sador on the 30th May, the Prince of Wales and the Dukes of York and Clarence would neither dance nor remain to supper, lest they should have the appearance of paying the smallest attention to her majesty, who was present.

The assertion of the Prince of Wales that his royal father would approve of what he had done, and censure Pitt, proved to be totally unfounded. The king conveyed to the parliament, through the lord chancellor, his approval of the measures taken by ministers, and expressed his gratitude that so much zeal had been manifested by them and parliament for the public good, and for the honor and interest of the crown. Following this, came a sweep of all who held removable offices under the crown, and who had opposed the queen's interests and the king's cause, by supporting the views of the prince. Among the ejected were the Duke of Queensberry, the Marquis of Lothian, Lord Carteret, and Lord Malmesbury.

Mr. Wright, in his History of England under the House of Hanover, illustrated from the caricatures and satires of the day, states that the popularity of the ministers did not increase in the same proportion as that of the king; for the reason that though the people approved of the constitutional measures they had adopted at the late crisis, the same people very well knew that they were as little impelled by patriotism as their adversaries. Mr. Wright notices "a rather celebrated caricature," by Gillray, entitled "Minions of the Moon," published a little later. It is dated the 23rd December, 1791, but is generally understood to refer to this affair. It is a parody on Fuseli's picture of "The Weird Sisters," who are represented with the features of Dundas, Pitt, and Thurlow. They are contemplating the disk of the moon, which represents, on the bright side, the face of the queen, and on the shrouded side that of the king, now overcast with mental darkness. The three minions are evidently directing their devotions to the brighter side.

CHAPTER IX.

ROYALTY UNDER VARIOUS PHASES.

AMONG the few bishops who took the "unrestricted" side, on the Regency Bill, Bishop Watson of Llandaff was the most active. No doubt his activity was founded on conscientiousness, for there were many able men of the period, who were by no means violent partisans, yet who were ready to maintain that, according to the constitutional law, the right of exercising the power of regent, in the case of incapacity on the part of the reigning sovereign, rested in the next heir, the Prince of Wales. There is as little doubt as to the queen's having looked with considerable disfavor on all who held such sentiments. Among those who did, was, as I have said, the Bishop of Llandaff. If Queen Charlotte felt towards the prelate as Queen Caroline used to do towards those who stood between her and her wishes, the fault, if fault there were, was not attributable to her, but to the minister. He, right or wrong, and most persons who knew what the conduct of the eldest son of Charlotte was, will agree that he was, at least, morally right,-he, the minister, represented to her that all who supported the prince, and opposed the ministerial measure, which gave great power to the queen, were enemies of the sovereign. Charlotte believed this, and perhaps the Whig bishop is not wrong, who says that the queen lost, in the opinion of many, the character she had hitherto maintained in this country, by falling in with the designs of the minister. These many were, however, only the Whigs. It is, nevertheless, unfortunately true that the queen distinguished by different degrees of courtesy, on the one hand, and by meditated affronts on the other, those who had voted with, and those who had voted against the ministers, "inasmuch," says Bishop Watson,

"that the Duke of Northumberland one day said to me, 'So, my lord, you and I also are become traitors.""

At the drawing-room which was held on the king's recovery, the queen received Bishop Watson with a degree of coldness, which, he says, "would have appeared to herself ridiculous and ill-placed could she have imagined how little a mind such as mine regarded in its honorable proceedings the displeasure of a woman, though that woman happened to be a queen." This is as little gallant towards the sex generally, and civil towards Queen Charlotte in particular, as ever was uttered by St. Kevin, with universal application, from the pulpit, or addressed by him from the rock, with especial application to his persevering Kate.

