Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria/Chapter 3

by Millicent Garrett Fawcett

Chapter III.

Accession to the Throne.

It is not easy to realize that in the lifetime of our own fathers and mothers there was in England a plot to change the succession and secure the crown for the "wicked uncle," to the exclusion of the rightful heir. The whole story savors of romance, or at any rate of a much earlier period in our history, when John Lackland or Richard the Hunchback cheated their young nephews of crown and life. Yet the evidence of history on this point is unmistakable. In 1835 a plot was discovered and laid bare in Parliament, mainly by Joseph Hume, which had for its aim to secure the crown for the Duke of Cumberland and set aside the claims of Princess Victoria. The Duke, to do him justice, does not seem to have supposed that his personal merits and attractions would cause him to be made king by acclamation. But he appears to have thought he could ride in on the top of a wave of fanaticism got up over a No-popery cry. The passing of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 by the Tory Government of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel was not accomplished without a great deal of real terror and misgiving that this act of plain justice to their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects was a breaking down of the barriers against Papal aggression, and that it was merely a step towards undoing the work of the Reformation. Orange Lodges, which up to that time had little vigorous existence out of Ireland, spread all over England, and were formed even in the army. The Duke of Cumberland, a precious champion for any sort of religion, was their grand master. But he was not inconsistent: he had his own personal aggrandizement in view, and appealed to fanaticism, bigotry, and ignorance to help him to attain it. If he was acting a part, he understood his own character, and was not acting out of it. But he and the Orange Lodges too completely misunderstood the nation they were living in. The saying of Charles II. to his brother, afterwards James II., might have shown them their mistake: "They will never kill me to make you king." When hard pressed by political necessity, the English people have not shrunk from revolutionary changes in their constitution; but they would never have embarked on a revolution with the object of placing Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, on the throne. The ridiculous plot was rendered still more ridiculous by the assertion made by the conspirators that they feared the Duke of Wellington intended to seize the crown for himself;^[1] that the Iron Duke, the most sternly upright and devotedly loyal of subjects, meant to depose William IV., set aside the little Princess Victoria, and become Emperor of the English, as Bonaparte had become Emperor of the French. The assertion had only to be made, and made publicly, to be drowned in the ridicule it excited. However, the plot of the Orange Lodges, the Duke of Cumberland's association with it, the unveiling of the scheme in the House of Commons by Joseph Hume, and Lord John Russell's masterly dealing with the whole matter, was a nine days' wonder in 1835. An address to the King was unanimously agreed to, praying him to dissolve the Orange Lodges; even the Orangemen in the House assented to this, and Greville says Lord John's dignified eloquence melted them to tears. The Duke of Cumberland, seeing which way his cat had jumped, hastened to assure the Home Secretary that the dissolution of the societies of which he was Grand Master had his entire approval and acquiescence, and the whole of the foolish business appeared at an end.

But this was not so. The elements of disturbance were quite genuine, and had not been removed even by a resolution of the House of Commons: these were the Duke of Cumberland's treachery and his No-popery nightmare. The original scheme had been to depose William IV. on the pretext that his giving the Royal Assent to the Reform Bill of 1832 was a symptom of insanity; the next step, the setting aside of the claims of Princess Victoria, was rendered attractive to the Duke of Cumberland by the fact that she was a girl, and young; when, therefore, in 1837, William IV. was removed by death, another futile attempt was made to raise the No-popery cry against the accession of the Queen. Her uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians, had recently married Louise, daughter of Louis Philippe, a Roman Catholic Princess. Another member of the Coburg family, Prince Ferdinand, cousin of Prince Albert, had also, quite recently, made a Roman Catholic marriage with Maria, Queen of Portugal. This at any rate showed that the Coburg family, who were known to have great influence with Princess Victoria, were not so exclusively Protestant as the Royal Family of England. But high as party feeling ran at the time, the bare suspicion that any treachery was intended to the young Queen caused a popular outburst of passionate loyalty such as had not been seen since the House of Brunswick had reigned in England. The warmth of this feeling in the curious warp and woof of human affairs was increased by the fact that to be ardently devoted to the young Queen was to be ardently opposed to all the works and ways of the Duke of Cumberland, to be in favor of religious liberty and toleration, to support the Reform Bill and the abolition of slavery. It was Whig to be loyal to the Queen, Tory to be, if not disloyal, full of doubts and fears, imagining that with a young girl at the helm, known to be in sympathy with Whig principles, the ship of State was bound to split on anarchy and popery. These fears very soon disappeared as the Queen showed she had a mind and will of her own, and was no mere puppet in the hands of her Ministers. If at the outset of her reign she showed strong Whig tendencies, she was not long in grasping the fact that, as Sovereign, she was Queen of the whole people, and not the mere head of a party.

