The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I (23 page)

Georg August railed against his limited powers. He could not appoint anyone to a position worth more than £50 a year, could not summon or dissolve parliament. George entrusted his son with no more responsibility than his council in Hanover enjoyed in his absences in England.

But the prince had another grievance against his father. Just before his departure George, fearing his influence over the prince, insisted on the dismissal of his son’s friend and groom of the stole, Archibald Campbell, third Duke of Argyll. It was also for the sake of political stability in his absence – Argyll was the enemy of Walpole and Townshend. Argyll was generally disliked, motivated in everything he did by his intense jealousy of Marlborough. According to the historian of the Georgian era, J. H. Plumb: ‘Few liked him, few trusted him . . . he could be relied upon to create the maximum trouble given half an opportunity. His power was far from negligible, for he and his brother controlled a great deal of the political world of Scotland. Their family had a long history of treason.’
¹⁰
But this quarrelsome duke had made himself very amenable to the prince. Georg August was furious at Argyll’s
dismissal, and George was forced to threaten to bring his own brother, Ernst August, over from Hanover to act as ‘regent’ in Georg August’s place unless he calmed down.

Melusine, ever trying to maintain a tranquil atmosphere, was against Argyll’s removal. She had known Georg August most of his life and was well aware of his volatility. She feared there would be trouble. Mary Cowper recorded in her diary on 8 July 1716: ‘Lady St John here [wife of Sir Henry, created in 1716 viscount St John, father of Lord Bolingbroke] . . . She says that the Duchess of Munster [Melusine] had told her that she was against turning out Argyll at this juncture, and that she believed it was the ministers had put the king upon it . . .’

Although Georg August declared himself ‘resolved to sacrifice everything to please and live well with the king’, he spent the summer and autumn of George’s absence behaving in a way that, if not in open opposition, was not entirely loyal. He headed a splendid court at Hampton Court and kept Argyll with him, although not in his official position. Townshend and Walpole found it prudent not to complain and went to see the prince regularly, where they found him charming and willing to conduct ministerial business. But they sent to Hanover their fears of the prince’s design, encouraged by Argyll, ‘to keep up an interest of his own in Parliament independent of the King’s’.
¹¹
Georg August was determined to create his own prince’s party in parliament. One of George’s greatest attributes was his loyalty. He was bewildered and miserable at what he saw as the prince’s treachery.

Georg August, ever prone to sulks and tantrums, stayed pointedly away from Cabinet meetings despite the pleas of the king and his ministers, and encouraged his supporters in the Commons and the Lords to vote against his father’s ministry. But Sunderland refused to be held captive to the prince’s ill temper. He sought to persuade George to drastic measures. He recommended banning
Georg August from the royal palaces, and in his wilder moments he even postulated deportation to the colonies.

The loathing between Walpole and Townshend on the one hand and Sunderland on the other possibly precipitated such outlandish suggestions. Melusine’s youngest brother Schulenburg’s letters tell us that Walpole and Townshend ‘hated’ Sunderland and the feeling was no doubt reciprocated.
¹²
They enjoyed fanning the flames of acrimony between George and his son.

But George refused to consider these ridiculous ideas. He did everything he could to appease Georg August for the sake of familial and parliamentary unity, despite his son’s provocative actions. Melusine, worried for George’s health, strove to keep him calm. She encouraged him to approach Caroline to smooth things over, and the diplomatic Stanhope was duly dispatched on George’s behalf.

But the situation worsened throughout the summer of 1717 after George and Melusine’s return from Hanover, despite Melusine’s best efforts to bring Caroline on side. The two women continued their friendly relations, but the princess steadfastly refused to ask her husband to step into line. Georg August deliberately distanced himself from Melusine, probably from a desire not to embarrass her with his temper. He always showed her the greatest respect, even after his father’s death.

