurred the charge of treason from the king for his complicity with the prince in some of his expenses. We find Prince Edward had a "Primer" bought for hint, but how much he benefited by its contents we are unable to say. As he was inordinate in all that he did, as well as indiscriminate in his favouritism in connection with the indulgence of his tastes, it is not surprising that a contemporary chronicler should, while admitting his grace and strength, have added, as the "current report," that he "despised the society of nobles, and clove to that of buffoons, and minstrels, and players, and stablefolk, and labourers, and watermen, and sailors, and to people of such low vocation generally." That he loved boating and water sports we gather from his own letters ; that he liked to sur- round himself with valets is also evident. We can well understand that there was little love lost between him and the proud young nobles, who might despise some of his tastes and could not stoop to his humours. The chronicler adds, as the common report, that he loved to give magnificent convivial entertainments, that he was ad- dieted to drinking, and was talkative in his cups, so that he betrayed the secrets of his friends, and would strike the bystanders for light cause ; that he was more ready to follow others' counsel than his own ; lavish in giving, but more ready to promise than to perform. That Prince Edward was wanting in the sense of self-respect and personal dignity seems evident, and this and his drunken brawls may have led to the imputation cast on him by " Min the Tanner" who disputed his legitimacy at his accession,—that his manners were rude, and betrayed the blood of a churl. He was so far " inconstant " that he probably persevered in nothing for long together, and restlessly wandered from place to place. But his leading tastes seem to have been somewhat firmly fixed, and though careless and ill-judged in his choice of friends, he seems to have been very constant in his attachments and devoted to the furtherance of their interests. For them he importuned (though, in the first case, not directly) king, queen, princesses and their husbands, ministers of state, foreign ambassadors, officers of the king's exchequer, the king's judges, mayors and corporations, church dignitaries, and religious houses. In the great majority of cases the applications bear on the face of them their own con- demnation as improper or foolish. His associates get into brawls and prison, and he seeks to rescue them from the consequences by solicitations to their judges to pack the juries. He solicits for his friends almost all the benefices that become vacant. He begs Hugh le Despenser to pardon "our well-beloved John de Bonynge," who had broken into that gentleman's park. A less creditable interference is intended to prevent a robber who had applied for oblivion of his past offences from obtaining it, on account of his alleged evil disposition to the prince and slanders respecting him. This looks as if some guilty community of interests had once existed between the prince and the robber, of which the latter had been making use, possibly for purposes of extortion.

In the year 1299 there came to England one Arnold de Gaves- ton, a Gaston gentleman, who had been a prisoner in France during the recent war with that country. Probably on account of his sufferings in the king's cause, Gaveston obtained a place for his son Piers about the prince's person. Piers was handsome, accomplished, witty, cunning, and insolent. He soon obtained a fatal ascendancy over the mind of the prince, and led him into such flagrant misconduct that Walter Langton, Bishop of Chester, the high treasurer, whose pecuniary relations with the prince were probably not of the most pleasant character, thought fit frequently to reprove the prince's favourite for misleading his master. This bred great ill-feeling between the prince and the treasurer, which at length, in the year 1304, came to a serious crisis. The prince grossly insulted the treasurer, and this being reported to the king, he banished his son from his court for nearly half a year, and for some weeks prohibited any one from supplying him with money. The prince was put to great straits, but at last, on apologizing to the treasurer, he was forgiven, and through the intercession of the queen be seems to have procured the readmission of Gaveston, whom he fondly calls "Perot," to his household, from which he would appear to have been dismissed.

The political influence of such a prince could hardly be great under a sovereign so determined and energetic as King Edward On the 1st of August, 1297, at a great council held at London, to pave the way for the king's expedition to France, the prince stood by his side, and received the fealty of the nobility, being appointed nominal regent during his father's absence. There was then great opposition to a tallage of the king's, and he managed to lull the storm for a time by fair words, and an appeal to their sympathies in behalf of his young son. But after his depar- ture to the Continent, when an order came to levy the tillage, the barons and citizens assembled in a threatening manner, and the young prince being hurried up by his council to pacify them, the so-called statute De Tallagio non Concedenlo, a re-enactment of a clause of King John's Charter, was passed under his auspices. This war with France involved a marriage scheme. The Count of Flanders, the ally of Edward, had a daughter, Philippa, about Prince Edward's age. He appears to have seen the lady Philippa, and-to have been pleased with her. The young lady and her father also desired the match, and King Edwar 1 was for a time bent' onit. The King of France, however, had other views. He inveigled- the count and his daughter to Paris, and kept them both close prisoners. King Edward, who had pledged himself in the most solenui manner to the count not to give up the match ; or, if the King of France continued to detain the lady Philippa, to betroth his son-to her younger sister, finding it at length to his interest to make peace with France, abandoned his ally and broke all his pledges. In 1299, he himself married a sister of the King of France, and a match was agreed on between Prince Edward and. a daughter of the same king, the Princess Isabelle, then a little child ten years younger than her proposed husband. The luckless Count of Flanders and his daughter both died in a French prison. No wonder, then, that the wretched event of this French match, in the tragedy of Berkeley Castle, was popularly regarded as a judgment of heaven on the perjury of King Edward. This year, it must also be noted, was the date of the arrival of the Gaveston family in England. The formal betrothal of Edward and Isabelle did not take place till the year 1303, and the marriage followed his accession to the Crown.

In the summer. of 1300, King Edward took his son with him in an expedition to. Scotland, and the prince led what was called the " Shining Battalion" in an encounter with the Scots near Irvine. In the following year, 1301, the king, by charter, granted to this son and his heirs, kings of England, the principality of Wales, with the exception of the male and town of Montgomery (added in the same year), and also the earldom of Chester, and granted him letters-patent for both dignities. The charter, which com- pletes the grant of the whole principality of Wales, bears date the 10th of May, 1301. In the summer of 1303, the new Prince of

Wales was again with his father in a military expedition to Scot- land, and, marching westward, with a portion of the army, wintered at Perth. Thence, as we have seen, he returned to in- cur his father's displeasure in 1304. In the following year, again, the chroniclers tell us, "King Edward put his son Prince Edward in prison, because he had riotously broken into the park of Walter Langton, Bishop of Chester, and destroyed the deer. And because the prince had done the deed by the procurement of a lewd and wanton person, one Piers Gaveston, the king banished him (Gaveston) out of the realm, lest the prince, who delighted much in his company, might, by his evil and wanton conduct, fall into evil and naughty rule." Once more the kilg endeavoured to rouse his son to a nobler line of conduct. On the morrow of Whitsuntide, 1306, before the Scotch expedition in that year, in a splendid assembly at Westminster, he conferred the honour of knighthood on Edward, who then, in his turn, knighted 300 gen- tlemen, who were to be his companions in arms. He was also in- vested by his father with the Duchy of Guienne. At the banquet which followed, King Edward made his celebrated vow to God and Two Swans, and the prince vowed, characteristically enough, that he would not remain two nights in the same place before he reached Scotland. He accordingly set out first, and ravaged the borders with such unsparing cruelty that even the stern old king reproved him. But Gaveston had now crept back to the prince, who had the effrontery to request the Bishop of Chester to ask of the king, for his favourite, the title of Count of Ponthieu. The reasurer reluctantly complied, and delivered the request to the king in the driest and most direct manner, apologizing for his share in the matter. The rage of the king knew no bounds. He said it was well for the treasurer that he was evidently an un- willing. agent, and ordered him to summon the prince to his presence. Edward came, and in person repeated his petition with reckless audacity. The king reviled him as no son of his, and de- clared that if it were not for the danger of anarchy in the king- dom he would disinherit him. He even went so far, in his pas- sion, as to seize his son and tear handfuls of hair from his head- He then placed him under arrest. The councillors who had ac- companied the king to Scotland were summoned, and Gaveston being called before them, was compelled to take an oath that he would never accept a gift of lands from the prince. A decree, converted into a solemn Act of Parliament, was then passed, February, 1307, by which Gaveston was exiled for ever from the kingdom ; and the Prince of Wales was made to swear that he would never confer titles or estates on his favourite. But in July all these solemn injunctions became a mere mockery. The hand of death then removed the stern king who stood between Prince Edward and his associates. There are many strange stories told of the means by which the dying monarch tried to bind down his successor to a prosecution of the war with Scotland, and on peril of his paternal curse never to recall Gaveston ; but to deal justly by the remaining members of the royal family, and by the people of England. But Gaveston, who was lingering, it is said, near the coast, was soon again at the side of his royal

friend. The rich earldom of Cornwall—held hitherto by members of the royal family—was thought the fitting reward of his past services and sufferings, while his enemy the treasurer, Walter Langton, was stripped of his offices and flung into a dungeon. The best vindication of the conduct of this prelate is the fact that the prince's debts, at the death of his father, amounted to 28,000/.—a sum, as a biographer remarks, which would be represented by nearer a half than a quarter of a million of money of the present value l It must be added that the prince at once paid this sum, as well as his father's debts, which were considerable, out of the exchequer. The fate of King Edward IL is too well known to require more than a word. The passage from his French marriage in January, 1308, to his deposition in January, 1327, and his murder in the September of the latter year, was natural, and, with his character and that of the times, inevitable.

II.-1313.—EDWARD OF WOODSTOCK (commonly called " The BLACK PRINCE ").

It will be observed that we pass over a generation. It is the fact that Edward IIL never bore the title of Prince of Wales. The dignity merged in the Crown on the accession of Edward of Caernarvon to the throne, and no new grant of it was made by him to his heir, who appears in the rolls simply as Earl of Chester. Indeed, Edward III. had not emerged from boyhood into youth when the revolution broke out which subverted his father's throne ; nor had he completed his fifteenth year when that father was murdered. For some time after his accession he

was a puppet in the hands of his mother and her paramour ; and, of course, the same remark applies still more strongly to the last year or two of his father's life. He does not therefore fall within the province of our subject-matter, and we may pass at once to his celebrated son.

EDWARD, surnamed the "Black Prince" (from the colour of his armour), the eldest son of King Ed ward III., by Philippa of Hainault, was born at Woodstock, on the 15th of June, 1330— when his father had scarcely completed his eighteenth year. We are told of the great expectations formed of his future career from the unusual size and beauty of the infant. It was natural that he should be the pride of his young father, and as he grew up should become his constant companion in arms. From his earliest years he was instructed in all the maxims and trained in the accomplishments of the splendid school of chivalry in which King Edward occupied a central position. Taught to exercise himself in miniature tourneys, and, surrounded by his father's most trusted and bravest warriors and the flower of the English youth, young Edward showed a precocious aptitude for the position assigned to him. He soon became known far and wide as the image and rival of his father's magnificence and heroism. Such a son the first Edward had vainly sighed for. The similarity of character between father and son seems to have been so great, and their harmony of feeling during the greater part of their common lives so complete, that we are presented at once with a singular contrast to the relation of the first Prince of Wales and his father. Though both Edward HE and his son were lavish in their expen- diture, it was always associated with the dignity and glory of the nation ; and those who were called to participate in it were the noblest of tbe land in every sense of the word. Courtesy, generosity, modesty of demeanour and language, knightly honour, and a royal hospitality were the virtues which young Edward learnt from the moral code of chivalry. There were, of course, grave omissions in its requirements when compared with our modern canons. Cruelty and savage revenge were sanctioned under very artificial restrictions ; and though the free spirit of the English, and the peculiar composition of a large part of the English armies inspired the prince with more respect for the lower orders, who stood outside the sacred pale of chivalry, than was prevalent on the Continent among the votaries of that " gentle" school, yet it is evident that he acquiesced to a considerable extent in the relative estimate placed by the ideas of those times on the lives of gen- tlemen and, canaille, when these latter were not free-born Englishmen. From the charge of savage cruelty, when under the influence of those fearful fits of passion to which he, as well as his father and great-grandfather, were constitutionally subject, Prince Edward cannot be vindicated without shutting our eyes to facts and straining our notions of morality. But, if stern and unbend- ing on such occasions, he was open even then to the influence of devoted heroism, and the only way to disarm his anger was to encounter it with a dauntless spirit corresponding to his own.

He was created Prince of Wales, " with the consent of Parlia- ment," on the 12th of May, 1343, having been made Earl of Chester, and invested with the county and the castles of Chester, Ryddlan, and Flint, on the 18th of March, 1333. He was also invested with the duchy of Cornwall, by charter, of the 17th of Al arch, 1337, having been created in the Parliament immediately preceding. This is the first case of the creation of a duke in Erg- land ; and, by the words of the charter, the castles, lordships, &c., as well in Cornwall as elsewhere, are created into a duchy, and are settled on him and the firstborn sons of himself, and of his heirs, kings of England. The grant of the principality had been immediately preceded by a solemn investiture with circlet, ring, and rod, for Wales, and with the girding on of the sword for the earldom of Chester.

But the honour of knighthood was reserved for a more martial occasion—on the heights above La Hogue, when he had just com- pleted his sixteenth year ; and on the 26th of August, 1346, the battle of Crecy afforded him the opportunity of meriting his newly acquired spurs, King Edward giving him the post of honour, and refusing to derogate from his reputation by reinforcing him. The defeat of Alencon's splendid chivalry was the basis of the military reputation of the prince. Among those who fell before him was the blind King of Bohemia, John of Luxenburg, whose motto, "Ich Dien," the prince adopted as his own ; and thence- forward he and his father ran for many years side by side a career of military glory by land and sea. At the siege of Calais, which fol- lowed on Crecy, young Edward appears on the scene in the gene- rous character of an intercesser, though an unsuccessful one, with his father, for the lives of the burgesses of the town. We gladly note this act, which we are afraid was an exceptional one in the

life of the Black Prince• A Tess pleasing episode in his career, which occurred after his return to England, was his unsparing severity in the suppression of a revolt of his own licgemen of the county of Chester caused by some exactions in the prince's name. The lavish expenditure of the prince probably lay at the bottom of the revolt, though his council may be immediately responsible for it. Attended by his chief justice, who accom- panied him to hang the chief rebels, Edward swept through the county, and was only appeased by the proffer of the sum of 5,000 marks. On his return from this expedition the prince, seeing the decayed condition of the church in Vale Royal, built by Edward I., devoted 500 of the marks thus obtained to its renovation. His religious feelings indeed, after the fashion of those days, were at all times conspicu- ous. In his letters and in his public addresses the ascription of all the glory to God, and the invocations of Him and the holy saints are remarkable even in that age of devout vows. Notwithstanding, or possibly in consequence of his occa- sional sternness, the Black Prince continued throughout his life to be the especial favourite of the English people in general, and the gracious, gentle, and unassuming manners which were habitual to him, when not incensed, were remembered in far wider circles than the limited ones affected by his ferocious moods. In the year 1349, the king and Prince of Wales gained fresh laurels on another element by the defeat of a Spanish marauding fleet, off Rye. In this engagement, young Edward lost one of his most valued personal friends and constant asso- ciates, Sir John de Goldsborough, whose manor in Yorkshire is now held by the Lascelles, Earls of Harewood. Both father and son equally bewailed his loss as an irreparable one, and the creation of fourscore knights was considered to indicate the king's estimate of the void left by his death.