There was, however, enough of revolutionary storm in the atmosphere to justify the Times in endeavoring to allay the fears of the ultra-Protestant party by reminding them that for the Queen to turn Papist, "or in any manner to follow the footsteps of the Coburg family" in marrying a Papist, "would involve an immediate forfeiture of the British Crown." This situation of affairs had the rather curious result of making the Irish among the most intensely loyal of the young Queen's subjects. O'Connell's stentorian voice was heard leading the cheers of the crown outside St. James's Palace on the day she was proclaimed Queen. he declared later, in a public speech, that if it were necessary he could get "five hundred thousand brave Irishmen to defend the life, the honor, and the person of the beloved young lady by whom England's throne is now filled." Mr. Harry Grattan, son of the famous orator of the Irish Parliament of 1782-1800, thought the Tories so bent on the Queen's destruction that "If her Majesty were once placed in the hands of the Tories, I would not give an orange-peel for her life." The expression "orange-peel" was, no doubt, a reference to the soubriquet his Irish opponents had bestowed upon Sir Robert Peel on account of his staunch Protestantism.

These extraordinary ebullitions of party feeling would be hardly worth recording but for the explanation they afford of subsequent events relating to the establishment of Prince Albert, and for the curious contrast they offer to the feelings of political parties at the present time. They also explain why quiet, peace-loving people, taking no special interest in party politics, were so devoutly thankful that the operation of the Salic law in Hanover separated that kingdom from the Crown of England and enabled us to get quit of the Duke of Cumberland. No paper and no party ever pretended to regret him; indeed, it must have become abundantly obvious that his departure was, in a special degree, advantageous to his own party. He could be nothing but a source of weakness to them. "A man's foes are those of his own household" is even more true of political than of private affairs. The anxiety of the Tories to get rid of the Duke of Cumberland is well illustrated by one of Greville's anecdotes. When the late King (William IV.) had evidently only a few days to live, the Duke of Cumberland consulted the Duke of Wellington as to what he should do. "I told him the best thing he could do was to go away as fast as he could. 'Go instantly,' I said, 'and take care you don't get pelted.'" He did go instantly, and his first act as King of Hanover was to suspend the constitution of the country and turn out of their chairs in Göttinger University seven distinguished professors for the crime of holding Liberal opinions. No wonder the Duke of Wellington felt this sort of Toryism would manufacture Liberals and Radicals by the thousand in England.

The story has often been told of how the Queen received the news of her accession, and of the extraordinarily favorable impression she produced by the youthful dignity and grace with which she presided at her first Council.

William IV. expired at Windsor about 2.30 A. M. on Tuesday, June 20th, 1837. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley, and the Lord Chamberlain, the Marquis of Conyingham, almost immediately "set out to announce the event to their young Sovereign. They reached Kensington Palace at about five; they knocked, they rang, they thumped for a considerable time before they could rouse the porter at the gates. They were again kept waiting the courtyard, then turned into one of the lower rooms, where they seemed to be forgotten by everybody. They rang the bell, and desired that the attendant of the Princess Victoria might be sent to inform H. R. H. that the requested an audience on business of importance. After another delay, and another ringing to inquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, who stated that the Princess was in such a sweet sleep she could not venture to disturb her. They then said, 'We are come to the Queen on business of State, and even her sleep must give way to that.' It did; and to prove that she did not keep them waiting, in a few minutes she came into the room in a loose white nightgown and shawl, her nightcap thrown off, and her hair falling on her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but perfectly collected and dignified."^[2] Another account states that the Queen's first words to the Archbishop on hearing his announcement were, "I beg your Grace to pray for me," and that her first request to her mother after she had learned that she was Queen was that she might be left for two hours quite alone. On the same day, about eleven o'clock in the morning, she held her first Council; and it may be noted that in Miss Wynn's account of this ceremony it is stated that the first of her subjects who paid her homage was the Duke of Cumberland, who knelt and kissed her hand. "I suppose," says Miss Wynn, "he was not King of Hanover when he knelt to her." The Diarist goes on to mention that the next to offer homage was the Duke of Sussex; but the young Queen would not allow him to kneel, but rose herself and kissed him on the forehead. This, however, differs slightly from Greville's account of the Queen's first Council, which must be now quoted:—