Georg August’s recalcitrance thrust George and Melusine into the limelight. Rather than returning to Hanover for the summer as planned, they were forced to make a splendid show at Hampton Court. Melusine was disappointed; the trip to Hanover included a spa cure for George at Bad Pyrmont, and she was increasingly worried about his health. It was at this time that George showed all the symptoms of an anal fistula, and family and friends panicked. Louis XIV, suffering from the condition in 1686, had been obliged to undergo surgery, and this option was viewed with horror by
George, Melusine and their immediate circle. Operations in the days before general anaesthetic were extremely risky, and George was never comfortable with doctors. It was Mehemet who was nominated to persuade him to undergo an examination, and to the delight of Melusine and the king’s friends and family, no fistula was found.

But despite George’s medical scare, he and Melusine felt compelled to host receptions, balls, card games, shoots and festivals. Public days were held on Sundays and Thursdays, George dined in public and, against his natural inclinations, held levees and couchers. He mixed freely with his visitors. He had card tables and a billiard table set up in the Gallery at Hampton Court and he attended these parties every night, staying until past midnight. George also made a point of spending far more time with his English staff and courtiers. His ministers and subjects were thrilled at this ‘royal’ behaviour.

Much of our information about this period comes from the letters that Melusine’s brother, Frederick William Schulenburg, sent to Görtz. He was part of the inner sanctum, almost on a par in George’s affections with the beloved Mehemet and Mustapha. He tells us of a ‘rupture’ between father and son, and the weakening of the king’s party of parliament. Georg August was now openly acting with the rebel Whigs (led by Walpole, and often called the Walpolian Whigs) against his father. Melusine’s brother, in another letter to Görtz, listed the group of those dissenting Whigs – chiefly Walpole and Townshend – under the heading ‘Le Prince’.
¹³
Walpole’s enormous skill in managing the Commons was proved as he held up bill after bill.

The breach was not yet irrevocable. To George and Melusine’s surprise and delight the Prince and Princess of Wales came to Hampton Court for the summer, although the prince could barely tolerate his father’s company. Caroline was pregnant once more;
her last child, a boy, had been stillborn and George wanted nothing to jeopardize the safe delivery of a hoped-for prince. The summer passed without incident between father and son, although both were sulking.

The prince and princess returned to St James’s to await the birth while George and Melusine took the opportunity to embark on a mini-progress to visit nearby estates and to go to the races at New-market. By showing himself to his subjects, his ministers agreed, the king had done ‘great good’. But Addison, George’s Secretary of the South at the time, tells us that George only ‘took the sudden resolution of being present at the diversion of that place [New-market]’ because he thought the prince would be there and now, in the midst of a conflict, he did not want Georg August to out-shine him.
¹⁴

George’s enforced sociability continued after the court returned to St James’s in November, when he held an evening drawing room three times a week.
¹⁵
George tried to make the court, and therefore his ministry, more desirable than the opposition of Townshend, Walpole and his son. A contemporary, Arthur Onslow, notes: ‘Among other methods used by the Court to secure a majority, chiefly in the House of Commons, a magnificent public table, at vast expense to the King, was kept at St James’s House in Parliament time, for the entertainment of the members.’
¹⁶
George spent the formidable sum of £700 a month on this merry-making, a sign that he was conducting, in Beattie’s words, ‘a competition for popularity’.

It was the birth of a healthy boy on 20 October that precipitated the final rupture.
¹⁷
The events that led to George and his son not speaking for nearly three years were almost comical. They began when the parents set about searching for a name. Caroline wanted to call her son William. George’s ministers insisted that, as George was to be one of the godfathers, he should be called George. A compromise, ‘George William’, was agreed upon.

The couple naturally expected to choose a second godfather for the boy, and they decided on Georg August’s uncle, Ernst August. This choice should have pleased George, but Sunderland and Stanhope took a hand. Hoping to break the prince’s dangerous links with Walpole and Townshend so that the king’s business could be carried out without hindrance once more, they insisted on the lord chamberlain, the Duke of Newcastle, as the other godfather.