A truce with France had ensued on the fall of Calais,

and lasted till the year 1355. On the renewal of the war, the Black Prince and his father held separate commands,—th king in the north and the prince in the south of France. Prince Edward's marches through the latter devoted dis- strict displayed once more his fiercer mood –indeed, be an- nounced that he came to destroy, rather than to conquer. His flying expeditions swept the country of all its supplies for the use of his army, which, at times, seems to have been reduced to curi- ous straits ; the horses, the historians assure us, being even intoxi- cated with wine, in default of water, amidst the boisterous hilarity of the soldiers. It was, indeed, a wild, reckless campaign, which both the prince and his followers seem to have entered upon very much as they n ould on a drinking bout. Meanwhile John, King of France, was watching his opportunity, and at last bore down on the enfeebled army of the English prince with overwhelming forces. We refrain from giving numbers, as they are quite un- reliable in the writers of those days. After some negotiation—in which the arrogance and self-confidence of the French king were contrasted with the firm reply of the Black Prince, "England shall never have to pay a ransom for my bones"—the battle of Poictiers was fought on the 19th of September, 1356. This was the greatest achievement of Prince Edward, and terminated in the defeat, with great slaughter, of the French army, and the capture of King John and his younger son Philip. " The Prince of Wales," says Froissart, " who was as courageous and cruel as a lion, took great pleasure this day in fighting and chasing his enemies." His letter announcing the victory displays the finer qualities of the English hero ; it is full of manly modes'y and devout gratitude to God. His treatment of his royal captives met, to their full extent, the requirements of the law of chivalry with respect to noble prisoners of war. That which to modern feelings may seem doubtful taste in the triumphal entry into London—the exhibition of the captive king on a splendid white charger, while his conqueror rode beside bins on a black palfrey—seems to have been in strict accordance with the ideas of the times, and King John appears to have been far more occupied in admiring the beauty of the fair young Englishwomen, who, suspended in bird- cages from the houses, scattered tinsel flowers on the procession, than in any moody thoughts on his own position.

The next event of importance in the life of the Prince of Wales was his marriage. Several matches had been proposed and broken off before Edward made choice for himself of his relative Joan, called the Fair Maid of Kent, the daughter of his great- uncle, the Earl of Kent, beheaded at the commencement of the reign. Joan had been contracted, if not married, as a child, to Montecute, Earl of Salisbury, and being divorced from him, or her betrothal to him renounced, while still a young girl, she was married to an elderly knight, Sir Thomas Holland, created there-

upon Earl of Kent. She had been left a widow only three months when, on October 10th, 1361, she became the wife of her cousin, the Prince of Wales. It was a love match, offending king and queen, particularly the latter, for Philippa had a poor opinion of the morals of her beautiful daughter-in-law, and some scandal attached to Prince Edward himself in respect to the lady's previous married life. Joan was thirty-three years of age, and the mother of several children ; but the prince himself had attained the age of thirty-one, and king, queen, and people were all eager for his speedy marriage. Much of the popularity enjoyed by her husband soon attached to Joan herself, and this somewhat romantic royal match, which looked so ambiguous at -first, was unattended with any public scandals, though the strange dying request of the princess that she might be buried with her former husband, instead of her royal consort, may justify a suspicion that their private harmony was not so unbroken as the public believed. But Joan certainly behaved admirably on all public occasions, and her courage and good sense might, had her life been prolonged, have saved her son, Richard II., from the ambition of the House of Lancaster. After the marriage, the prince and princess gave way to their common love of magnificence, and their house on Fish-street-hill was the centre of a splendid court and the scene of numberless costly entertainments. The king created his son Prince of Aquitaine and Gascony ; and on the suggestion, it would seem, of his younger brother, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, he was directed by his father, in 1363, to take up his abode in Guienne. Here he held a still more splendid court for several years—all the most illustrious and famous of European celebrities and sovereign princes in abundance being his guests. At length, in the year 1366, ten years after his victory at Poictiers, he was incited to martial action once more by sympathy for the alleged wrongs of King Pedro of Castile (sur- named the Cruel), whom his brother Enrique, assisted by the French, under the celebrated Du Guesclin, had driven from his throne. A fugitive sovereign, suffering at the hands of his old enemies, the French, and throwing himself on his generosity, was sure to excite Edward's sympathies ; and these were justified, in a political point of view, by the danger of having a French depen- dency on the southern side of the Pyrenees, by the proffer by Pedro ofthe province of Gallicia, and by other profuse promises and solemn written bonds. On the strength of these engagements, Edward raised money in every direction, selling his own plate, andbecoming security to a large amount to his chief nobles for dis- bursements, and thus equipping a gallant army. His star was still in the ascendant, and on the 3rd of April, 1367, the battle of Najera, in- which the forces of Enrique and Du Guesclin were routed by the English prince, phiced Pedro once more on the throne of Castile. But he then repudiated all his material promises to his ally, and Edward returned to Bordeaux beggared in his finances, with an army decimated by disease and toil, and himself in a state of health u hich threatened an early termination to his career. Even at the time of his marriage people had spoken doubtfully of his living to succeed his father, and ever since his health had been gradually declining ; but the Castilian campaign probably derided his fate. The remaining years of his government in France are full of melancholy and disaster. His penury, in conse- quence of the Castilian campaign, compelled him to raise money by levying a heavy tax on li is subj cts of Guienne. While he spent his money lavishly among them, none were more loyal than his French subjects; but he ceased to be popular when he demanded money in his turn. Probably, the impcot was levied in the harsh and imperious manner which the Black Prince sometimes displayed in dealing with opposition. At any rate, it provoked a general insurrection, and the new King of France, being appealed to by the insurgents, summoned Edward, as his vassal for Guienne, to appear before him and answer for his conduct. Edward re- turned a furious answer that he would do so at the head of an• invading army. But health and resources were wanting to such an undertaking. Town and castle fell one after the other before the rebels and their French allies. One final effort the Black Prince was roused to make. His favourite and favoured city of Limoges had admitted the enemy within its walls. Edward, stung to madness by this treason and ingratitude, rose from his sick bed, and descended suddenly and with fury on the devoted city, retook it, and was only arrested in his bloody retributive work on the garrison and inhabitants by his admiration for the valour of some nobles who were defending their lives with the courage of desperation. But nature soon gave way again, and at last, in January, 1371, Edward was obliged to return to England, to recruit, if possible, his shattered health, leaving John of Gaunt to carry on the war, and ultimately to negotiate a disadvantageus peace.

Here ends the martial career of the Black Prince, and for the next five years we hear little of him, except that the fatal disease was slowly but surely gaining ground upon him, and that all men now regarded his death as imminent, from year to year and from month to month. Strange to say, it is at the close of this period of bodily decay and inaction that the political action of the Prince of Wales makes itself first distinctly felt, and that his name becomes inseparably connected with the civil as it is with the military history of England. The long reign of Edward III. was drawing to a close in gloom at home as well as abroad. The king, although he had only completed his fifty-ninth year, ex- hibited unmistakable signs of mental as well as bodily decay. As lie gradually sank into something at times approaching dotage, those about h;m of more and more the ascendant over him, which they seem to have unscruplously abused. Among these was a married woman of much beauty, named Alice Perrers, who had been a lady-in-waiting on Queen Philippa. For two years before the death of the queen, which took place in 1369, there had been talk of undue intimacy between this lady and the king, and she had since been installed as his avowed mistress, presid- ing over court festivities, and at a public tournament taking the principal place under the title of the " Lady of the Sun." Not satisfied with this, she is accused of grasping at everything she could extort from the doting king—money, places, preferments, the late queen's jewels, all went the same way, or through that one channel. She is said to have intruded into courts of justice and the royal council board, and dictated to judges and ministers, interfering with the course of justice and the government of the land. We have seen that John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, had been the instrument of removing the Black Prince to Guienne in 1363. Since that time, either personally, or, if absent, through his creatures, he had, in conjunction with Alice Perrers, governed the old king and England. How far the charges of misgoverning both brought against him are true or exaggerated it is not possible with our present information to determine for certain. But we know of him that he was a great patron of learning and learned men—of a shrewd and scheming, if not a wise head—a favourer of Wycliff and the Lollard heresy—and, at the same time, living in open adultery with Catherine Swinford, the sister of the celebrated Caxton's wife. He was also unconciliatory in his manners, and, consequently, personally very unpopular. The higher clergy hated him for his heresy, the common people had no sympathy with his tastes, and hated him from a strong suspicion that he was planning to supersede the Black Prince and his family in the succession. Though active in the field as well as restless in council, Lancaster was not cast in the mould of a hero of chivalry, and, therefore, contrasted unfavourably in the popular eyes with his gallant brother. We must remember this, as well as that the chroni- clers of the times were monks, when we endeavour to appreciate his real character. But, allowing for this, there seems to have been a substratum of solid truth in the feeling against him, and it is clear that it was firmly rooted in the gentry and middle &asses. His support of Alice Perrers is much against him, and his political associates at this time do not give us a high opinion of his patriotism. He afterwards, it is well known, deserted Wycliff, and made his peace with the church without much scruple. But be this as it may, it is certain that after the return of the Black Prince to England, a party gradually formed itself under his auspices, which only awaited "au opportunity, and some improve- ment in the health of the Prince of Wales, to show itself openly. In the early part of 1376 the opportunity occurred. Lancaster was absent in France, negotiating a peace, and the Black Prince, under the influence of that final effort of nature which so often immediately precedes death, awoke from his long lethargy, and roused himself for a last effort to overthrow the power and schemes of Lancaster, and secure his young child in the succession. His eldest son, Edward of Angouleme, had died

in his seventh year, and now a boy of nine, Richard of Bordeaux, stood in the due line of succession. After him came the Clarence branch, represented by the family of' Edmund Mortimer, Earl of Mara, who had married the heiress of Lionel, Edward III.'s next son. March participated with the Black Prince in his dread of the ambition of the next in succession after their families, John of Lancaster, and stood forward as the ostensible head of the new opposition. The soul of the party, however, was the celebrated 1Villiam of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, who had formerly been chancellor, but had been removed through the influence of Lancaster and his party. Wykeham,

whose name is associated with splendid charitable endowments and noble scholastic institutions, was also a shrewd politician and man of the world. He and the Black Prince were mutually much attached, and the latter appointed him one of his executors. Whether in consequence of his own disgrace, or from friendship to Prince Edward, or patriotic motives, he now set himself to work to organize what their opponents called the "party of the knights," probably from the leading part taken by the knights of the shire. With him was associated for the time Courtenay, Bishop of London, the active opponent of Wycliff. But the party was not a retrograde church one, and though a common hatred of John of Gaunt ,irobably united those who differed widely on many points, we must not suppose that we are reading of a struggle in which civil and religious liberty stood on opposite sides. A parliament, called afterwards, with grateful emphasis, " the Good Parliament," met on the 28th of April, 1376, and in the Commons the popular party were led by Sir Peter de la Mare, a knight of Herefordshire, and steward to the Earl of March. But it is said they were in constant communication and counsel with the Black Prince. Yet one of the most striking bills passed by the popular majority in this House of Commons was a vehement attack on the extortions and venality of the Pope, and a strong demand for the reformation of the church. The Commons, as the rolls inform us, having held a conference with the Lords, renewed, for three years longer, the subsidies granted in the last Parliament, which were now near the time of their expiring, but desired to be excused making any further grant on account of the distresses of the times, unless any extraordinary event should happen, in which case they would aid the king to the utmost of their ability. They then prayed that, considering the evils of the country through so many wars and other causes, and that the officers now in the king's service are insufficient without further assistance for so great a charge, the council be strengthened by the addition of ten or twelve bishops, lords, or others, to be constantly at hand, so that no business of weight should be despatched without the consent of all, nor smaller matters without that of four or six. The king assented, and then these councillors and all other officers were prohibited from taking presents in the course of their duty. The " Commons then appeared in Parlia- ment, protesting that they had the same goodwill as ever to assist the king with their lives and fortunes, but that it seemed to them that if their said liege lord had always possessed about him faithful Councillors and good officers, he would have been so rich that he would have had.-no need of charging his Commons with subsidy or tallage, considering the great ransoms of the French and Scotch kings, and of so many other prisoners ; and that it appeared to be for the private advantage of some near the king, and of others by their collusion, that the king and kingdom are so impoverished and the Commons so ruined. And they promised the king that if he would do speedy justice on such as should be found guilty, and take from them what law and reason permit, with what had been already granted in Parliament, they would engage that he should be rich enough to maintain his wars for a long time without much charging his people in any manner." They then alleged, as particular grievances, the removal of the staple from Calais, where it had been fixed by Parlia- ment, through the procurement and advice of the said pri- vate councillors about the king ; the participation of the same persons in lending money to the king at exorbitant usury ; and their purchasing at a low rate for their own benefit old debts from the Crown, the whole of which they had afterwards induced the king to repay to themselves. For these and for many more misdemeanours, the Commons accused and impeached the Lords Latimer and Nevil, with four merchants. Latimer, who had been chamberlain, was the creature of Lancaster. An ordinance was also made that " whereas many women prosecute the suit of others in courts of justice by way of maintenance, and to get profit thereby, which is displeasing to the king, he forbids any woman henceforward, and especially Alice Perrers, to do so, on pain of for- feiting all their goods and suffering banishment from the kingdom." The names of those added by these parliamentary proceedings to the king's council of course included William of Wykeham and a majority of his party ; but one or two were added who, if not strong friends of Lancaster, were known not to be actively hostile to him. Among these was Henry Lord Percy, who, once Lan- caster's strong opponent, was now, it is said, conciliated by the grant of the marshal's staff, and was with him in France. This Percy was the well-known father of Harry Hotspur, and the future friend and enemy of Lancaster's son, Henry of Bolingbroke. With these remarkable acts we may dismiss the Good Parliament, which was dissolved in the following July. Such were the measures with which the last weeks of the Black Prince's life are associated. But nature now had her way, and on the 8th of June, 1376, the Prince of Wales breathed his last. On his death, Lancaster hurried back to England, accompanied by Lord Percy. All that had been done by the influence of his brother was speedily revoked. Alice Perrers resumed her sway, and Sir Peter de is Mare and William of Wykeham both felt the force of the duke's resentment, notwithstanding the riotous protests of the citizens of London ; a signal proof of the basis on which the popular party had rested.

I11.-1376.—RICHARD OF BORDEAUX.

As this prince was only nine years old at the death of his father, the Black Prince, and only ten when he succeeded his grandfather, Edward III., on the throne, we have but a few words to say respecting him. He was born at Bordeaux, on the 6th of January, 1387, just as his father was about to eat forth on his unfortunate Spanish campaign. James, King of Majorca, and Charles, King of Navarre, were then visitors at the Black Prince's court, and the former of these, together with Richard, Bishop of Agen, after whom the child was named, stood sponsors for him. After the death of his elder brother, Edward, the hopes of the people of England rested on him ; and his great beauty added to this feeling of enthusiasm, while his real character, habitually indolent and self-indulgent, with intervals of spas- modic activity, and resembling that of King John more than any of our kings, was not yet known or foreseen. After his father's death the House of Commons went so far as to petition the Lords to admit the young prince among them as Prince of Wales ; but the lords replied that the king alone bad the power of taking the initiative in this matter. Still the Duke of Lancaster was obliged so far to yield to the popular feeling as to allow the king to make the creation, as well as those of Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester, by charter of the 20th November following. On Christmas-day in that year young Richard sate next his grandfather and before all his uncles at a grand banquet, and on a Sunday in the following February 130 " prime citizens" of London rode down, splendidly attired as mummers, with bands of music, to Kennington, where Richard and his mother resided, and offered their congratulations on the prospect of his speedy succession—making at the same time munificent gifts in money and articles of gold.. This was probably meant as a demon- stration against Lancaster. On the 21st of June following their wishes were fulfilled, to their own bitter cost. We should add that in the 21st year of Richard's reiga the earldom of Chester was erected into a principality, and in accordance with the new limitations has ever since been granted in conjunction with the principality of Wales.

IV.-1399.—HENRY OF MONMOUTH.