"June 21st. The King died at twenty minutes after two yesterday morning, and the young Queen met the Council at Kensington Palace at eleven. Never was anything like the first impression she produced, or the chorus of praise and admiration which is raised about her manner and behavior, and certainly not without justice. It was very extraordinary, and something far beyond what was looked for. Her extreme youth and inexperience, and the ignorance of the world concerning her, naturally excited intense curiosity to see how she would act on this trying occasion, and there was a considerable assemblage at the Palace, notwithstanding the short notice that was given. The first thing to be done was to teach her her lesson, which, for this purpose, Melbourne had himself to learn. I gave him the Council papers, and explained all that was to be done; and he went and explained all this to her. He asked her if she would come into the room accompanied by the great officers of State, but she said she would come in alone. When the Lords were assembled the Lord President informed them of the King's death, and suggested, as they were so numerous, that a few of them should repair to the presence of the Queen and inform her of the event and that their Lordships were assembled in consequence; and accordingly the two Royal Dukes, the two Archbishops, the Chancellor, and Melbourne went with him. The Queen received him in the adjoining room alone. As soon as they had returned, the proclamation was read and the usual order passed, when the doors were thrown open and the Queen entered, accompanied by her two uncles, who advanced to meet her. She bowed to the Lords, took her seat, and then read her speech in a clear, distinct, and audible voice, and without any appearance of fear or embarrassment. She was quite plainly dressed, and in mourning. After she had read her speech and taken and signed the oath for the security of the Church of Scotland, the Privy Councillors were sworn, the two Royal Dukes first by themselves; and as these two old men, her uncles, knelt before her, swearing allegiance and kissing her hand, I saw her blush up to the eyes, as if she felt the contrast between their civil and their natural relations. This was the only sign of emotion which she evinced. Her manner to them was very graceful and engaging; she kissed them both, and rose from her chair and moved towards the Duke of Sussex, who was farthest from her, and too infirm to reach her. She seemed rather bewildered at the multitude of men who were sworn, and who came, one after another, to kiss her hand; but she did not speak to anybody, nor did she make the slightest difference in her manner, or show any in her countenance to any individual of any rank, station, or party. I particularly watched her when Melbourne and the Ministers and the Duke of Wellington and Peel approached her.^[3] She went through the whole ceremony, occasionally looking to Melbourne for instruction when she had any doubt what to do, which hardly ever occurred, and with perfect calmness and self-possession, but at the same time with a graceful modesty and propriety particularly interesting and ingratiating. When the business was done she retired as she had entered, and I could see that nobody was in the adjoining room. … Peel likewise said how amazed he was at her manner and behavior, at her apparent deep sense of her situation, her modesty, and at the same time her firmness. She appeared, in fact, to be awed, but not daunted; and afterwards the Duke of Wellington told me the same thing, and added that if she had been his own daughter he could not have desired to see her perform her part better. It was settled that she was to hold a Council at St. James's this day, and be proclaimed there at ten o'clock: and she expressed a wish to see Lord Albemarle, who went to her and told her he was come to take her orders. She said, 'I have no orders to give; you know all this so much better than I do that I leave it all to you. I am to be at St. James's at ten to-morrow, and must beg you to find me a conveyance proper for the occasion.' Accordingly he went and fetched her in State with a great escort. … At twelve o'clock she held a Council, at which she presided with as much ease as if she had been doing nothing else all her life; and though Lord Lausdown and my colleague had contrived between them to make some confusion with the Council papers, she was not put out by it. She looked very well, and though so small a stature, and without much pretension to beauty, the gracefulness of her manner and the good expression of her countenance give her, on the whole, a very agreeable appearance, and with her youth inspire an excessive interest in all who approach her, which I can't help feeling myself. After the Council she received the Archbishops and Bishops, and after them the Judges. They all kissed her hand, but she said nothing to any of them; very different in this from her predecessor, who used to harangue them all, and had a speech ready for everybody."

Greville then describes the young Queen's thoughtful consideration for everything that could soothe and cheer the Queen Dowager, and adds:—

"In short, she appears to act with every sort of good taste and good feeling, as well as good sense; and, as far as it has gone, nothing can be more favorable than the impression she has made, and nothing can promise better than her manner and conduct do, though it would be rash to count too confidently upon her judgment and discretion in more weighty matters. No contrast can be greater than that between the personal demeanor of the present and the late Sovereigns at their respective accessions. William IV. was a man who, coming to the throne at the mature age of sixty-five, was so excited by the exaltation that he nearly went mad, and distinguished himself by a thousand extravagances of language and conduct to the alarm or amusement of all who witnessed his strange freaks. … The young Queen, who might well be either dazzled or confounded with the grandeur and novelty of her situation seems neither the one nor the other, and behaves with a decorum and propriety beyond her years, and with all the sedateness and dignity, the want of which was so conspicuous in her uncle."