George, seemingly wishing to accommodate his son and daughter-in-law, suggested that Newcastle instead act as proxy for Ernst August at the ceremony. But Georg August loathed Newcastle and refused. The more diplomatic Caroline suggested a postponement, but no one was willing; the ministry was furious with the disobedient prince, and Melusine and the king’s closest friends wanted the matter dealt with as quickly as possible so that the king could finally have his holiday in Hanover in the spring.

The christening went ahead on 28 November, but as soon as his father was out of the room Georg August turned the full force of his infamous temper on Newcastle and verbally abused him. He accused him of dishonourable behaviour and evidently used other ‘strong, injurious expressions’.
¹⁸
During this rant he probably said, in his thick German accent: ‘I’ll find you.’ But Newcastle, in shock and frightened of this princely tornado, misheard and thought that Georg August had challenged him to a duel with the words ‘I’ll fight you.’ He was, he believed, in peril of his life. He ran to the king for protection.

George, furious, took drastic measures. He placed his son under house arrest at St James’s before expelling him from the palace on 2 December, to Georg August’s enormous surprise. Caroline, he made clear, was welcome to stay at the palace with her children, but the princess insisted on leaving with her husband. Under English law the royal children belonged to the Crown, and as such they were obliged to stay. Georg August took his father to court in an attempt
to get them back, but the court found for the king. Georg August was further incensed when his father insisted the prince give him £40,000 a year for the children’s upkeep. Although the king’s demands came to nothing, they succeeded in worsening the breach.

Liselotte, despite having never met Caroline – their correspondence was a method devised by Liselotte’s son the Regent for shoring up relations with Britain – sent a flurry of letters to her correspondents and wrote to Louise on 23 December 1717:

I am so sorry for our dear Princess of Wales that I shed tears for her yesterday. It is so pitiful, the way the Countess of Bückeburg [Joanne Sophie zu Schaumburg-Lippe] described her departure from St James’s. The poor Princess went into one faint after another when her weeping little Princesses said goodbye.

She continued: ‘The King of England is really cruel to the Princess of Wales. Although she has done nothing, he has taken her children away from her.’
¹⁹

Mary Cowper wrote in her diary: ‘The Princess is all in a flame, the Prince in an agony. They are all mad, and for their own private ends will destroy all.’
²⁰

The spat, so public, was devastating for the entire family. Londoners deplored what they saw as the snatching away of the children and public sympathy rested with the prince and princess. The Jacobite press was overjoyed, as were the Tories who crowded to George’s court.
²¹

Frederick William Schulenburg reported that the king, so saddened, was ‘quite altered’. And it is from this period that George’s health went into gradual decline. His sadness was compounded by Sophia Charlotte’s intense grief at the death of her husband Johann Adolf von Kielmansegg. George also mourned the loss of a close friend.

The prince and princess rented a fine seventeenth-century house in Leicester Square, on the edge of Leicester fields – it was the house in which Sophia’s mother, Elizabeth of Bohemia, had died. Here they established a rival court, attracting a younger and livelier crowd of politicians and courtiers than George’s ‘official’ court. George, incensed, made it clear that anyone who had been received at Leicester House would not be welcome at court. Friendships suffered, with Mary Cowper forced to leave Caroline’s service because of her husband’s position in George’s ministry. But cloak-and-dagger ways were found of communicating, at masked balls and with secret notes, all heightening the sense of intrigue.

The critical ramification of the rupture between the king and the Prince of Wales was the solidifying of the opposition of Walpole and Townshend around the prince at Leicester House. Father and son effectively led rival factions. George and his ministers experienced a ‘painful session’ when parliament reconvened in October, with Walpole continuing to consistently block the progress of the king’s bills.

And with the removal of the most sociable elements of the royal family, the Prince and Princess of Wales, George’s court had to glitter more than ever. In April 1718 the court moved to Kensington Palace, where the king continued his evening parties. Mrs Allanson wrote to Lady Cowper in May: ‘the ladies say they [have] never see[n] so much company and every body fine, the King very obliging and in great good humour . . . [at night] all the garden illuminated and music in it and dancing in the Green House and the long Gallery’.
²²