Ten years had passed from the accession of Richard IL, when, on the 9th of August, 1387, Mary of Bohun, the wife of Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, eldest son of John of Gaunt, gave birth in the castle of Monmouth to an heir to the house of Lancaster. He was sent, it is said, at the early age of eleven, to Queen's College, Oxford, of which his uncle, afterwards Cardinal Beaufort (a son of John of Gaunt by Catherine Swinford), was chancellor. But his name does not appear on the books, and he probably was only under the care and training of his learned and astute relative. Then came the celebrated challenge between Henry Bolingbroke and Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, which gave King Richard an opportunity of banishing the former for ten years, the latter for life, with confiscation of his property. The king soon remitted Bolingbroke's sentence to four years, but on the death of John of Gaunt, in February, 1399, the king seized the property of the House of Lancaster, and made Bolingbroke's sentence the same as Norfolk's. Young Henry of Monmouth was placed under slight restraint and kept near the king's person, who, however, treated him and another captive nephew, Hum- phrey, son of the late Duke of Gloucester, with much kindness. This treatment appears to have made a very favourable lasting im- pression on young Henry. The king, whenhe se t out forIreland, car- ried Henry and Humphrey with him, landing with them at Water- ford, and marching through a wild and thickly wooded country, against an equally wild body of 3,000 Irish, who were entrenched in the woods, under MacMurchard, their titular king. Unable to penetrate to them, King Richard fired the woods and villages, and by their blazing light he, on Midsummer-eve, 1399, knighted young Henry, addressing him in these words :—" My fair cousin, henceforth be gallant and bold ; for unless you conquer you will have little name for valour !" The king soon after left

.county Waterford for Dublin, where a gay court was held, inter- rupted by the news of the landing of Henry Bolingbroke in Eng- land and the rapid progress of his arms. Richard, after address- ing young Henry in terms of commiseration for the probable loss of his inheritance through the treason of his father, and receiv- ing from him assurances of his own innocence in the matter, left the two young princes under restraint in Trym Castle, and sailed for England to encounter his melancholy destiny. On the depo- mition of Richard and election of Henry Bolingbroke as king, the latter's eldest son, of course, was released from his Irish prison, and returned to London, where, on the 15th of October in the same year, he was created Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester, in full Parliament, and was invested with the principality and duchy, together with the counties of Chester and Flint, "to him and his heirs, kings of England," by charters .of the same date. He was also declared Duke of Aquitaine and Lancaster in Parliament the day following. We gather from the .accounts of contemporaries that during these early years Prince Henry had acquired a great taste for, and attained to considerable proficiency in learning. He loved books and learned men, and he delighted in music as much as the luckless Edward of Caer- narvon—another tribute to the air of \Vales, in which Monmouth was then included. But he had other• tastes and abilities; and the state of the kingdom required all the united energies of father• and son to maintain the House of Lancaster on the throne. Rebellion after rebellion—first in favour of the real Richard, and then, after his death, in favour of pseudo-Richards, shook the throne of Bolingbroke. The Welsh, who chose to make Richard's quarrel their• own, were in full rebellion ; and against them their -own titular prince marched in the spring of 1401, as the nominal head of a powerful army. The prince's forces burnt and plun- dered, and marched up and down the land, but could not find Owen Glendower, the redoubtable Welsh chief, and scarcely any of his men. On the back of this fruitless warfare came the great aebellion of the Percies, which culminated in the battle of Shrews- bury, fought on July 21, 1403. In that desperate charge of Hots- pur's, when the royal standard sank and rose again three times, and the flower of the royal army fell fighting around it, while one arrow put an end to the life of the gallant rebel, another wounded the young Prince of Wales, then barely sixteen years of age, and in the thick of the battle. The prince afterwards presided at the " Commission of Mercy " held at Worcester, for pardoning those rebels who might submit. He then returned to his Welsh • campaigns, and at length, on the 11th of March, 1405, succeeded in bringing 8,000 of the enemy to a pitched engagement at .Grosmont, with very inferior forces. The Welsh were completely routed, 1,000 slain, and the heart of the rebellion broken. " Very trite it is," wrote the prince, " that victory is not to a multitude of people, but in the power of God." The king, in reward, bestowed on him the castle and estates of Framlingham. In 1407, he made a successful expedition into Scotland, and the next year, having

• completed his work in Wales, finally quitted that principality. He came to London, where the king gave him a mansion at Cold- -harbour, near Eastcheap. He was made President of the Council an 1409, and in the years 1410 and 1411 Warden of the Cinque Ports, Constable of Dover, and Captain of Calais, besides weceiving a revenue out of the duties on skins and wools.

The rolls of Parliament afford us ample proofs that during these last years of his father's reign the prince took a most active part in the government. Henry Bolingbroke at this period had been stricken with leprosy, and suffered much from epileptic fits. He was, therefore, secluded from the public sight, and often from public business, which drifted into the handsof his clever and ener- getic son, to whom foreign princes and foreign ambassadors ad- dressed themselves as if he had been the reigning sovereign. From the time when he first took part in the administration we have repeated entries in the rolls of the approbation of the Commons of his proceedings. Ho is again and again thanked by them for his services, and the king exhorted to bestow some mark -of favour on him. One extract from the rolls will illustrate the footing on which the prince stood with the majority of the Lower House at the close of the year 1407 :—

"On the 2nd December, 1407, being the last day of Parliament, after great heat and debate, the Speaker, in the name of the Commons, prayed the King to be graciously pleased to reward the Prince for his great labour, diligence, and troubles, many and frequent, in resisting the great rebellion of the Welsh. Whereof his Majesty most especially returned thanks to the Commons for their hearty goodwill in his behalf. And thereupon the said lord the Prince, most humbly kneel- ing, declared to our said Lord the King, and to all the estates of Parliament, in respect of the Duke of York, how that he had understood that divers obloquies and detrac-

tions had been put forth by certain evil-disposed persons, to the slander and derogation of the honourable estate and name of the said Duke. Wherein the lord the Prince made declara- tion for the said Duke, that if it had not been for his skill and good advice, himself the said Prince and those who were with him would have been in very great perils and desolation. And he farther added, in behalf of the said Duke, that if he had been one of the poorest gentlemen of the realm wishing to earn a good name and honour by service, the said Duke did so iu his own person labour and use his endeavours to give comfort and courage to all others who were of the same company ; and that in all his actions he is a true and valiant knight. And the said Speaker, in the name of the Commons, further prayed that all those who were with the said lord the Prince in Wales, and continued and stayed with him until his departure thence, might be re- warded and promoted according to their good desert ; and that the rest who fled and went off from the said Prince's company, without asking or obtaining leave in that behalf; might be punished and chastised, for example to others in time to come." The Duke of York, cousin of the prince, had been implicated in the rebellion of Mortimer, Earl of March, and was still under sus- picion on that account. He fell fighting at Agincourt by the side of the prince who hero intercedes for him. It appears that Prince Henry also bribed his stepmother, Queen Joanna, to obtain from the king leave for the Earl of March, to marry— a remarkable intercession in favour of the representative of the legitimate line, the House of Clarence. But young Henry seems to have been devoid of all the suspicious fears which animated his father.

We must now refer briefly to the stories of Henry of Monmouth's early excesses, rendered fatuous by Shakespeare. We have seen that he had a mansion given him by the king near Eastcheap. Were the years during which be took so constant and leading a part in the government, also partly devoted by the prince to wild debauchery in the neighbourhood of Eastcheap, as the great poet assumes? And was he committed to prison by Chief Justice Gascoigne for endeavouring to rescue a fol- lower of his from the hands of justice in open court? The latter story, and, indeed, all the stories of these excesses first. appear in the writers of the reign of Henry VIII. This silence may be explained possibly by the intervening wars of the Roses ; but it is, nevertheless, a striking fact that there is no trace of the alleged events in any contemporary record. The only thing which may give a colour to their truth is tl•e fact that in the year 1412, for some unknown cause, Prince Henry- ceased to be of the council, and lost his share in the government. But there is evidence that the king was then extremely jealous of him, and apprehensive of a design on his part to depose him from the Crown, and even on one occasion hastily quitted one of his houses for another on hearing of the prince's presence in Lon- don. It is said that Queen Joanna made ill-feeling between father and son ; but there is no proof of this. Certainly the probability is against personal debauchery and violence having been the cause of Prince Henry's disgrace.

His great friend in early life was Sir John Oldcastle, in right of his wife called Lord Cobham, the leader of the Lollards, a man of great learning, and an old and dis- tinguished soldier. We can find no evidence that any com- mon taint of heresy formed the bond between the prince and Oldcastle. The former always appears to have been orthodox, and opposed to the Lollards, though attached to his old friend by their common love of books and arms. But the king may have thought differently, and it must be remembered that the Lollards were accused of embracing along with their religious heresy dan- gerous republican notions. Did the king believe the prince to be scheming through them to upset his throne ? If there is any truth in the Gascoigne story, it may be a perverted or exaggerated account of some interference on behalf of a Lollard friend of Oldcastle's.

Oldcastle had served with the prince throughout his campaigns in Wales, and as late as 1411 commanded one of the divisions of the contingent sent in aid of the Duke of Burgundy. Neverthe- less, he appears in the old play of "the famous victories of Henry V.," among the companions of Henry, as " a low, worthless fellow, without a single spark of wit or humour to relieve his grovelling profligacy." He is an insignificant character in this play, but from his and another character in it Shakespeare caught the idea of Falstaff, which be has made so popular—altering the name to avoid (as a Protestant) the libel on Oldcastle,—as be himself hints in the epilogue to Henry IV., part 11.—" Falstaff

shall die of a surfeit, unless, indeed, he be already killed with your hard opinions ; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." If, then, the well known character of Oldcastle was thus libelled, why not that of Henry himself? We ar•e inclined to believe, indeed, that the early excesses of Edward of Caernarvon —joined to the facts of Prince Henry's alienation frcm his father, and his friendship to Oldcastle—are the real sources of the popular stories. The pranks of Edward bear a close resemblance to those attributed to Henry, and the name of one of the prince's corn- pan ion s—" our dear ser vent (Guill emot) Pointz"—actually appears in Shakespeare as that of one of Prince Henry's low associates. Such transpositions and repetitions of stories are very common in history.

Whether Prince Henry and his father were ever reconciled is very doubtful. We only know for certain that Henry IV. died on the 20th of March, 1413, and that one of the first acts of the new king was to cause the body of King Richard II. to be trans- ferred from its humble resting-place, and buried with great pomp by the side of his queen. Until the point as to his early life is settled, it is impossible to draw up a character of Prince Henry ; but from what is ascertained as fact, we cannot do otherwise than pass a highly favourable judgment on his conduct. The only doubt is as to his political conduct towards his father ; and the character of Hern•y Bolingbroke was such as to warrant a favourable interpretation of his sou's actions in this case also.

V.-1454.—EDWARD OF WESTMINSTER.

VI.-1471.—EDWARD OF THE. SANCTUARY. VII.-1483.- EDWARD OF MIDDLEHAM.

We next come to three young princes who have a tragic con- nection with each other. The first, the son of Henry VI. and Margaret of Anjou, was born in the palace at Westminster on October 13, 1453; and his birth, no doubt, by cutting off the suc- cession from Richard of York, who also represented through his mother the claims of the house of Clarence, precipitated the revolution which placed the house of York on the throne, and terminated with the young prince's death in or after the battle of Tewkesbury, flay 4, 1471. The second of these young princes, the son of King Edward (IV.) of York, the victor of Tewkesbury fight, and Elizabeth Woodville, was born on the 14th of November, 1470, in the Sanctuary at Westminster, where his mother had taken refuge during the brief resuscitation of the house of Lancaster under the auspices of Warwick, the King- maker." When or how he died is, and, perhaps, always will -nain a mystery ; but we know that after succeeding his

Edward V. he was deposed by his uncle, Richard or tihonce,ter, and soon after disappeared, in the year 1483. The third Prince Edward, born at Middleham Castle, in Yorkshire, in the year 1474, was the son of this Richard of Gloucester and the Lady Anne Nevile, widow of Edward of Westminster. Theirs is, indeed, a bond of death and ruin ! Edward of Westminster was born during one of his father's fits of melancholy imbecility. When carried to the king, first by his godfather, the Duke of Buckingham, and then by Queen Margaret, that he might bless him, and with the hope of rousing the wretched Henry, the latter only gazed vacantly on child and mother•. In the first year of his age, March 15, 1454, young Edward was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester by royal charter, confirmed in Par- liament the next day. Under the limitations of the Duchy of Cornwall, he required no new grant. Before he was two years old the civil war began, and henceforth his fortunes are those of his mother, Queen Margaret. When York recovered his Pro- tectorate, after the first battleat St. Alban's, and the king fell into his hands, Prince Edward had a sum of 10,000 marks annually granted to him by Parliament till lie should become eight years old. After the battle of Northampton, King Henry again fell into the hands of the Yorkists, and in a Yorkist Parliament, on the 31st of October, 1460, it was ordained that Prince Edward should be set aside, and that •Richard, Duke of York, should be called " Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester." On the 31st of December the new titular Prince of Wales was slain at Wakefield. When the battle of Barnet Heath again restored Henry to liberty, he knighted his son and thirty others. The battle of Towton drove all three to Scotland. After the battle of Hexham, in the spring of 1463, is said to have taken place the well known incident of the generous robber and Queen Margaret and her son. They at length found refuge in Flanders, and thence in Lorraine, where the young prince was placed under the tutorship of the leirned Sir John Fortescue. Then came the revolt of Warwick from Edward of York—the marriage of his daughter Anne to Edward of West-

minster—the restoration of King Henry—the second battle of Barnet, where Warwick fell—and last, the fight at Tewkes- bury, which closed the career of young Edward of Westminster.

Edward of the Sanctuary's brief life is merely that of his father• and his ambitious mother and uncles. He was only thirteen when be disappeared. He was created Prince of Wales and Earl; of Chester by charter, June 26, 1471 ; invested with the princi- pality and earldoms of Chester and Flint by charter, July 17, and created Duke of Cornwall in Parliament by patent of the- same date.

Young Edward of Middleham died suddenly on the 31st of March, 1484, when only ten years of age, to the intense pier of his. father, who had lavished honours on him, and put him forward• as his heir on all occasions. It was generally considered to be rt+ judgment of God for the mysterious fate of the other Edward in the preceding year. He was treated from his father's accession. as Duke of Cornwall, and created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester by charter, August 24, 1483.

VIII.-1489.—ARTHUR TUDOR. . IX.-1503.—HENRY TUDOR.

These brother princes, the S,MIS of Henry VII. and Elizabeth, of York, may be spoken of together. Arthur was born at Win- chester Castle, September 20th, 1486. Of Welsh origin himself,. the politic king chose for his fist-born the name of the Welds national hero. Henry Tudor was born at Greenwich, June 28, 1491. Arthur was placed under the tuition first of Bernard, Andreas, an Italian, and then, together with Isis brother, under that of a distinguished Greek scholar, Thomas Linacre. Both. princes seem to have been literally gorged with learning; but while Arthur's feebler mind became oppressed by it, Henrys robust constitution and petulant, restless spirit bore it gaily and lightly, and when a mere boy the latter corresponded with Erasmus, much to the pride of that learned man. Both princes were naturally apt at exercises. Arthur excelled in the use of the bow, and good archers of the time were called " true Prince Arthurs." Henry's stately air, even as a child, caused the ladies to give him the name of " the King." The private life of both seems to have been even-flowing, but nothing of note occurs in their lives till the match formed between the elder prince and the Princess Catherine, daughter of Ferdinand of Ar•r•agon. There were long delays in the negotiations for the marriage, and Arthur wrote plaintive and adoring Latin love-letters in abundance to Catherine, who replied in the same language. At last, on the 21st of May, 1501, the princess left the Alhambra, but did not reach Plymouth till the 2nd of October following. Arthur was at Ludlow Castle, but encoun- tered her on her road on the 5th of November. The next clay he was formally introduced to her by the king, and after a conversas. tion in Latin they were at once betrothed. The Prince was. then just fifteen, Catherine a year older. On the 12th of November they made a public entry into London. " The mayor,. aldermen, sheriffs, with other of the conservators, councillors„ and eiders of the City of London, so orderly with good policy had provided the said city, that the fellowship of every craft should,—' all things laid aparte,'—in the several liveries and, bodies of their names, be present at the coming of this most excellent princess. And for the said great number of crafts were barriers made on every side of the way, from the middle of Graceehurch street into the entering of the• churchyard of St. Paul's, that they might, from the comens and common people have their peace and ease, and also be seen." Near St. Paul's prince and princess lodged in separate houses. for the night. On the 14th of November they were married at St. Paul's, Prince Henry (a boy of ten) leading the bride into an from the church. In a fortnight the bride and bridegroom, departed for Ludlow Castle ; and there, on the 2nd of April fol- lowing, Prince Arthur expired, after a short and sharp idness. He had been created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester on the 1st of December, 1489, and invested by charter on the 27th of February following. King Henry—not to be dependent on the right of his wife—obtained a fresh grant by Parliament, in the first year of his reign (November 7th), of the Duchy of Cornwall to himself and to his first-born son. On the death of Prince Arthur it was decided that "first-born" meant "eldest surviving,:' and therefore that Prince Henry succeeded of right to the Duchy. He was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, February 18, 1503. In the June of the next year he was betrothed to his brother's widow—much against her will, it is said—be being only a boy of thirteen, while she herself was nineteen. When Prince Henry attained the age of fourteen, his father made him protest

against this betrothal as null and void, wishing, it would seem, to leave a loophole for escaping from the match. The match was afterwards delayed and nearly broken off by the King's project of himself marrying Juana, the sister of Catherine. The Prince and Catherine were forbidden to have any communication ; and from the severe measures adopted, it would seem that while Prince Maury- had assumed the character of an ardent lever, the lady herSelf had changed her mind respecting him, perhaps to some degree affected by the state of penury in which her father-in•law kept her. On the 25th of April, 1509, however, the death of the king released them from royal interference, and Henry at once married the widowed Princess of Wales. As Princes of Wales, neither Arthur nor Henry, except in the matter of their marriage matches, had any influence on political affairs, and the character of the latter belongs to his reign, and not to his minority. None of his sons were ever Princes of Wales.

