X. 1820. divisions to Portsmouth. The night before the last CHAP. division marched, however, an alarming mob collected round the gates of the barracks, calling on the troops to come out and join them; and they were only dispersed by a troop of the life-guards, called out by Lord Sidmouth in person. 83. the negotia commence After the Queen's arrival in London, an attempt was made by her able advisers, Messrs Brougham and Den- Failure of man, to renew the negotiation, and prevent the disclo- tions, and sures, painful and discreditable to all concerned, to ment of the which the threatened investigation would necessarily inquiry. lead. The basis of the proposal was to be, that the King was to retract nothing, the Queen admit nothing, and that she was to leave Great Britain with an annuity, settled upon her for life, of £50,000 a-year. It failed, however, in consequence of her Majesty insisting on the insertion of her name in the Liturgy and a reception at foreign courts, or at least some one foreign court, in a manner suitable to her rank. On the first point the King was immovable; on the last, the utmost length he would go, was to agree to notify her being legally Queen of England to some foreign court, leaving her reception there to the pleasure of that court. The utmost mutual temper and courtesy were evinced by the commissioners on both sides, who were no less persons than Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington on the part of his Majesty, and Messrs Brougham and Denman on that of the Queen. But all attempts at adjustment of the differences were unsuccessful, and on the 19th June it was formally announced in both Houses of Parliament that the negotiation had failed, and on the 4th July, the secret July 4. committee of the Lords, to whom it had been referred, reported" that the evidence affecting the honour of the Queen was such as to require, for the dignity of the Crown and the moral feeling and honour of the country, a solemn inquiry." The Queen next day declared, by July 5. petition to the Lords, her readiness to defend herself, X. 1820. 1 Protocol, CHAP. and praying to be heard by counsel; and soon after Lord Liverpool brought forward, in the House of Lords, the famous Bill of Pains and Penalties, which, on the narraJune 15, 16, tive of improper and degrading conduct on the part of Reg. 1820, her Majesty, and an adulterous connection with a menial Parl. Deb. servant named Bartelomeo Bergami, proposed to dissolve ii. 167, 207, the marriage with his Majesty, and deprive her of all her rights and privileges as Queen of England.1 1820; Ann. 159, 161; 248. 84. the trial. The die was now cast, and the trial went on in good Scenewhich earnest. But who can paint the scene which ensued, ensued on when the first of British subjects was brought to trial before the first of British assemblies by the most powerful of British sovereigns! Within that august hall, fraught with so many interesting recollections, where so many noble men had perished, and innocence had so often appealed from the cruelty of man to the justice of Heaven; where Anne Boleyn had called God to witness, and Queen Catherine had sobbed at severance from her children; where Elizabeth had spoken to the hearts of her people, and Anne had thrilled at the recital of Marlborough's victories; whose walls were still hung with the storied scene of the destruction of the Armada-was all that was great and all that was noble in England assembled for the trial of the consort of the Sovereign, the daughter of the house of Brunswick! There was to be seen the noble forehead and serene countenance of Castlereagh-the same now, in the throes of domestic anxiety, as when he affronted the power of France, and turned the scales of fortune on the plains of Champagne; there the Roman head of Wellington, still in the prime of life, but whose growing intellectual expression bespoke the continued action of thought on that constitution of iron. Liverpool was there, calm and unmoved, amidst a nation's throes, and patiently enduring the responsibility of a proceeding on which the gaze of the world was fixed; and Sidmouth, whose courage nothing could daunt, and whose tutelary arm had so long enchained X. 1820. the fiery spirit which was now bursting forth on every CHAP. side. There was Eldon, whose unaided abilities had placed him at the head of this august assembly, and who was now called to put his vast stores of learning to their noblest use-that of holding the scales of justice, even against his own strongest interests and prepossessions; and there was Copley, the terror of whose crossexamination proved so fatal on the trial, and presaged the fame of his career as Lord-Chancellor. There was Grey, whose high intellectual forehead, big with the destinies of England, bespoke the coming revolution in her social state; and Lansdowne, in whom suavity of manner and dignity of deportment adorned, without concealing, the highest gifts of eloquence and statesmanship. There were Brougham and Denman, whose oratorical powers and legal acuteness were sustained by a noble intrepidity, and who, in now defending the illustrious. accused against the phalanx of talent and influence by which she was assailed, apparently to the ruin of their professional prospects, worthily won a seat on the Woolsack, and at the head of the King's Bench of England. Lawrence there gazed on a scene more thrilling and august than the soul of painting had ever conceived; and Kean studied the play of passions as violent as any by which he had entranced the world on the mimic stage. And in the front of all was the Queen of England, a stranger, childless, reviled, discrowned, but sustained by the native intrepidity of her race, and gazing undaunted on the hostility of a nation in arms.