In this vivid personal description by an eye-witness we see in the grave dignity of the young girl the same dutiful child who, at eleven years old, had said, when she learned her future destiny,"There is much splendor, but there is more responsibility," and, lifting her little hand, added, "I will be good."

Greville describes the impression made by the young Queen within the Palace upon her Ministers and servants. Miss Martineau, another contemporary, describes the impression produced outside the Palace, on the crowd in the streets who came to witness the ceremony of the proclamation. She refers to the intense joy of whatever was sound and wholesome in the nation, that the ill-doing sons of George III. no longer occupied the throne, and that it was filled instead by a young girl, prudent, virtuous, and conscientious, reared in health, simplicity, and purity. She says even exaggerated hopes were awakened by the change; people seemed to expect that the fact of having a virtuous Sovereign, strong in the energies of youth, was in itself a guarantee that all was to go well: "That the Lords were to work well with the Commons, the people were to be educated, everybody was to have employment and food, all reforms were to be carried through, and she herself would never do anything wrong or make any mistakes."

Those who represented that it was an injustice to the Queen to expect her to work miracles—

"were thought cold and grudging in their loyalty, and the gust of national joy swept them out of sight. In truth, they themselves felt the danger of being carried adrift from their justice and prudence when they met their Queen face to face at her proclamation. As she stood at the window of St. James's Palace … her pale face wet with tears, but calm and simply grave,—her plain black dress and bands of brown hair giving an air of Quaker-like neatness which enhanced the gravity,—it was scarcely possible not to form wild hopes from such an aspect of sedateness—not to forget that, even if imperfection in the Sovereign herself were out of the question, there were limitations in her position which must make her powerless for the redemption of her people, except through a wise choice of advisers, and the incalculable influence of a virtuous example shining abroad from the pinnacle of society."

The young Queen's character came out in everything she did. Reference has already been made to her tender consideration towards the Dowager Queen Adelaide. The Queen addressed a letter of condolence to her on her husband's death, and addressed it to "Her Majesty the Queen." It was pointed out to her that the correct address would be "Her Majesty the Queen Dowager." "I am quite aware," said Queen Victoria, "of Her Majesty's altered character, but I will not be the first person to remind her of it." She placed Windsor Castle at the disposal of Queen Adelaide for as long as it suited her health and convenience. But while yielding with the utmost grace on various little matters in which her doing so might serve to soothe and console the Queen Dowager, the young Queen showed a knowledge of her own position and what was due to it in substantial privilege, no less than on points of etiquette, that quite astonished her Ministers. Thus when she went for the first time after her accession to visit the Queen Dowager at Windsor, she told Lord Melbourne that as the flag on the Round Tower was half-mast high, it might be thought necessary to elevate it on her arrival, and she desired Lord Melbourne to send orders beforehand that this should not be done. Melbourne "had never thought of the flag or knew anything about it, but it showed her knowledge of forms, and her attention to trifles."

The numerous children of the late King resigned into her hands their various appointments, and the pensions that had been allowed them. She accepted these resignations to show her right to do so, and afterwards reappointed them, behaving with the greatest kindness and liberality. Greville speaks over and over again of the remarkable union she presented of womanly sympathy, girlish naïveté, and queenly dignity. He says every one who was about her was warmly attached to her, "but that all feel the impossibility of for a moment losing sight of the respect which they owe her. She never ceases to be a queen, but is always the most charming, cheerful, obliging, unaffected queen in the world." The tears which she shed at her proclamation were due to the intense emotion awakened by her position; they by no means betokened a morbid or hysterical temperament. The records of the early years of the Queen's reign constantly speak of her gayety and good spirits. At her coronation, in 1838, she is said to have looked as radiant as a girl on her birthday.

The demise of the Crown necessitated a dissolution of Parliament. A general election took place in August, 1837, in which the Whigs were again returned to power, but by a reduced majority.