X.-1610.—HENRY FREDERICK STUART. XI-1616.—CHARLES STUART.

Two more brother princes succeeded, standing in a somewhat similar relation to one another with the last two. James I., their father, was, like Henry VII., the founder of a new dynasty, and again we had the eldest son cut off prematurely on the verge of manhood, and the younger playing an important part in history.

But the loss seems really to have been much greater in the case of Prince Henry than of Prince Arthur. He was born at. Stirling,

on the 19th of February, 1594. The hopes of the English suc- cession attached to him from his birth, and lie was educated accordingly. Precocious in all that lie attempted, he soon learnt to ride, dance, and sing. Richard Preston, afterwards Earl of

Desmond, taught him the use of arms, and the Pope expressed a wish to undertake the superintendence of his education—

an offer which his mother, Anne of Denmark, wished to

accept ! On the accession of his father to the Crown of England, the latter (a great philosopher on paper, and for the good of others), wrote to him, " Let not this news make you proud or insolent; for a king's son and heir was ye before, and no more are ye yet. The augmentation that is hereby like to fall unto you is but in cares and heavy burthens !" In May, 1603, the prince, with his mother and his only sister, Elizabeth, two years his junior, left Holyrood for 'Windsor, where he arrived

at the end of June. On their way, among other festivities, they were entertained at Althorpe with a masque by Ben Jonson.

Everybody in England appeared to have made up their minds that the prince was to emulate the warlike fame of the Black Prince and Harry of Monmouth. Ben Jenson addressed him prophetically to th it effect -

" Shine bright and fixed as the Arctic star ;

And when slow time hath made you fit for war, Look over the salt ocean, and think where You may best lead us forth who grow up hero,

:against a day when our officious swords Shall speak our actions better than our words."

Lord Sp,nccr sent him a copy of De Comities' Memoirs of the French Wars, and Colonel Edwards expressed a similar hope when presenting him with a suit of armour and the works of Froissart sent him from Holland. His mother, a weak, perverse- tempered woman, nursed this warlike humour to annoy her husband, who wished to make a scholar rather than a soldier of

his son. The prince was entered at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1605, and had, besides, tutors and assistant tutors

in plenty ; but though not averse to learning, he never became absorbed in his books. He preferred the reading that bore on active life—travels and travellers' stories were his delight, and Adam Newton his tutor kept him supplied with letters from abroad. He liked also history, and made Lydyat his cbronographer and cosmographer. Naval affairs interested him greatly, and Sir Walter Raleigh drew up for him a treatise on naval architecture.

When a mere boy Pbineas Pett, one of the masters of Woolwich dockyard, made him a model ship, 28 feet by 15, which the prince called the "Disdain," and in which he made voyages on the Thames. His uncle, the King of Denmark, on his visit in 1606, presented him with his Vice-Admiral's vessel, worth £2,500. At a subsequent period he looked closely, though privately, after the

management of the navy and dockyards, and stood sturdily by his friend llamas Pett, when the latter was falsely accused of malversation. His skill in manly sports was considerable, parti- cularly at tennis. Here he came into collision with two noted in- dividuals. The king's Favourite, Carre, then Viscount Rochester, is said to have quarrelled with him at this game, and even struck him vend the young Earl of Essex, his playfellow, is said also to have struck the petulantprince on the head with a racket, because

he called him the son of a traitor. The prince is said to have subsequently made love to the young Lady Essex, and to have been supplanted by Rochester. His household, meanwhile, was formed on a magnificent scale, and the money which he or his courtiers ran through was enormous• But though the house was a gay one, and always in debt, the prince himself had a serious side to his character which was strongly marked. He allowed no swearing in his household ; after the gunpowder plot, Tuesday, November 5th, always at- tended church on a Tuesday ; and showed a decided Protestant, not to say Puritan, leaning in his opinions. This seems to have made, for a time, some coolness between hint and his mother, whose leanings were Romanist and Spanish ; yet it was through her that he came to know and appreciate Sir Walter Raleigh. That great man, then a prisoner in the Tower, sent a prescription to the queen when dangerously ill which cured her. The prince thus introduced to him scon appreciated in his character the spirit of adventure and love of historical study, so kindred to his own. " No king but my father," he said, " would keep such a bird in a cage." The prince led an uneasy life between his father and mother. On one occasion, when the royal pair bad quarrelled, he writes to the king, "I dare not reply (to the queen) as you directed, that your Majesty was afraid lest she should return to her old bias, for such a word might set her in the way of it, and, besides, make me a peace breaker, which I would eschew." His companion in his family was his sister Elizabeth, to whom lie was warmly attached. When the Duke of Savoy proposed a double match between his son and daughter and Prince Henry and his sister, the prince got Raleigh to write a pamphlet against the matches, as they were of one mind in their dislike to marrying a "Papist." A French and a Spanish match for the prince were continually being talked of. The king hankered after a Spanish infanta for his son ; while the French tried to outbid their rivals by offering a large dowry with Madame Christine, the second daughter of their king, a child nine years old. Henry, who was then eighteen, did not relish the idea, and Rochester joked him coarsely on the subject. But death saved him from both matches. He became Duke of Cornwall on his father's accession to the Crown, and was so'emnly created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester in Parlia- ment, June 10, 1610, and by patent of even date. In the year 1611, he applied to the king to be made President of the Council, as Henry of Monmouth had been. The request was refused, for James had conceived a great jealousy of his ton—who had won all hearts from him, and showed a disposition to take an active part in the government, in a very different direction from his father's policy. On one occasion, both setting out by separate roads to Theobald's, the prince was attended by all the flowerof the nobi- lity, while the king was left to his own servants. A burst of tears was James's resource. The next year, however, the prince's health broke up altogether. After some preliminary attacks in the autumn he fainted away at an entertainment given to the Prince Palatine on his approaching nuptials with the Princess Elizabeth. Raleigh sent time queen a prescription for him, adding that it would cure him, except in case of poison. But the prince never rallied. He did not wish for life without health, he said. On the 6th of Novem- ber, 1612, he expired, and the queen, catching at Raleigh's

words, cried out that he was poisoned. The idea got widely spread, and was generally believed. Most accused the Papists—some hinted at Rochester—and a suppressed whisper of the time has found its echo in history, that the king himself knew something of the foul play. On the other hand, the prince's death was attributed to his imprudent carelessness of his health, and to bathing in the Thames at Richmond after a heavy supper. The grief at his death was intense, and Raleigh wrote of it "that like an eclipse of the sun, we shall find its effects hereafter."

We may not have lost in him all that his contemporaries fondly believed ; but, certainly, there seems to have been a manliness in his character, and a peculiar tinge in his religious opinions, which would have harmonized far more with the spirit of the age than the peculiarities of his brother's disposition possibly could. At any rate, it is far more likely that his reign would have been an era of maritime enterprise and English naval ascendancy than of civil divisions and civil war.

CHARLES STUART, the younger son of King James I., was born at Dunfermline, on the 19th of November, 1600. A puny, sickly,

infant, his life seemed for some time to bang on a thread, while half his physical organs refused to do their proper office. In his fourth year he was with great difficulty beginning to speak some words. He was left behind in Scotland, under the care of Lord Fife, when the rest of the royal family went into England, and

that nobleman writes, that though the Prince is gaining strength, "he is far better with his head than with his body and feet." In July, 1604, a physician, sent for the purpose, reports that he was beginning to walk alone. He was removed the same year to England, where father and mother at first neglected him, as in a doomed and hopeless condition, while Prince Henry, with the insolence of a healthy elder brother, said they had better make an Archbishop of Canterbury of him, thatthe episcopal petticoats might hide his crooked legs. He was left during childhood very much to the sole charge of Lady Carey, to whose assiduous kindness he probably owed his life and much that renders life tolerable. As he grew older, he gradually gained in strength and personal appearanc°, and sh ook off a large part of his early infirmities. But to the last he stuttered in his speech when at all excited ; his legs never became perfectly straight or strong, though he was a rapid walker, and he retained much of the irritable temperament of a helpless invalid, and the abrupt, ungracious manner of one who had scarcely the mastery of the power of speaking. Ph ysical weakness had probably not a little to do with the unhappy forma- tion of Charles's character. Till he outgrew his worst deficiencies he was a child neglected and looked down upon by his parents, and ignored by the public, who were wrapped up in his brilliant and popular brother. Deprived of the sympathies of the people, the boy naturally soon lost the power of sympathizing with the people, and left to himself and his immediate attendants, he withdrew into books and things which appealed to the eye and ear rather than the muscles, and were the appropriate solace of a valetudinarian. The king placed about him two clergymen, with orders never to leave him, as if he wished to realize Prince Henry's impertinent project. From them, and as he grew older, from the encourage- ment of the king himself, be gained a taste for theological contro- versy, and became,while still a mere boy, quite a learned divine of the new school of ceremonial Anglicanism. Pictures also and the fine arts generally were among his most prized companions, and he took great delight in music and musicians. Poetry and the drama found a large place in his reading—and under the tutorship of Thomas Murray he seems to have received a thorough educa- tion up to the highest standard of the age, and to have been an apt scholar. The king soon learnt to take a pride in his precocious erudition, and instilled into him, no doubt, opinions and maxims of Church and State which were only too congenial with the prince's own feelings and preconceptions. He suited James far better in these 9acific and theological tastes than his elder son did, and parent and pupil soon agreed in their detestation of popular liberty and their theory of royal irresponsibility. Charles's temperment was naturally cold and reserved, though he was subject to brief fits of irritable passion, in which he often said far too much. Unable to mix much at first in personal adventure, he learned to scheme how to make use of others, and grew as self-opinionative in his ideas of his Machiavellian skill as his father, and nursed in casuistry, lie soon lost any keen sense of' truth.' Obstinate to the last degree in his ideas, he was yet wanting in moral firmness, and vacillating in his plans. He generally pursued three or four inconsistent schemes at the same time, and never could be brought to believe in the necessary failure of them all. With his statecraft he became a dissembler, and for his dissimulation and double-dealing he ultimately paid the forfeit with his life. He was naturally, or from the influence of more refining pursuits, free from animal passions in the gross shape in which they exhibited themselves in his father. But the spirit of court life and manners in that age, and the example of those about him had, to some extent, affected his feelings and habits; and though he plunged comparatively little himself into coarser indulgences, and had a certain respect for outward decorum, he had no strong feeling of disgust for the vices in themselves, such as to make him shun close association with those most stained with them; nor was his own idea of decorum, either of behaviour or conversation, such as would be much appreciated at the present day. He had not his brother's dislike of oaths ; for, as his irreverent3 son said to the bishop, who reproved him for swearing, "'Odds fish, man, your Martyr swore like a trooper 1" Such was, or became in more mature years, the character of the prince who succeeded Prince Henry as heir apparent to the English throne.

Charles brought with him from Scotland the title of Duke of Albany, and in January, 1606, Sir Dudley Carleton writes, " Little Charles is made great Duke of York." The nation, at his brother's death, had yet to gather their opinion of the latter's successor ; and very little for certain did they know till his Spanish -trip in 1623. Charles evidently still shrank from the popular eye, though no longer the pitiable object he once had

been. But he was still very sensitive on the point of his past and present defects, and took so great a dislike to a boy in his house- hold, a son of Sir Robert Killigrew, who had crooked legs like himself, that the father offered to remove him on that very account. But though Charles kept very much in the background, rumour soon supplied the place of ascertained fact in his case, . and as his friendship with George Villiers, Duke of Buckinghairi-ms

began to be marked, popular opinion took a more definitely , 19n- favourable tone respecting his character. There was a selfishn■thess (fostered, no doubt, by his early illness) in Charles, and a want of frank and generous sentiments, which made a great impressicOa out of doors. If people knew little evil of him, they heard good. When Villiers first rose to power in 1615, he seems otc" have treated Charles with great nonchalance, and Clarendon telak us that " it was after a long time of declared jealousy and dis--". pleasure on the prince's part, and occasion enough administered on the other," that through the interference of James him- self, whom Villiers thanks for " having first planted me in your Babie Charles's good opinion," this fatal friendship was• cemented. His early antipathy to Villiers probably gave rise to- a rumour that the prince leant to the Puritans ; but this soon

died away. Before the death of Queen Anne, in 1618, Charles made use of Villiers to appease his father's anger on some point on which he had offended him ; and in 1618 we find Buckingham the confidant of a secret intrigue of the prince with some lady.

In the summer of 1622, the French ambassador writes,—" Many place their hopes upon the Prince of Wales ; I, however, main- tain, against the opinion of many, and especially of M. Dom-

quester (sic), who holds him to be a man of much understanding and of his word, and ascribes his great endurance to wisdom,.

that, when he comes to the government, his subjects will soon be tired of him, for he will exhibit all the vices of his father, but display none of the qualities which his friends attribute to him; for how were it otherwise possible that a prince of his years should,. as yet, have given no proof of anything.good or generous?" And the historian May, speaking of his accession to the Crown, adds' that, " Some men suspended their hopes, as doubting what to find of a prince so much and so long reserved." Speaking of the friendship which had grown up between Charles and Bucking- ham, the French ambassador, in January, 1623, after mentioning the various conjectures out of doors respecting it, says, " few know that passions for women have to do with it. Howsoever- the affair may be, the prince is loudly blamed therefore, and the more he advances in age the more he diminishes his reputation.'

The Venetian envoy, writing in September, 1622, says:— " Of the Prince Charles as yet scarcely anything is to be said, except that he is, like his father, passionately addicted to the chase. The coldness which he displays in all his dealings leads us to no very favourable conclusions in the case of a young man, unless on his.

accessionto the sovereignty he displays a different disposition.'