* 85. The trial for trial it was, though disguised under the name of a Bill of Pains and Penalties-went on for several Progress of the trial, months; and day after day, during that long period, was and its difthe public press of England polluted by details, which ficulties. * The reader of Macaulay's incomparable Essay on Warren Hastings need not be told what model was in the author's eye in this paragraph; but no one can feel so strongly as he does the futility of all attempts to rival that noble picture. X. 1820. CHAP. elsewhere are confined to the professed votaries or theatres of pleasure. Immense was the demoralising influence which the production of these details exercised upon the nation, which laid before the whole people scenes, and familiarised them with ideas, which had hitherto been confined to the comparatively few, whom travelling had made acquainted with the license of foreign manners. It does not belong to history to bring them again to light; they repose in decent obscurity, accessible to few, in the Parliamentary Debates, and have come to be forgotten even by the licentious, to whom at the time they were a subject of such unbounded gratification. Suffice it to say, that the facts sworn to by the witnesses for the prosecution were of such a nature as to leave no doubt of the guilt of the accused, if the evidence was to be relied on; but that there the case was beset by the greatest difficulties. Most of the witnesses were Italians, upon whose testimony little reliance could be placed; some of them were involved in such contradictions, or broke down so under cross-examination, that they required to be thrown overboard altogether. The principal of them, Theodore Majocchi, the Princess's valet, pretended ignorance, on cross-examination, of so many things which he obviously recollected, that his answer to the questions, "Non mi ricordo," has passed into a proverbial expression known all over the world, to express the culpable concealment of vi. 442; known truth by a perjured witness. Yet did the conduct 1820; App. of the Queen herself afford reason to suspect that he had something material to reveal; for when his name was called out by the clerk, as the first witness, she started up, gave a faint cry, and left the House.1 1 Hughes, Ann. Reg. to Chron. 986; Mar tineau, i. 257. 86. Mr Brougham thus closed his eloquent opening of the Peroration defence for her Majesty, justly celebrated as one of the Brougham's finest specimens of British forensic eloquence: "Such, defence. my Lords, is the case before you! Such is the evidence of Mr in support of this measure-evidence inadequate to prove a debt, impotent to deprive of a civil right, ridiculous to X. convict of the lowest offence, scandalous if brought for- CHAP. ward to support the highest charge which the law knows, monstrous to stain the honour and blast the name of an 1820. English queen. What shall I say, then, if this is the proof by which an act of judicial legislation, a parliamentary sentence, an ex post facto law, is sought to be passed against this defenceless woman? My Lords, I pray you to pause; I do earnestly beseech you to take heed. You are standing on the brink of a precipice-then beware! It will go forth as your judgment, if sentence shall go against the Queen. But it will be the only judgment you ever pronounced, which, instead of reaching its object, will return, and bound back upon those who gave it. Save the country, my Lords, from the horrors of this catastrophe-save yourselves from this peril. Rescue that country of which you are the ornaments, but in which you can flourish no longer, when severed from the people, than the blossom when cut off from the roots and the stem of the tree. Save that country that you may continue to adorn it-save the Crown, which is in jeopardy-the aristocracy, which is shaken-the altar, which must totter with the blow which rends its kindred throne! You have said, my Lords-you have willed-the Church and the King have willed-that the Queen should be deprived of its solemn service. She has, instead of that solemnity, the heartfelt prayers of the people. She wants no prayers of mine; but I do here pour forth my humble supplications at the throne of mercy, that that mercy may of Mr be poured down upon the people, in a larger measure i. 227, 228; than the merits of its rulers may deserve, and that your iii. 210. hearts may be turned to justice."1 1 Speech Brougham, Parl. Deb. fence, and Such was the effect of this splendid speech, and such 87. the apprehensions felt in a large part of the House of Queen's dePeers of the hourly-increasing agitation out of doors, that failure of it is generally thought, by those best acquainted with the the bill. feelings of that assembly, that if the vote had been taken at that moment, the Queen would have been entirely VOL. II. 2 G |