But, it must not be forgotten that if the queen had, as it were, two faces for the two parties into which society at court was divided, her eldest son exhibited the same characteristic, and he was, accordingly, eminently cordial with the prelate of Llandaff. When, at the drawing-room above-named, the queen looked displeased as the bishop stood before her, the Prince of Wales, who was standing by her side, immediately asked him to come and dine with him. A more unseemly proceeding cannot well be imagined. "On my making some objection," says the bishop, "to dining at Carlton House, the prince turned to Sir Thomas Dundas, and asked him to give us a dinner at his house on the following Saturday." The party was arranged, the guests met, and, while they were waiting for dinner, the prince took the bishop by the buttonhole, and, says the bishop, "he explained to me the principle on which he had acted during the whole of the king's illness, and spoke to me, with an afflicted feeling, of the manner in which the queen had treated himself. I must do him the justice to say that he spoke, in this conference, in as sensible a manner as could possibly have been expected from an heir-apparent to the throne, and from a son of the best principles towards both his parents." The especial words, "in this conference," would seem to imply that the son of Charlotte did not always speak in as sensible a manner as could have been expected from a royal heir-apparent. It would have been as well, too, if the bishop had told his readers what the principle was on which the prince had grounded his conduct

throughout the king's illness; and when he simply talks of the prince as a son imbued with the best principles towards both his parents, he would have done well if he had added, whether he was considering that son politically or morally. I think it must have been politically, for the right reverend prelate did not impress upon his younger friend that a mother's faults should be invisible to the eyes of her children; but, on the other hand, he rather emphatically charged her with ill-humor, by advising the prince to "persevere in dutifully bearing with his mother's illhumor till time and her own good sense should disentangle her from the web which ministerial cunning had thrown around her." Now, to persevere in a line of conduct is to continue in that already entered upon, and the line followed by the prince was one of continual insult and provocation against the queen. The bishop confesses an inclination to think well of her. "I was willing,” he writes, "to attribute her conduct during the agitation of the regency question, to her apprehensions of the king's safety, to the misrepresentations of the king's minister, to anything rather than a fondness for power." There is something inexpressibly ingenuous in the paragraph which follows:-"Before we rose from table at Sir Thomas Dundas's, where the Duke of York and a large company were assembled, the conversation turning on parties, I happened to say I was sick of parties, and should retire from all public concerns, 'No,' said the prince, and mind who it is that tells you so, you shall never retire-a man of your talents shall never be lost to the public.'" This testimony of himself was recorded by the bishop in 1814, and was published by his son, in the queen's life-time, in 1817. Like the passage touching the queen, it gave offence to the principal person concerned in it. The aged queenconsort was not pleased to have her "ill-humor" registered before the world, nor was her son flattered by the innuendo which was conveyed in the paragraph which chronicled his promise of conferring preferment on the Bishop of Llandaff. Dr. Watson died prelate of that small diocese. The chief-butler had forgotten Joseph and his services.

We should do but poor justice to the queen on this occasion if we omitted to state, that if her majesty looked coldly upon the

prelate, it was because the latter had deliberately inflicted an annoyance on the queen. The clergy of the diocese of Llandaff presented congratulatory addresses to both their majesties, upon the king's recovery. These addresses were written by Bishop Watson; and in that which he presented to Queen Charlotte, he inserted a paragraph which he avows, in his memoirs, that he knew would be disagreeable to her. The address in question, after expressing that the sympathy of every family had been extended to the queen in her late distress, complimenting her on the sincerity of her piety, the amiableness and purity of her manners as queen, wife, and mother, and referring, in laudatory terms, to the concern which she had exhibited for the monarch during his late unhappy situation, thus proceeds :-" We observed in the deliberations of parliament a great diversity of opinions as to the constitutional mode of protecting the rights of the sovereign during the continuance of his indisposition; but we observed no diversity whatever as to the necessity of protecting them in the most effectual manner. This circumstance cannot fail of giving solid satisfaction to your majesty; for, next to the consolation of believing that in his recovery he has been the especial object of God's mercy, must be that of knowing that during his illness he was the peculiar object of his people's love; that he rules over a free, a great, and an enlightened nation, not more by the laws of the land than by the wishes of the people."

Upon this text of his own constructing, the bishop makes the following comment in his Autobiography :-" The first part of this last paragraph I knew would be disagreeable to the queen, as it contradicted the principle she wished to be generally believed, and the truth of which alone could justify her conduct-that the opposition to the minister was an opposition to the king. Now, as there was not a word of disaffection to the king in any of the debates in either house of parliament during the transaction of the regency, and as I verily believe the hearts of the opposition were as warm with the king, and warmer with the constitution, than those of their competitors, I thought fit to say what was, in my judgment, the plain truth." The bishop, however, loses sight of the fact that queen, ministers, and a great majority of the people