But, while the prince was to the eye of the public secluding him- self in his private pleasures, be was really quietly taking a very important and very mischievous part in the conduct of national affairs. Buckingham had now made up his mind to build his fortunes on the good-will of the heir apparent, and, accordingly, by his influence over the weak old king, compelled the latter to do whatever the prince and he, the duke, might agree in recom- mending. Buckingham never openly directed Charles, as he did his father. This he knew would rouse the sensitive pride of the.

prince's character—jealous on some points, though enduring the easy familiarity of the favourite on many occasions where it would have caused great annoyance to most persons. The duke influenced the prince indirectly, and then browbeat the king with their united authority into acquiescence. James fretted under this yoke, and the increasing neglect of Villiers ; and sus-

pected him of a design to seclude him altogether, and place Charles at the head of the State. But be had no courage to•

resist them openly, and accordingly followed their counsels, much to his own detriment. We have on record, in Charles's own writ- ing, two instances of his interference in state affairs. Writing to.

the duke on Friday, November the 3rd, 1621, he says, "Steenie, time Lower House this day have been a little unruly ; Out I hope it will turn to the best, for before they rose they began to be ashamed of it Yet I could wish that the king would send down a commission here, that (if need were) such seditious fellows.

might be made an example to others, by Monday next ; and till then I would let them alone. It will be seen whether they mean to do good or to persist in their follies ; so that the king needs to

be patient but a little while. I have spoken with so many of the council as the.king trusts most, and they are all of this mind, only the sending of authority to set seditious fellows fast is of my add ing." Again, on the 28th be writes, "Steenie, this day the Lower House has given the king a subsidy, and are likewise resolved to send a messenger humbly to entreat him to end this session be- fore Christmas. I confess that this they have done is not so great a matter that the king need to be indulgent over them for itiaet, on the other side (for his reputation abroad at this time), I Would not wholly discontent them ; therefore, my opinion is, that the king should grant them a session at this time, but withal I should have him command them not to speak any more of Spain, whether it be of that war or of my marriage. This, in my opinion, does neither suffer them to encroach upon the king's authority, nor give them just cause of discontent." The arbitrary ideas, and still more, the insolent tone exhibited in these letters, show mote than any general remarks could, the real dis- position of Charles towards the constitution and people of England. The king unluckily followed his advice, and addressed a letter in the same tone to the Speaker. The Commons answered with spirit, and the king rejoined that their privileges were only matter of grace. This excited such indignation that the ministers had to excuse it as a "slip of the pen at the end of a long answer." Notwithstanding this, and a more subdued letter from James, the Commons entered on their journals on the 18th of December, 1621, a solemn " protestation " that the liberties, privileges, and juris- diction of Parliament are the ancient birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England. The king, thereupon, dissolved the Parliament, and followed Charles's other piece of advice by com- mitting the leaders to separate imprisonment in the Tower and elsewhere ; and there, with one exception, they remained till the opening of the next Parliament, in which Charles and Buck- ingham played a very different game. It is, however, well to remark that an opposition to the court first sprang np in the House of Lords in the Parliament just dissolved, and that the Prince of Wales was a constant attendant on their deliberations, though we must conclude from what the ambassadors say that be ex- hibited no marked feeling on the matter, at least openly.

Now, however, occurred the celebrated journey of Charles and Villiers to Spain, which caused such a panic in king and nation, and in its event totally altered the relations of the prince and favourite to the popular party. Marriage negotiations of various sorts had been going on ever since the year 1617. It is generally admitted, however, that a personal visit to Spain on the part of the prince was Buckingham's peculiar idea, though the Spanish ambassador no doubt encouraged and fostered it. The duke is said to have been desirous of thus monopolizing the young prince more than be possibly could in their home intercourse, and of so obtaining a still firmer hold on his mind ; besides, he found his position between a jealous king and a proud young heir apparent more and more difficult every day, and was well content to escape from it for a time. He was fond of adventure, per- sonally fearless, and eager to display his handsome person, and exhibit his influence over the prince to the eyes of foreign courts. The old king was nearly distracted at the idea. In the first place, he had not been consulted till everything was settled, and he was naturally piqued. Then he feared more than ever the increasing intimacy of Charles and Villiers ; and though he had begun to hate the latter, he was used to see him near his person, and was uneasy during his absence, though his presence brought little pleasure. For the prince's personal safety the faint-hearted king was not a little alarmed. He felt that Buck- ingham, to gratify his own ambition and vain whim, was perilling the safety of the only son of a king—and such a king as himself. Looked at, too, in a political point of view, James was too shrewd not to see that this journey to Madrid was throwing the marriage game entirely into the hands of the Spanish Court, and giving them a royal hostage, for the safe return of whom they might almost make their own terms. He remonstrated loudly, but at length gave way, and "John and Thomas Smith" set out with a few attendants, and passing through Paris, where Charles saw his future wife, Henrietta Maria, for the first time, reached Madrid on the 7th of March, 1623. From that date to their ambiguous departure from that capital on the 12th of September, their visit was one continued attempt on the part of the wooers and the-Spanish Court to outwit and overreach each other. The king at home followed almost passively the directions of his two tyrants—and it was only the firmness of some of his councillors that prevented his being fatally committed on most important points. Charles and Buckingham, not without reason, entreated him to keep the more exceptionable proceedings a secret from all his council. That they played a double and most dis- reputable part with the Spanish Court, there can be no doubt ; whether the latter dissembled, or not, in its turn. The court and

people of Madrid all imagined the Prince must be really in secret a Catholic, or he never would be so anxious for the match as to imperil himself thus. They acted on this idea, and Charles and Buckingham encouraged them in it, boasting of their deceit in letters to the King. The Pope also was corresponded with in the same spirit, and all sorts of vague promises were made to the Spaniards and the Court of Rome respecting the project of a general toleration of the Catholics in England, and licence to them to propagate tbeir doctrines in that country. No one who peruses the letters which passed between the English prince and his father and favourite on the subject of these marriage treaties, can fail to arrive at a most unfavourable conclusion re- specting the real character of Charles, in point of sincerity and common honesty. At last, however, notwithstanding all difficulties, things appeared to be on the eve of settlement,. and the infanta assumed the rank at court of Princess of Wales.. But Buckingham had quarrelled with the Spanish favourite, Olivarez, and having disgusted the grave ceremonious Spaniards by hie insolent levity and nonchalant manner., he became dis- gusted with them and the match altogether. He probably saw that the infanta might be used as an instrument against him, if she became the wife of Charles ; at any rate, he resolved to break off the match ; and keeping up their deceit to the last, and committing the English ambassador, the Earl of Bristol, in the most shameless manner, he and the prince got away to the coast, embarked for England, boasting bow they had deluded the Spaniards, and landed at Portsmouth on the 8th of October. The nation frantic with joy, at the rupture of the unpopular Spanish match, and the safe return of the Prince, believed all they chose to say against the conduct of Spain towards them. In vain James attempted to stem the torrent. Charles and Villiers were resolved on a war with Spain, and to effect this they had a Parliament summoned, and in it appeared in the new character of popular leaders. At a conference with the two. Houses the duke delivered a long account of the Spanish nego- tiation utterly at variance with the truth, Charles standing by and corroborating him. In vain the king tried to preserve peace with Spain. He soon had to endure an attack on his own most cherished ideas on the part of those who had encouraged him formerly in putting them forward. His ministers were impeached by the Commons, tinder the aus- pices of the prince and duke. "By God, Steenie F' he exclaimed, "you are a fool, and will shortly regret this folly, and will find that in this fit of popularity you are making a rod with which you will be scourged yourself." And then, turning in some anger to the prince, he told him " he would live to have his belly-full of Parliaments ; and that when he (James) should be dead, he would have too much cause to remember how much he had con- tributed to the weakening of the Crown by this precedent he was now so fond of." On March 27,1623, the wretched old king sank under an accumulation of diseases,, joined to agony of mind and vexation at the conduct of his son and old favourite, which he dared not openly resent or oppose. He privately caballed against them, indeed, but Charles and Villiers, strong in the popular confidence, pursued their course—and as the king prophesied, after his death reaped the fruits of their pretended patriotism when the nation, awakening from the delusion, called on them to per- form as heads of the government those promises of which they had been so lavish in opposition. Charles became Duke of Cornwall on the death of his elder brother in 1612, and was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester November 4, 1616.

XII —CHARLES STUART (THE YOUNGER).

This prince, the eldest surviring son of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria of France, was born at St. James's Palace on the 29th of May, 1630. His mother, in a letter to a friend, writes, " He is so ugly that I am ashamed of him ; but his size and fatness supply the want of beauty. I wish you could see the gentleman, for he has no ordinary mien. He is so serious in all that be does that I cannot help deeming him far wiser than myself." A curious debut for the "Merry Monarch 1" The first eleven years of the prince's life were untroubled ones. He was, during that time, under the governorship of Cavendish, Earl (afterwards Marquis and Duke) of Newcastle. Brian Duppa, afterwards a bishop, was his general tutor, while the celebrated Hobbes of Malmes- bury taught him mathematics, in which study the prince took considerable pleasure, much appreciating his instructor. When the dissensions between king and Parliament began to assume a very serious aspect, in the latter part of 1641, the Earl of Newcastle was superseded by a governor who was thought by the Par- liament more trustworthy—Seymour, Marquis of Hertford. But after the attempt on the five members and the withdrawal of the

king from Whitehall at the beginning of the year 1642, Hertford was induced to follow the fortunes of the Crown, and carried

off the young prince in the king's train. lie was present at Edgehill fight, and narrowly escaped capture. In the year 1645, after Queen Henrietta Maria had quitted Oxford and had left England for the Continent for the second time, the king resolved to send the prince into the west of England, with the title of Generalissimo, and surrounded by a council, among whom Hyde and Culpeper took the lead. On the 5th of March in that year Charles and his son parted at Abingdon, as it proved, for ever ! The prince's court was established first at Bristol, and thence, on account of the plague, it was removed to Bridgewater. As the army of Fairfax overran the west, the prince and his council withdrew successively to Exeter, Pendennis, and Laun- ceston. During this time the governor of the prince was the Earl of Berkshire, a weak, dissolute man ; and in the neighbourhood of Bridgewater young Charles fell into the company of Goring's debauched cavaliers, some of whom are described by the royalists themselves as of the most abandoned and abominable habits. Some were expressly removed from the prince's society on that account, but not before the seed had been sown of the profligate character of the future king of England. When the mainland be- ciame no longer a safe residence for the prince, be was removed to the Scilly Islands, where he arrived on the 4th of March, 1646. The ill fortunes of his father still pursuing him, lie quitted St. Mary's Island on the 16th of April for Jersey. Here he established a mimic court, which was gay enough to satisfy his own tastes and delight the islanders, notwithstanding his arbitrary ordinances respecting the price of provisions, and the taxation imposed to build new forts. But his lively courteous manners pleased the inhabi- tants, who were, no doubt, rendered doubly loyal by antagonism to their sister island Puritan Guernsey. The prince had also the power of granting titles of honour—an additional source of popu- larity. It was during this first residence in Jersey that Prince Charles " fell in love with a young lady of high rank, who be- came the mother of a child, who enjoyed the prerogative denied to all the other natural children of Charles II., of bearing his father's name. He was called James STUART, and was brought up on the Continent, in the Protestant religion," though be afterwards became a Catholic and a priest., playing a mysterious but important part during his father's reign on the question of that king's formal reception into the Roman Catholic Church. "11 nous est tie'," says Charles himself, " lorsque nous n'avions grtres plus de seize ou dix-sept ans, d'une jeune dame des plus qualifie'es de ses royaunzes plustost par fragiliti de nostre premiere jeunesse que par f;talice."

After some intricate negotiations of King Charles and the queen with the prince's council at Jersey, the latter was removed —much against the wish of Hyde and Culpeper—to France and his mother's care. He left Jersey on the 5th of June, 1646 and reached St.-Germain's in the middle of July ; and here, with occasional visits to the French court at Fontainebleau, he remained under the strictest tutelage of Henrietta, till the year 1648. The queen allowed him no free will of his own, and even appropriated to her own use the allowance made him by the French government, under pretence that it was derogatory to his dignity to receive it. She had made up her mind from his first landing in France that her son should marry Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the wealthy heiress of the 'Duke of Orleans, a clever, audacious, insolent royal coquette of nineteen, who counted half the princes of' Europe as her admirers and wooers, and was playing her game for a great marriage prize. Three years older than Prince Charles, and he then a wandering prince, destitute of money, and with most doubtful prospects, it is no wonder the proud beauty treated him at first with superb disdain. She her- self attributes her neglect of him to his being unable to talk French, and his sulkiness or bashfulness in their first interviews. "Now, what was I to do with a young fellow that could not speak French ? What could I reply to him who had nothing to say ? Could he only have spoken for himself, heaven only knows what might then have happened. Under these circumstances, how could I do other than regard Prince Charles as an object of pity ?" The prince, however, followed her about sedulously for some time, and his mother tried her best arts to create an attachment between the parties ; but at length queen and prince got tired of their efforts, and when, in the spring of 1647, the royal beauty, disappointed in her hopes elsewhere, began in her turn to woo the prince, both Henrietta and Charles gave a cool r_ception to these advances. The next year we find the prince entering on an illicit relation with Lucy Barlow, alias

Walters, " a brown, beautiful, bold, but vapid creature," as Evelyn calls her. In April, 1649, she made the prince the father of "John Crofts," afterwards the well known Duke of' Monmouth. But before this, the Presbyterian-Royalist rising in England, and the revolt of a part of the Parliament's ships under Batten, led Charles, in June, 1648, to proceed to Calais, and thence sail4n Holland, where he took the command of the revolted shipst-,.) at

Helvoetsluys. The fleet sailed for England, but returned ag yt4) Holland without fighting the Earl of Warwick and the Parl 'Tla- ment's squadron. Warwick followed, Van Tromp and the Du tell fleet interposing and keeping the peace between the hostile vess,??1s• Quarrels broke out in the prince's fleet, the sailors deserted c.er were seduced back to Warwick's service; and Charles, giving ti the nominal command, retired to Breda, where he.lived in great penury, but maintaining a reckless gaiety till the trial of his father, at the beginning of 16t9, roused him to send a blank paper with his signature, offering any terms to the Parlia- ment if the king's life were saved. The interference, however, was fruitless. The axe fell at Whitehall on the 30th of January, 1649, and Prince Charles became, in the eyes of the royalists, " King Charles the Second of England." Here, they, we leave him. His character is soon summed up. He was an easy-tempered, but selfish and heartless voluptuary, witty, shrewd, and in his manners affable and condescending, but without a spark of manly feeling, or self-respect, or an atom of moral courage or honesty. He was Duke of Cornwall by birth, and was styled Prince of Wales, in public documents, from the year 1645, and not before ; but there is no trace of any formal creation. A warrant for the expenses of his household in March, 1641, is addressed to the Receiver of the King's Treasure as Prince of 'Vales.

XIII.-1714. -GEORGE AUGUSTUS.