Lord Melbourne was again Prime Minister, and continued to act as the Queen's chief adviser and counsellor, not only in public affairs, but also on every personal matter in which she felt she needed the advice of an experienced man of the world. There were some who regretted the Queen's extreme reliance on Lord Melbourne, looking upon him as a man of an essentially frivolous and volatile nature; those who held this opinion appear to have misjudged him, but the mistake was one for which Lord Melbourne himself was chiefly responsible. He deliberately put on an affectation of foolish frivolity on many of his appearances in public. He would blow a feather about or toy with a sofa-cushion when he was receiving a solemn deputation, with apparently the express object of producing the impression that he was incapable of giving serious attention to serious things. He had to be found out, detected in earnestness as rogues are detected in dishonesty, by close and careful watching when he believed himself unobserved. Sydney Smith was one of those who unmasked him, and showed that with all his air of being hopelessly idle and trivial, he really was an honest and diligent Minister. In his important position as Prime Minister to the girl-Queen, he showed tact, discretion, and devotion, and won her complete confidence and friendship. Until the Queen's marriage, he virtually combined the functions of Private Secretary to the Queen with those of Prime Minister. He was much more her intimate friend than a Prime Minister had ever been to a Sovereign before. He saw her every day, dined with her constantly, and sat next her at table, and had the art of explaining all the business of State without boring her with sermons and long speeches. He never troubled her, as Mr. Brett has said, as if she were a public meeting. He had first made a very favorable impression upon her on the occasion of the last of the unfortunate disputes which took place between William IV. and the Duchess of Kent. Early in June, 1837, Princess Victoria, having then attained her majority, the King offered to settle £10,000 a year on her. The Duchess wished that £6,000 of this should be for herself, and £4,000 for the Princess. There were the usual unseemly squabbles, and neither would give way. Melbourne conducted the business on the part of the King, and although he must have known that the Princess Victoria would be Queen in a very short time, he yet defended his master's views and interests with a warmth and tenacity which proved him to be no time-server. It is equally to his credit and to that of the young Queen that this circumstance was the foundation of the full confidence and esteem which she afterwards placed in him. Greville describes their relations as being almost like those of father and daughter. "I have no doubt he is passionately fond of her, as he might be of his daughter if he had one, and the more because he is a man with the capacity for loving, without having anything in the world to love. It is become his province to educate, instruct, and form the most interesting mind and character in the world. … It is a great proof of the discretion and purity of his conduct and behavior that he is admired, respected, and liked by the whole Court."

If Melbourne was, in the eyes of the world, the Queen's tutor in statesmanship, there was another behind the scenes no less assiduously devoting himself to her instruction. Shortly before the late King's death, Peel had expressed a hope that Leopold would not come over immediately on his niece's accession, as his influence and interference would cause jealousy and heart-burning. Leopold did not come, for the excellent reason that he was there already in the person, alter ego, of the faithful friend and trusted servant, Baron Stockmar. Stockmar, though at one time somewhat doubtful whether Prince Albert would prove the right Consort for the Queen of England, had by this time thoroughly identified himself with the realization of Leopold's dream of reproducing in Victoria and Albert the loves and hopes and ambitions which had been so cruelly crushed at Claremont in 1817. Charlotte and Leopold were to live again in Victoria and Albert. But in order that the dream should come true, it was necessary that Stockmar and Leopold should have their hand on the "very pulse of the machine," the hearts and the characters of the two young people themselves. King Leopold had Prince Albert with him in Brussels for ten months, from June, 1836, while Stockmar proceeded to Kensington to be with the Princess immediately she attained her majority, to aid her by his counsel and advice. Her accession, which followed within less than a month, found him still with her; and from henceforth until her happy marriage in 1840 his time was spent with one or other of the young people. To the end of his life he spent much time with them, and remained their intimate friend and most trusted counsellor in all matters, both public and domestic.

Stockmar, besides his share in bringing about the marriage of the Queen with her cousin, had an extremely important political influence on her, in thoroughly grounding her in the principles of constitutional monarchy. Although no Englishman, it was a case of plus royaliste que le Roi. He was more English than the English in his grasp of, and devotion to, our system of government. He wrote to the Prince in 1854: "I love and honor the English Constitution from conviction; … in my eyes it is the foundation-corner-cope-stone of the entire political civilization of the human race, present and to come." He was untiring in impressing upon the Queen, and later on the Prince, that the Sovereign belongs, or should belong, to no party. She must be equally loyal to her Ministers, to whatever party they may belong. Her experience at the head of the State will enable her to detect among her statesmen those who have the good of their country sincerely at heart, while differing, as human beings must differ, as to the means by which that good is to be attained. There will be some in all parties who make the honor and welfare of their country their first object, and there are some in all parties who are wishing to dishonor and injure their country, if they think they perceive party advantage to be gained by doing so. To the first of these the Sovereign's confidence should be given, irrespective of party differences.

Leopold and Stockmar between them formulated the position of a constitutional monarch much more definitely than it had ever been formulated before. Their pupils were the Queen and her husband, towards whose union events were now rapidly tending.

1. In 1829 the Duke of Cumberland had tried to excite George IV.'s jealousy of the Duke of Wellington by habitually speaking of him to his royal brother as "King Arthur."
2. Diaries of a Lady of Quality, by Miss Wynn.
3. This is evidently in reference to the general belief that the Queen was a strong partisan of the Whig party.