Before the creation of this next Prince of Wales, the Revolu- tion of 1689 had removed the direct line of the Stuarts from the throne of England. The unfortunate son of James II , Prince James Francis Edward, was indeed styled Prince of Wales in the ceremony of his christening in the chapel of St. James, on the 15th October, 1688, but he was never formally created. His father was held to have abdicated on the 11th of December fol- lowing, and he himself was attainted in 1701. By the Act of Suc- cession, the Electress Sophia, of Hanover, youngest daughter of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and granddaughter of James I., and her family were placed in the succession after the death of Anne. When this event took place, on the 1st of August, 1714, the new king, George I., the sou of Sophia, was not only a father, but a grandfather. The misfortunes and the possible misconduct of his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Zell, are well known. The gaoler of his wife, he was destined to become the implacable enemy of .his son, George Augustus, who was born on the 30th of October, 1683. This heir to the house of Hanover, and future Prince of Wales, from the first gave no promise of good looks, being of di- minutive stature and pinched features. He was left at first very much to the care of his grandmother, the Electress Sophia, but his early life was attended by circumstances which could hardly fail to exercise an unfavourable influence on his character. His mother was consigned to her prison while he was only ten years of age, and being strongly attached to her, he learned at that early period to look upon his father as a tyrant and oppressor, while the elector seems to have soon felt towards his son, whom he perhaps doubted to be really his own, a strong corresponding aver- sion. The prince, while still a youth, male one attempt, at least, to see his mother in her prison—the castle of Ahldim, riding off from a *milting party with that purpose, and being with difficult( overtaken and brought back. As he grew up he exhibited some not very royal qualities. Exact and methodical in all his habits, he was close to the extent of mean- ness, and his avarice was offensively undisguised and notorious. His fits of passion were also frequent, and very indecorous in their manifestation. On the other hand, he was much less reserved and shy than his father, had a decided sense of justice, in accordance with which he generally acted, joined to a strong desire to do his duty, and wherever personal danger threatened hint his courage was conspicuous. His vanity was considerable, and, in accordance with the general charac'er of his mind, was connected rather with small external appearances than with the substance of things. "He-has often told me himself," says Lord Chesterfield, "that little things affected him more than great ones ; and this was so true, that I have often seen Mtn so put out of humour, at his private levee, by a mistake or blunder of a valet de chambre, that the gaping crowd admitted to his public levee have, from his looks and silence, concluded that he bad just re• ceiYed some dreadful news." The same writer says, " He troubled hi nisei fli ttle abo utreligion, but jogged on quietly in that in which he had been bred, without scruples, doubts, zeal, or inquiry." But be was a man of his word, and very firm in his attachments. As we might expect, he was a good man of business, though his under- standing was not of a high order, and his education had either been of a very limited character, or he had availed himself little of his opportunities. He professed great contempt for lighter literature, but was a reader of history, and had a good head for dates. " He seems to think his having done a thing to- day," says Lord Hervey, "an unanswerable reason for his doing it to- morrow." He was temperate in eating and drinking, and can scarcely be called irregular even in his breaches of the law of morality, with such systematic and orderly phlegm were they perpetrated. He delighted in the army, particularly in its routine discipline, in which, like all his family, he was a martinet. He behaved with great gallantry at the battle of Oudenarde in 1708, at which his rival, the Stuart Prince of Wales, of the deposed family, was also present, and took part on the other side. In 1706, Queen Anne created Prince Georg: Duke of Cambridge, but refused to allow hint to come over to England and take his seat in the House of Lords. When he was twenty-two years of age he was married to Caroline Willielmina Dorothea, of Anspach, a princess of about his own age, who had refused the Archduke Charles and a prospec- tive imperial crown, rather than give up her Protestan ism. This was a most fortunate match for the prince and for England. Caroline had a clear-sighted and sensible mind, much above the average of her sex, understood her real interests and those of her husband, and had the tact to make him perceive them also, with- out offending his vanity by an open display of her influence. Her manners were dignified, agreeable, and conciliatory, though she shared in the grossness of thought and expression prevalent in that age. She was a blue-stocking in divinity and metaphysics, and loved to trifle with the more ponderous and deeper learning of the age, gathering around her the most celebrated philosophers and theologians—heterodox as well as orthodox—and interesting her- self in, or amusing herself with, their arguments and disputes. But she had a keen eye in discerning the really able and meritori- ous, and was not slow in showing 'Tactically her apprecia- tion of them. At the time of the accession of the House of Hanover to the throne, the prince and princess had a son and three daughters. The latter accompanied them to England, but the son remained in Hanover (perhaps to gratify the Hano- verians) till after his father's accession. Prince George landed with his father (George I.) at Greenwich, on the 17th September, 1714, and was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, by patent, of the 27th of the same month, " to him and his heirs, kings of Great Britain." The letters patent declare him to be likewise invested with the said princi pality and esamties, and to be confirmed in the same by these ensigns of honour—the girding on of the sword, the deliver- ing of the cap, and placing it on his head, with a ring on his finger, and gold staff in his hand, according to custom. The prince also was considered to have succeeded to the Duchy of Cornwall ; but as the descent through the heirs apparent of the existing heirs of the Black Prince (according to the limitations of the original charter) had now determined, it has been conjectured that Prince George must have claimed under the laxer interpretation of the limitations contained in an act of Henry V., "heirsproscheins du Roialme d'Engkterre."

At first the Prince and Princess of Wales took up their resi- dence in the palace of St. James's, and the ill-feeling between the father and son, though well known in court circles, was not made a public scandal. " It had, however, been inflamed by an invidious motion of the Tories in the House of Commons that out of the civil list 100,0001. should be allotted as a separate revenue for the Prince of Wales. The motion was at this time overruled by the ministerial party, and its rejection offended the prince as much as its proposal had the king." In 1716 a new occasion of jealousy occurred, on the king's determination to visit his Hanoverian dominions. He was unwilling to entrust the government to the prince during his absence, unless other persons were joined with him in the commission, and his powers were limited by the most rigorous restrictions. But his ministers whom, through his favourite Bernsdorf, he consulted on the point, were of opinion that " the constant tenour of ancient practice could not conveniently be receded from." The king had to yield ; but several restrictions were imposed on the authority of the prince, and instead of "Regent," he was calh d " Guardian of the Realm and Lieutenant,"—a title not employed since the days of the Black Prince. The Duke of Argyll was also dismissed from being groom of the stole about the prince, on suspicion of exciting his ambition. However, during this brief period of limited authority, the Prince of Wales gained a considerable amount of popularity by his attention to public business, and the princess still more by her tact and lively manners. From that time a party in society, as well as in politics, gathered around the heir apparent, and on his father's return from the Continent the antagonism between them became more and more marked. At last, on the occasion of the christening of one of the prince's children, November 17, 1717, the affair assumed a more serious aspect. The Duke of Newcastle, whom the prince at this time detested, was ordered by the king to attend as one of the child's sponsors. The enraged prince, immediately after the ceremony, forgot all decorum and dignity, and used grossly insulting language to the duke ; and thereupon was ordered by the king to remain in his own apartments, and soon afterwards commanded to quit the palace. The prince and princess, after a temporary lodging in Albemarle street, took up their residence at Leicester House, at the sauth-east corner of the square. The old abode of the Sidneys became the centre of a gay and brilliant court, where assembled all the learning and wit of the day, and not a few of the nobles • who preferred the pleasures of Leicester House, though accompanied by exclusion from the king's levees, to the dullness of St. James's. Here, or at the summer residence of the prince and princess at Richmond, were to Le seen Mrs. Selwyn, Miss Howe, Miss Bellenden, and Miss Lepell, with Lords Chesterfield, Bathurst, Scarborough, and Hervey, and in this brilliant circle fluttered Pope, the poet and wit, the favourite of the ladies, and by turns the butt and terror of the courtiers. In these drawing-rooms witty and shameless coquettes jostled learned divines, and grave philosophers mingled with fashionable gallants and scheming politicians. Among them all moved the princess herself, brilliant and engaging, equal to talk- ing with and charming any one of them on any subject ; while the prince pursued his slow monotonous courtship of impatient Mary Bellenden, or his more serious, but placid, attentions to Mrs. Howard, who was soon understood by the world to be his avowed mistress. This connection, however, of which contem- poraries doubted the real extent, did not affect at all the prince's attachment to his wife, who, in her turn, took the matter very coolly, and, by suffering the king to enjoy the reputation of keep- ing a mistress, whom she could afford good-humouredly to despise, had many a quiet sarcasm at the expense of her "good Howard," without herself suffering from jealousy or delicate feelings of any description. Mrs. Howard, the estranged wife of a younger son of the Suffolk family, is described as sensible and well disposed, tho affected with the malady of dsafness, perhaps not a malady to a dis- creet woman living in a court circle ; but Lord Hervey says of the prince, with the contempt of a roue, "that he was a man incapable of being engaged by any charm but habit, or attached to any woman but his wife ; a man who was better pleased with the idea of an in- trigue than any otlitr part of it, and who did not care to pay a tolerable consideration even for that." This novel relation between the mistress and the wife puzzled people at first not a little ; for in public George treated his wife's opinions with ostenta- tious contempt, and fancied that everybody would believe what he himself did—that he was not governed by her in everything. But those who tested the comparative power of the two lidies by application for preferments soon found out, in the words of Lord Hervey, that " the will" of the wife "was the sole spring on which every movement in the court turned." Caroline's great defect, her want of womanly delicacy, here stood her in good stead. Besides governing her husband in all other things, she provided him with mistresses of her own selection !

The ill-feeling of the king, meanwhile, experienced no diminu- tion, and he now devised a new plan for annoying his hated son and heir—no less than depriving him of the care of his own children. Lord Campbell in his life of Parker, Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, gives the following account of this attempt :—

" There was now such open enmity between his Majesty and the Prince of Wales, that Lord Carteret declared prophetically, ` this family has always quarrelled, and will quarrel from genera- tion to generation.' The prince's numerous children were all is England except Frederick, the eldest, left behind in Hanover; and the king, to annoy his son, asserted the power of his preroga- dve to dis ect their education, and prospectively to dispose of them in marriage. The prince contra maintained that by the law of nature and by the law of the land, this power belonged exclu- sively to himself as their father and the heir apparent to the Crown. Lord Chancellor Couper would not take upon himself to decide the question, and wrote a lever to Lord Parker (Lord Chief Justice) signifying the king's pleasure that all the judges should meet and give him their opinion. The truth was that no king of England had lived to have grandchildren since the time of Edward III., when the Black Prince was allowed to have the care of his son Richard, and as no constitutional writer had dis- cussed the subject, the judges had no materials for giving a judicial opinion upon the first branch of the question ; and with respect to the second, although the reigning sovereign had exerted a control over the marriages of the royal family, and though the contracting of a marriage with any of the blood royal without his consent was considered a contempt of the Crown, such marriages were undoubtedly valid in law, and the only mode of punishing those concerned in them was by a pro- secution in the Star Chamber, so that when this court was abolished, the alleged prerogative was without any means of -vindication or redress. However, Lord Parker, having assembled all the judges at his chambers in Serjeants' Inn (January 22,1718), read the Lord Chancellor's letter to them, and intimated his own opinion strongly to be that the whole of the question was to be answered absolutely in the affirmative. He was able to bring forward nothing in support of the grandfather's right to have the care of his grandchildren, except that " the law of God and law of nature are rather with the grandfather." But he showed, by various instances, beginning with the match made by Henry III. between his sister Joan, without asking her consent, and Alexander, King of Scots, that the kings of England had assumed to them- selves and had generally been allowed to exercise the right of disposing in marriage of those who, being of the blood royal, were in the succession to the throne. He prevailed upon nine of the judges to agree with him ; but two, Baron Price and Baron Eyre, the Prince of Wales's Chancellor, differed, returning for answer that, though the approbation of the marriages of the royal family belonged to the king, there was no instance where a marriage had been treated by the king for any of the royal family without the consent of the father, and that the case of the Prince of Wales was no exception to the general rule, by which the father has a right to the custody and education of his children. George I. was exceelingly delighted with having so large a majority of the judges in his favour, and he ordered their opinions to be recorded in the books of the Privy Council, as a warrant for the authority Which he was resolved to maintain. He attributed this triumph over his son mainly to the exertions of Lord Chief Justice Parker, which may possibly account for the transfer of the Great Seal, which so speedily followed." No steps, however, were taken to give practical effect to the new doctrine, and things remained on this doubtful footing till the Royal Marriage Act in 1772. The king, however, carried his resentment against his son to such an extent, that " he formed another scheme for obtaining an Act of Par- liament, by which the prince, on coming to the throne, should be compelled to relinquish his German States. This project [a happy one for England, if it had been carried out] he afterwards laid before [the then] Lord Chancellor Parker ; and it was only on the Chancellor's representation of its inexpediency and impracticability, that it was abandoned by his Majesty."

It must not be supposed, however, that the Prince was a pas- sive and unaggressive victim during all these events. When be held the position of head of the state, during his father's absence in Hanover, he bad been most ill-judged in his proceedings con- sidering the king's well-known jealousy. He allowed Argyll to ob- tain a great ascendancy over him, and when, to remove this influence, his father's ministers, Walpole and Towushend, endeavoured to gain his goodwill, he only yielded to their advances in order o make the latter the medium of most imprudent requests to the king— that the prince might hold a Parliament, and even that he might have a discretionary power vested in him. These requests cost Townshend the loss of the king's favour. After the removal to Leicester House, this place became the refuge of all those who were discontented with government, and within its walls were matured most of the schemes of the opposition. Nor were the Tories, or even the semi-Jacobites, neglected. So much had the breach widened between the king and prince, that when the for- mer again paid a visit to Hanover, in the summer of 1719, there was no mention of any regency of the prince, nor were he and his wife allowed to hold levees in the king's absence, this office being assigned to their children, the young princesses So matters continued between father and son without any inter- mission until, on the 14th of June, 1727, Sir Robert Walpole arrived hastily at the prince's palace at Richmond, and, rousing

him from his afternoon sleep, announced that on the 11th his father had expired on his way to Osnaburg, during another of his Continental trips, and that consequently the Prince of Wales was now King George H. Sophia Dorothea, the unhappy wife of George I., had preceded her husband to the grave only seven months before.

XIV.-1729.—FREDERICK LEWIS. XV.-1751.—GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK.

During the reign of George II. there were two Princes of Wales successively--father and son ; but the life of the former alone is, in that capacity, of any importance. Prince Frederick Lewis was born on the 20th of January, 1707, and, as we have seen, was left in Hanover when his parents came to England in 1714. His education in that country was by no means neglected, and at first he gave great promise not only of quickness of intel- lect, but of amiable moral qualities. His mother once allowed, in the midst of their subsequent bitter altercations, that " the poor creature had not a bad heart." He was decidedly hand- some in person, and Iris manners were graceful and engaging ; so that golden reports respecting him were brought by Englishmen who visited Hanover. His grandfather, too, rather favoured him, probably in a spirit of opposition to his son. But this early promise was soon overcast, and his character, naturally weak yet stubborn, became gradually more and more morally degraded. His conversation and habits grew so gross that his tutor wrote home about it in despair, and he plunged very soon into gambling and debauchery without restraint. It must not be forgotten that he was left by his parents to the care and company of inferiors, while they in England were quarrelling with the king. Even while Frederick remained in Hanover he had begun to imitate the paternal example in this latter respect. One subject of this quarrel in a new generation was the marriage of Prince Frederick. He himself wished to marry the Princess Royal of Prussia, but her brutal father and his somewhat uneven tempered one were on bad terms, and the match was forbidden. The Queen of Prussia was, however, eager for it, and to her Frederick sent an agent to assure her that he was determined to marry the princess, in spite of his father, and would set off in disguise to Berlin to execute his purpose. The queen indiscreetly told the English envoy, and he informing the government at home the plan was frustrated, and the prince was summoned to England, where he arrived in 1728. For some years he took no part in public affairs, but then began to repeat the old story of his father's proceedings in the former reign. He was vain, and at the mercy of flatterers. He affected a love for literature. and men of letters, to contrast with his father's contempt for them. He threw open his doors to the leading members of the opposition to tire king's government, and Pulteney, Chesterfield, Wyndham, Carteret, and Cobham were now iris familiar friends, and, as Lord Stanhope observes, " the all-accomplished Lord St. John (Boling- broke) became the mentor of his political course." The king's contempt for his son prevented his feeling any apprehensions from any party lie might gather round him. " They will all soon be tired . of the puppy," he said, " for besides his being a scoundrel, he is such a fool, that he will talk more fiddle-faddle in a day than any old woman talks in a week." On the 27th of April, 1736, be was married to Augusta of Saxe Gotha, a young princess of seventeen and some beauty, who came to this country attended by her inseparable companion, a great doll, but who, as she grew older and shook off her childish ways, exhibited considerable shrewdness and tact. Her husband imitated his father in another respect. He went through the duty of choosing and establishing two or three mistresses, but he remained most attached to his wife. Frederick's great grievance, which Bolingbroke had urged him to put forward in Parliament, was his only having 50,0001. a year out of a civil list of 800,0001., while his father, as Prince of Wales, had (at last) obtained one of 100,0001. out of a civil list of only 700,0001. He omitted all mention of the large family the latter bad to support out of this larger sum. Against the advice of his confidential friend Bubb Dodington, the Prince insisted on thus making the family quarrel public ; and the result was a sharp debate on the 27th of February, 1737, on a motion of Pulteney's for an address to the king on the subject. Walpole stated the king's reply to the prince that 50,000/. a year, with the revenues of the Duchy of Corn- wall, amounting to 10,0001., was ample allowance for him, and he could offer him no more. Owing to the ill-health of the king at the time the motion was nearly carried. A more decisive majority rejected a similar proposal of Carteret's in the House of Lords. On the 31st of July the prince resented this defeat in a most disgraceful manner. He had only deigned to give notice to the king and queen of the approaching accouchement of his wife a month before this event—and now, the queen having intimated her intention of being present on the occasion, and the whole royal family being assembled at Hampton Co urt, the prince resolved she should not. So, ou the first symptoms of labour, he hur- ried his wife into a coach, notwithstanding her remonstrances, and carried her off in the night to St. James's Palace, where, before Walpole and Lord Harrington could reach them, the princess gave birth to a daughter—the mother of the unfortunate Caroline of Brunswick, the luckless wife of the sixteenth ranee of Wales. Queen Caroline was with her daughter-in-law by seven o'clock in the morning, and then, according to Horace Walpole, " the gra- cious prince, so far from attempting an apology, spoke not a word to his mother ; but on her retreat, gave her his hand, led her into the street to her coach, still dumb ; but a crowd being assembled at the gate, he kneeled down in the dirt, and humbly kissed her Majesty's hand !"

The public resented this indecent proceeding, and Frederick did penance in the most abject apologies, and lame excuses to his father. Bolingbroke wrote to Wyndham on the occasion in terms of strong disapproval. "He hurries his wife from court, when she is on the point of being delivered of her first child. His father swells, struts, and storms. He confesses his weakness, and asks pardon in the terms of one who owns himself in the wrong. Besides that all this appears to me boyish, it is purely domestic, and there is nothing, as far as I can discern, to interest the public in the cause of his royal highness." Lord Hardwicke endeavoured to persuade the king to accept the apologies of the prince, but Walpole urged a contrary course, and at his instiga- tion a severe message was sent to the prince on the 10th of September, to which it was intimated the king would receive no answer, and which, after commenting on his conduct, added, "It is my pleasure that you leave St. James's with all your family." The prince accordingly removed for the time to Norfolk House in St. James's square, which became the new centre of a bitter opposition to the government. Such was the avowed cause of the complete alienation between the prince and the rest of the royal family—including his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, and his sisters—who all spoke of him in terms of deep detestation. So strong, indeed, are these terms, and so bitter was the hatred of both king and queen to their eldest son, that a deeper cause has been sought for these feelings. " Sir Robert Walpole informed me," writes Lord Hard wicke, "of certain passages between the king and himself, and between the queen and the prince, of too high and secret a nature even to be trusted to this narrative ; but from thence I find great reason to think that this unhappy difference between the king and queen and his royal highness turned upon some points of a more interesting and important nature than have hitherto appeared." What these were we are left to conjecture.

A few weeks after this scene in the royal family the queen unexpectedly died. Walpole retained his influence with the 'king, but when at length his popularity began to give way, and his power in Parliament to wane, he with great difficulty per- suaded his royal master to send a message to the prince offering the payment of his debts, and an addition to his income of 50,0001., if he would cease from opposition to the measures of the govern- ment. Frederick had then his revenge on the minister for the message expelling him from St. James's, by replying, after many expressions of respect and duty to the king, that be would never hearken to any proposals so long as Walpole continued in power.

Accordingly, on the minister's fall, overtures were'made to the Prince of Wales. He gained his additional 50,0001., and it was promised that two of his friends should have seats in the new Board of Admiralty. The whole party then, headed by the prince, went to pay their respects at court on the 18th of February, 1742. The king received him very coldly. " How does the princess do ? I hope she is well." The prince kissed his hand, and this was all. The next appearance of the prince of any interest is one very creditable to him. After the adventurous escape of Charles Edward, in 1746, when the Princess of Wales expressed some censure on the conduct of Lady Margaret Macdonald, one of the young chevalier's pre- servers, Frederick exclaimed, "And would not you, madam, in like circumstances have done the same ? I hope—I am sure you would !" It is also said that it was at his inter- cession that Flora Macdonald was released from confinement. This was one of the generous actions of which Frederick was occasionally capable—for we need not go out of our way to attribute it to dislike of his brother Cumberland—the hero of Culloden. In 1749 he was again in opposition ; but his influence was then much weakened by his frequent vacillations and his now notorious ficklen efe of character, which prevented all but a very few friends from venturing to trust their fortunes with him. '1 hese were led by the Earl of Egmont and Bubb Dodington. Even, however, this lowered political position the prince was not destined to enjoy long. In the year 1751 he caught a slight cold, and this being neglected, brought on pleurisy. There was also, it was afterwards found, a gathering imposthume on his breast, from a blow, it is said, received two years before at trap-ball. His illness, at first thought serious, was then judged of so favour- ably that only half an hour before his death no one had doubted his recovery. He expired on the 20th of March, 1751, leaving his wife with eight children, and the expectation of another. The xidowed princess remained in his room for four hours after his death, refusing to believe in its reality. His eldest son, young George, a boy of twelve, showed deep emotion at the news ; he turned pale, and laid his hand on his breast. " I am afraid, Sir, you are not well," said his tutor. He answered, "I feel something here, just as I did when I saw the two workmen fall from the scaffold at Kew." These are simple but strong tributes to the better side of Frederick's character. The king behaved with decency on the receipt of the news of his son's death, but the Duke of Cumberland observed, " It is a great bloW to thiscountry, but I hope it will recover it in time ! " Prince Frederick was Duke of Cornwall by right of birth, and was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester ou the 8th of January, 1729.

Prince GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK was born on the 4th of June, 1738. Speaking of him at the death of his father, Lord Chesterfield writes,—" He is seriously a most hopeful boy ; gentle and goodnatured, with good sound sense." He was at first necessarily (and afterwards voluntarily) entirely guided by his mother, and her conduct at first was admirable. She discounten- anced all cabals, refused to keep up the prince's party, and placed herself entirely in the king's hands, who, in return, showed her much affection. Prince George was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester as early as the 20th of April, 1751, only a month after his father's death. A sum of 50,0001. was settled on the princess herself. Leicester House was assigned as her residence, and the household constituted according to her wishes. Everything looked like a new era of harmony between the Crown and the heir-apparent, and for four years the sunshine continued unclouded. But the king having, during his journey to Hanover in the year 1755, set his heart on a match between a daughter of the Duchess of Brunswick and his grandson, the, princess dowager, over whom the Earl of Bute had now obtained an unfortunate ascendancy, jealous, it is said, of the talents and accomplishments of her proposed daughter-in-law, and the influ- ence she might obtain over the mind of her son, set herself dog- gedly against the match, and instilled all her feelings of aversion to it into her son. " The young woman is said to be handsome," she said to Dodington, "and to have all good qualities ; but if she takes after her mother she will never do here." " Pray, madam," asked Dodington, "what is her mother ? as I know nothing at all about her." " Why," replied the princess, "her mother is the most intriguing, meddling, and also the most satirical, sarcastical person in the world, and she will always make mischief wherever she comes. Such a character would not do with George; it would not only hurt him in his public, but make him uneasy in his private situation. He is not a wild, dissipated boy, but goodnatured and cheerful, with a serious cast, upon the whole. Those about him know him no more than if they had never seen him. His education has given me much pain ; his book-learning I am no judge of, though I sup- pose it small or useless ; but I hope he may have been instructed in the general understanding of things. . . I once desired Mr. Stone (the sub-governor) to inform the prince about the constitution ; but he declined it, to avoid giving jealousy to the Bishop of Norwich. I mentioned it again, but he still declined it, as not being his province." " Pray, madam," said Dodington, "what is his province?" The princess answered, "I do not know, unless it is to go before the prince upstairs, to walk with him sometimes, seldomer to ride with him, and now and then to dine with him." So the princess set herself in full antagonism to the king, and thenceforward made Leicester House once more the seat of the opposition, then headed by the elder Pitt. The king, on his return to England, hearing of her change of conduct, sent for the young prince himself, and injudiciously enough warned him against evil advisers, though without pressing the match. The prince, devoted to his mother, bowed, and bowed, but scarcely returned an answer. In the summer of 1750 the Prince of Wales attained his legal majority as heir to the throne—of eigh- teen. The king again made the mistake of trying to withdraw him from his mother's control, instead of conciliating her herself. He wrote a gracious letter, stating his intention of grant- ing the prince 40,0001. a year, and that a suitable household being appointed for him, he should occupy the apartments of the late prince at Kensington, and of the late queen at St James's. But the prince in reply entreated his Majesty not to separate him from his mother, which would be a trying affliction to both- Another difficulty was the appointment of the Earl of Bute as groom of the stole, or principal officer in the new household. This the princess insisted on, and the king, who hated Bute, declined for some time to grunt ; at length, Newcastle, afraid of the Leicester House opposition, persuaded the king to consent to this appointment, cud to allow the prince to continue to reside with his mother. Here then he remained the pupil of that mother and her favourite Bute, imbibing the narrow pre- judices and unpopular opinions of the latter, and lending his name from time to time to the various opposition schemes of which, during the political vicissitudes of the last years of the reign of George II, Leicester House was the nursery. On the 25th of October, 1760, the sudden death of his grandfather placed him, at the age of twenty-two, on the throne of England.

XVI-1762.—GEORGE AUGUSTUS FREDERICK.

We have now passed in review all the predecessors of the present Prince of Wales, with the exception of the last—George Augustus Frederick, the eldest sou of George TH., and Charlotte Sophia, of Mecklenburgh Strelitz, who was born at St. James's Palace on the 12th of August, 1762, and for half a century played a more or less public part in the history of this country—unfortunately without much credit to himself or advantage to the nation—as Prince of Wales, Regent, and King. Beyond the first stage of his career, however, it is not our duty to follow him.

On the 17th of August, the day of his baptism, he was created, by letters patent, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester ; on the 26th of December, 1765, was made a Knight of the Garter, and a few months afterwards Captain-General of the Artillery Company of London. Together with his next brother Prince Frederick (after- wards Duke of York), the prince was educated in great privacy, and with an affectation of extreme discipline. In April, 1771, Lord Holderness was appoints d his governor, and Dr. Markham (afterwards Archbishop of York) and Dr. Cyril Jackson, his tutors. In 1776, however, these all suddenly resigned, and the rumour went that it was on account of the king having placed what they considered objectionable books in the hands of the young princes. Their successors were the Duke of Montagu as his governor, and Colonel Hotham as sub-governor, and Bishop Hurd and the Rev. William Arnold as preceptor and sub-pre- ceptor. Till he attained the age of eighteen the prince led a dreary life of almost entire seclusion at Buckingham House, Kew, or Windsor. The ordinary pleasures of his age having been thus denied to hint, it is not surprising that when, on attaining his legal majority (eighteen) in 1780, it was found necessary to bring him forward in public and relax this excessive discipline, he at once gave way to excesses which from that time continued to attract general attention. In this year he formed a connection with Mrs. Mary Robinson, an actress and the wife of an attorney, whom the prince fell in love with when she was acting Perdita in Shakespeare's " Winter's Night." She was four years older than her royal lover. This connection lasted not quite two years, when the prince deserted her, without any scruple, for the society of other ladies. Gambling and horse-racing were among his ether chief amusements, and these brought him into intimacy with the Duke de Chartres, afterwards Duke of Orleans, who perished in the French revolution, and who during these years was a frequent visitor in London. They also led him into the society of Charles James Fox, Sheridan, and Erskine, then the leaders of the Whig party and of fashionable life. The prince, already on bad terms with his father, between whom and himself there was on nearly all points a great dissimilarity of char- acter and tastes, eagerly courted these opponents of the king's government, and identified himself with all their political doings, even wearing the Whig buff and blue colours. When, in April, 1783, the coalition ministry was forced on the king, the Prince of Wales went down to the House of Lords, and being intro- duced with great ceremonial, as Duke of Cornwall, took his seat as a supporter of the new ministry. They in return tritd to obtain from the king the annual grant of 100,000/. a year to the prince. But the king repeated the policy of his grandfather and great grand father, and would only consent to 50,0001., with 60,000 as an outfit for Carlton House, which was assigned as the prince's residence. He had also about 14,0001. a year from the Duchy of

Cornwall. When his political friends were thrown out of office, the prince went again with them into opposition, 'rejecting, it is said, some overtures of the king. Soon after this an event occurred which must always form an important feature in any account of his life or estimate of his character. This was his in- timacy and marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert. We are now able to gather from the lady herself, through the medium of her friend Lord Stourton, some more authentic account of the circumstances of this strange transaction ; and bearing in mind that it is this lady's own version of facts that we are perusing, the following may be taken as a tolerably accurate summary of events : Mary Anne Fitzherbert was the daughter of Walter Smythe, Esq., of Brasbridge, in Hampshire, second son of Sir John Smythe, Batt She was born in July, 1756 ; was first married in July, 1775, to Edward 'Weld, Esq., of Lulworth Castle, Dorsetshire, who died in the course of the same year and secondly, in the year 1778, to Thomas Fitzherbert, Esq., of Swinnerton, in Staffordshire.

He also only survived the marriage three years, and thus, before she was twenty-five years of age, she became a second time a widow. It was about four years after the death of Mr. Fitz- herbert and when residing on Richmond Hill, that she first became acquainted with the Prince of 'Wales, then about twenty-three years of age, and at once became the object of his most ardent attentions. During this period she was made the subject of a popular ballad, which designated her under the title of the " Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill :"—

" I would crowns resign to call her mine,

Sweet lass of Richmond Hill !"

She had then an independent fortune of nearly 2,0001. a year, and was greatly courted in society for her beauty and attractive manners. For some time she resisted the prince's advances with great resolution. At length, one day, " Keit, the surgeon, Lord Onslow, Lord Southampton, and Mr. Edward Bouverie arrived at her house in the utmost consternation, informing her that the life of the prince was in immediate danger—that he had stabbed himself — and that only her immediate presence would save him. She resisted, in the most peremptory manner all their importunities, saying that nothing should induce her to enter Carlton House. She was afterwards brought to share in the alarm, but still, fearful of some stratagem derogatory to her reputation, insisted upon some lady of high character accompanying her as an indispensable condition ; the Duchess of Devonshire was selected. They then drove from Park street to Devonshire House, and took her along with them. They found the prince pale and covered with blood. The sight so overpowered her that sne was deprived almost of all conscious- ness. The prince told her that nothing would induce him to live, unless she promised to become his wife, and permitted him to put a ring upon her finger. A ring of the Duchess of Devon- • shire is believed to have been used on the occasion. Mrs. Fitzherbert afterwards declared her belief in the blood having been really the prince's, and said she had frequently seen the scar. But the whole thing looks very like a trick. They returned to Devonshire House. A deposition was drawn up of what had occurred, and signed and sealed by each of the party.

On the next day she left the country, sending a letter to Lord Southampton, protesting against what had taken place, as not being then a free agent. She retired to Aix-la-Chapelle, and after- wards to Holland, while the prince went down into the country to Lord Southampton's for change of air. She was admitted here to the friendship of the Prince and Princess of Orange, and " left Holland in the royal barge, to spend above another year abroad, endeavouring to fight off' (to use her own phrase) a union fraught with such dangerous consequences to her' peace and happiness." Courier after courier passed through France, carrying the letters and propositions of the prince to her in France and Switzerland. The Duke of Orleans was the medium of this correspondence. Wrought upon, and fearful from the past of the desperation of the prince, she consented, formally and delibe- rately, to promise she would never marry any other person ; and, lastly, she was induced to return to England, and to agree. to become his wife on those conditions which satisfied her own con-

science, though she could have no legal claim to be the wife of the prince. " I have seen," says Lord Stourton, "a letter of thirty-seven pages, written, as she informed me, not long before this step was taken, entirely in the handwri.ing of the prince ; in which it ia stated by him that his father would connive at the union . . . mmediately after her return she was married to the prince, according to the rites of the established Church in this coun- try; her uncle, Harry Errington, and her brother, Jack. Smythe, being witnesses tc the contract, along with the Protestant clergy- man who officiated at the ceremony. No Roman Catholic

priest officiated. A certificate of this marriage is extant in the handwriting of the Prince, and with his signature, and that of Mary Fitzherbert. The witnesses' names were added, but at the earnest request of the parties, in a time of danger, they were afterwards cut out by Mrs. Fitzherbert herself with her own scissors, to save them from the peril of the law. This she afterwards regretted ; but a letter to the prince on her return to him has been preserved to supply any deficiency, in which she thanks God that the witnesses to their union were still living. There are also preserved the letter of the officiating clergyman, and a document with the signature of the prince, in which he re- peatedly calls her his wife.

Thus the lady reconciled her conscience to what, in the eyes of the law, as well as in outward appearance, was an illicit connection. In 1772 the Royal Marriage Act, passed in consequence of the clandestine marriages of the king's broth rs, had rendered null and void any marriage among the royal family which took place with- out the knowledge and consent of the reigning sovereign. The proper course for the prince to have pursued, as Mr. Fox pointed out to him in a letter written at this time, under the apprehension of such a marriage, was to wait till he was twenty-five years of age, and then to state formally to Parliament his intention of marry- ing. But, not to speak of other objections to this open course, the lady was a Roman Catholic ; and besides the antipathy in the nation to that faith, there was an ugly provision in the Act of Succession which seemed to imply a forfeiture in case of such a marriage of the prince's light to the throne. This was perfectly well known to the prince and to Mrs. Fitzherbert also ; but the prince bad few scruples on such a point, and the lady seems to have thought it sufficient that the marriage was a valid one, as she believed it to be, in the sight of God and her own Church, and to have made up her mind to bear the oppro- brium of a doubtful position as stoically as possible. This, how- ever, was by far the most creditable, as it was the most lasting, of the connections of the Prince of Wales. The lady, whose grace, beauty, and accomplishments so fitted her for the highest place in society, acted the part of a faithful wife to him, and as far as her influence went it was exerted favourably as respects his moral character. But no influence for good was cogent or lasting with a young man whose character had been so thoroughly un- dermined as the prince's ; and Mrs. Fitzherbert herself ultimately learned by bitter experience the ingrained heartless selfishness of the royal profligate--and how little the most attentiveand continued devotion to him could bind him to honour or gratitude, when his own interests or self-indulgence pointed in a different direction. The marriage, such as it was, was kept in mystery; but the public soon

• got a tolerably true impression of what had taken place, and the consequence of this was the admission of Mrs. Fitzherbert into society from which, as the prince's mistress, she would have been ex- cluded. But it was the pecuniary difficulties of the prince which first brought the question of the secret marriage formally before the public. In the year 1786, Sheridan, as the prince's friend, had made a motion in the House of Commons for an address to the Crown for an augmentation of the prince's revenue. This the king, after some hesitation, declined. The prince then broke up his establishment at Carlton House. In April, 1787, however, his difficulties had so much increased that they came again before Parliament. In the course of the debate on this occasion, Mr. Fox, in his name, and by the authority of the prince, denied in the most precise terms that there had been any marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert, or even any contemplated, either in fact or in law. Mrs. Fitzherbert was excessively indignant at the terms employed in this denial, and the prince, whose miserable shuffling and lying during this affair with all parties were most disgraceful, got Sheridan to make a mystifying speech in vindication of the honour of Mrs. Fitzherbert, which left the matter much where it stood before, but with which the lady was compelled to be satis- fied. The king now agreed to assign 100,0001. fur the payment of the prince's debts, and 20,0001. for the repairs of Carlton House, which was thereupon again opened.

In the latter part of the year 1'788 the malady of the king brought before Parliament the question of a regent, and the powers to be assigned to the Prince of Wales ; and on this occa- sion the Whigs and Tories exchanged principles under tha influ-

ence of party feeling. On the 3rdDecember, 1788, the king's five physicians were examined by the Privy Council. They agreed that the king was then incapable of meeting Parliament, or of attending to any business; but believed in the possibility of his ultimate recovery, although they could not limit the time. Parliament, therefore, took up the question of a regency, and appointed committees to search for precedents. When the motion for the committee was made in the House of Commons, Mr. Fox advanced the startling opinion that the Prince of Wales had as clear a right to exercise the power of sovereignty during the king's incapacity, as if the king were actually dead ; and that it was merely for the two Houses of Parliament to pronounce at. what time he should commence the exercise of his right. Mr. Pitt, on the other hand, maintained that as no legal provision had been made for carrying on the government, it belonged to the Houses of Parliament to make such provision. He even went so far as to affirm that, " unless by their decision, the Prince of Wales hating more right—speakingof strict right—to assume the govern- ment than any other individual Fe tbject of the country ;" a position. as objectionable in one direction as that of Mr. Fox in the other, and which gave great umbrage to the prince and his friends. When next. this matter was discussed, Mr. Fox somewhat receded from his first ground. He now spoke of the prince having a legal claim, rather than a right to the regency, and contended that it was for Parliament to adjudicate upon that claim, which, when allowed, would become an absolute title to exercise all the rights of sovereignty, without any limitation. It was now his main position that no restrictions should be imposed on the power of the regent. In answer to this, Me. Pitt, allowing the claims of the prince as a matter of discretion, contended " that any power which was not essential, and which might be employed to embar- rass the exercise of the king's authority, in the event of his re- covery, ought to be withheld." In the House of Lords, when the subject was introduced, the Duke of York " said that no claim of right had been made on the part of the prince, who understood too well the sacred principles which seated the House of Bruns- wick on the throne, ever to assume or exercise any power, be his claim what it might, not derived from the will of the people, ex- pressed by their representatives and their lordships in Parliament assembled. He therefore deprecated pressing for any decision on that point, in which the Duke of Gloucester concurred." The prince, incensed at Pitt's speech, wrote to the Chancellor com.. plaining that the minister had proposed a scheme fur the regency without submitting it previously to his consideration. Pitt replied that he had submitted no such scheme, because he wished to have the question of right first settled. When this had been done by resolutions in both Houses, in accordance with the mintet s ideas (Lord Rawdon's amendment in the Lords, calling on the prince to assume the regency, being rejected), Mr. Pitt sub- mitted his scheme to the prince. The limitations on the regent's power were the reservation of the care of the king's person and household, and the appointment of officers and servants to the queen, the regent not to be empowered to dispose of the real or personal property of the king, or to grant any office in succession, or any pension or office, otherwise than during pleasure, except those which were required to be granted for life, or during good behaviour, or to bestow any peerage, except upon his Majesty's issue, having attained the age of twenty-one. The prince's reply was drawn up by Burke and revised by Sheridan, and stated that he considered the restrictions to be "a project for producing weakness, disorder, and insecurity in every branch of the administration of affairs,—for dividing the royal family from each other, for separating the court from the state, and thus disconnecting the anthot ity to command service from the power of attracting it by reward ; and for allotting to the prince all the invidious duties of government, without the means of softening them to the public by any act of grace, favour, or benignity." The restriction on granting away the king's property he treated as wholly unnecessary. Resolu- tions, however, thus restricting the prince's powers were passed in both Houses, and, being presented to the prince, he accepted the limited authority, and the queen acquiesced. Parliament had not been, however, formally opened, in default of a speech from the throne, and ministers, alleging this to be essential, carried resolutions in both Houses, authorizing letters patent to issue for a commission to perform this duty. The Regency Bill was then. introduced, passed the Commons after lengthened debates, was sent to the Lords, and was in committee there, when, on the 19th of February, 1789, the Lord Chancellor announced that the king was convalescent, and further proceedings were arrested. The Parliament of Ireland, meanwhile, adopting Mr. Fox's views, had

offered the regency of Ireland to the prince, who returned an answer warmly thanking them, and expressing a Lope that the powers would become unnecessary by the recovery of the king.

In the summer of 1791 the prince retired from the Jockey Club in consequence of an affair in which a private servant of his was accused of foul play. He sold off all his horses-500 in number—and settled an annuity of 2001. on the servant. There had been a fresh misunderstanding between the king and queen on the one aide and the prince on the other, after the recovery of the former from his illness. The spirit exhibited by the prince towards his father during the discussions on the Regency Bill and his intrigues with some of the king's ministers, such, for instance, as Lord Thu, low, were much resented by the king. The public also took the king's side against the prince on the former score of his unfilial conduct, and the day when the restored monarch went in state to St. Paul's (on the 23rd of April, 1789) to return thanks for his recovery, was made the occasion of a popular demonstra- tion against the Prince of Wales and his brother the Duke of York. But in 1790 a temporary reconciliation was brought about between the father and son, and on the 3 tat of May, 1792, the prince delivered his first speech in the House of Lords, in which he formally separated himself from the party of Mr. Fox, and joined those Whigs who, under Burke and Windham, had seceded to the government, on the question of the French Revolution. He also took leave of his former friends in a letter to the Duke of Rutland. "As it is the cause of kings," writes Erskine, in February, 1793, " our prince is drawn into it, and has taken his leave of all of us."

In February, 1801, and again in 1804, there were recurrences of the king's malady, which caused the question of a regency to be again discussed. The former attack occurred during a minis- terial crisis between an outgoing and incoming minister—Mr. Pitt and Mr. Addington—and both these gentlemen put them- selves in communication with the Prince of Wales. But in both years a better feeling prevailed among all parties on this subject, and the king's speedy recovery relieved them from any public discussion on this most delicate point.

The pecuniary embarrassments of the prince, however, having continued to increase, it became at length necessary for him to take some decided step, and accordingly in the summer of 1794 be intimated his willingness to many (as the king had long de- sired) if his debts were paid and a suitable provision made for him. The ministers undertook the unpleasing task of communi- cating to parliament the Prince's position, and proposing the new arrangement. His income was raised to 115,0001. a year, 25,0001. being deducted from that sum for the payment of his debts, which were stated to amount to no less than 050,0001. The lady whom the prince accepted as his legal wife, at this price, was his cousin, Caroline AmeliaElizabeth, second daughter of the Duke of Brunswick and of the Princess Augusta, sister of the king. The princess does not appear to have had the most prudent management in her early years. She had formed an early attachment in ber own country, and had the indiscretion to refer to it in a quarter from which it was sure to reach the Prince of Wales. She was not only indiscreet, but flighty in her conduct, and somewhat coarse in her manners— as she was singularly negligent as to her personal appearance. She had, however, a considerable amount of ability, if it bad only been under the control of prudence ; warm feelings where she took a predilection—which she indulged without the slightest regard to appearances--and a firm woman's will. Had she been placed in happier circumstances, though her conduct would proba- bly have been always rather outré, she might have passed tolerably unscathed through the ordeal of married life, and have been able to display her good-natured and amiable feelings without the risk of misinterpretation or the scandal of indecorous ex- aggeration in their indulgence. As it was, she was united to a man who had married her from pecuniary motives only, who was already united by a religious ceremony with a lady to whom (not- withstanding their occasional separations), he was still strongly attached, and who conceived from his first view of his new bride a strong disgust for her person, while he was wholly unable or unwilling to make allowance for the peculiarities of her dispo- sition and manners, or the difficulties attendant on her first arrival in a strange land. Disagreements soon arose between husband and wife—the impetuous spirit and wounded pride of the latter revolting against the society of the prince's favourite, Lady Jer- sey, and the marked preference which he showed for the mistress over the wife. The rashness and indiscretion on one side—the grossness, not to say brutality, on the other—the indecorum displayed on both sides were for many years the samdal of the Court, and the subject of indignation among the people, who, however, naturally enough, generally took the part of the weaker and less culpable party ; and often, forgetting her real faults, and exaggerating her ordinary good qualities into exalted virtues, made fresh mischief between the royal pair by inflaming still more the jealousy and anger of the prince. On the 7th of January, 1796, the birth of a daughter—the Princess Charlotte—gave an opportunity for some sort of a reconciliation. But neither party availed themselves of it. They lived for some months longer under the same roof without speaking to one another, and then a formal separation took place, and the princess and her child retired, first to Charlton, and then to Blackheath.

As the prince was again on ill terms with his father, who re- fused to give him any public employments, military or civil, and who was greatly displeased at his conduct towards the princess, it is not remarkable that the Tories and the court party generally at this time gathered round the wife and attacked the husband. Mr. Perceval was at this time her •principal adviser, and assisted ber on an important occasion which a few years afterwards threatened to remove her from the pale of society. This was the accusation of Sir John and Lady Douglas in 1806 against the princess, that she had not only behaved habitually with gross impropriety, but bad actually given birth in the year 1802 to a male illegitimate child. A royal commission, which was ap- pointed from amongst the ministers, examined into the charges, and declared the latter part of them false, though they lent some countenance to the truth of the former and lighter accusation. But after the answer of the princess, drawn up by Perceval, the cabinet resolved unanimously that the whole of the accusations were without foundation.

At the close of the year 1810, however, the king's malady once more returned, and, as it proved, in a permanent form. There was again some discussion, but much less violent, on the ques- tion of the regency, and on the 3rd of February, 1811, the Prince of Wales was sworn in as Regent before the Privy Council, with restricted powers as before. These restrictions, however, were removed the next year. Here, then, his career as Prince of Wales ends. Henceforward the royal authority vested in him absorbed his former position, and added to it duties and responsibilities which are not those of the heir appa- rent. Here, then, we leave him to pursue his miserable career of selfish profligacy, and to experience at last tire strange fate of having his name associated with public measures of essential benefit, for the result of which he can personally advance no claim; and leaving a record in his private life of all that a prince ought not to be.

Not without some talent, his tastes, even in their higher direc- tion, were marked by an ingrained vulgarity of sentiment. In the decorative arts be had the showy uneducated ideas of a second- rate upholsterer, and, as an architect, he exhibited all the eccen- tricity of an unformed and childish taste. His great redeeming trait, as it is called, was his reputation of being the first gentle- man in Europe. If superficial manners and a certain attention to dress are to be taken as the index of this character, no doubt

he is entitied to the epithet. He could be fascinating in his address when he chose, and be had a certain gift for devis- ing new (if not elegant) costumes, which might have, under other circumstances, made of him a tolerable tailor. But he was wholly destitute of the higher characteristics of a true gentle-

man. Of real good-breeding—as opposed to surface affability—he had no conception. His vanity and his selfishness emptied all his most agreeable acts of any deep or true meaning, and with all his polished manners, and his occasional sallies of wit, he never made a real friend, or was long faithful to any but the most degraded of his associates. He patronized the talents of men like Sheridan for his selfish amusement, and cast them aside when tired or jealous of them, as a child does its last week's toys.

William Hone, in later years, wrote what may well serve as his epitaph :-

"This is the man, all shaven and shorn,

All covered with orders, and all forlorn ; The Dandy of sixty, who bows with a grace, And has taste in wigs, collars, cuirasses, and lace !"

In a political point of view, we cannot do better than close our notice with some remarks of a recent historian, referring to the

prince at the commencement of his regency in the year 1811 :- "George III., eager for power, had delighted also in business, in which be had trained himself from early youth. With greater abilities, and superior education, the prince was fond of ease and

pleasure,. and averse to business. His was not the temperament to seek the labour and anxieties of public affairs, nor had power devolved up.= him until the ambitious spirit of youth had ceased to prompt him to exertion. He loved the pomp and circumstance' of royalty without its cares. But though disinclined to the daily toils which his father had undergone for fifty years,—and dis- posed by indolence and indifference to leave more discretion ts; his ministers in the ordinary affairs of state, vet, whenever his own feelings or interests were concerned, his fathe" himself had scarcely been more imperative. The very qualities, however, which disinclined the prince to laborious activity exposed him the more readily to the influence of the court. His father's will was strong and full of energy ; his own, inconstant and capricious. The father had judged for himself with rude vigour and decision, —his son, inconstant, indolent, and without strength of principle or conviction—was swayed by the advice of those nearest to his person. To politics, apart from their relations to himself, the -prince was indifferent, and his indifference led to the same results as the king's strong predilections. He readily gave up the opinions as well as the political friends of his youth. As to his friends, indeed, he had been separated from them for many years by the French Revolution. The death of Mr. Fox had more recently lessened the tie which had bound them together; the part taken by them against the Duke of York further relaxed it, and the proud bearing of the greatWhig leaders, little congenial to the lighter manners of the court, had nearly broken it asunder. But lately they had exerted themselves strenuously against the restrictions upon the powers of the regent, which the government, following the precedent of 1788, had pro- posed, and their general views of policy were supposed to coincide with his own."

How the Prince Regent cast aside these old friends and recent supporters is well known, and with this characteristic trait of his disposition we gladly pass from the subject.

XVI1-1841.—ALBERT EDWARD,

Eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg- Gotha, born November 9th, 1841; Duke of Cornwall ; created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, 8th December, 1841, " to him and his heirs, Kings of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, fur ever." Whom God preserve !