of almost all other persons, he has never volunteered to tell me what he really thought of the truth of the charge against his royal client, and I could not with any decency ask him his conscientious belief. Denman, who had about him more enthusiasm than discrimination, used to profess, and I doubt not sincerely, that he considered her "pure as unsunned snow." Brougham's conduct before the trial began can only be justified upon the supposition that he thought there was satisfactory evidence to convict her.*

During the trial, although there was no doubt much false swearing against her, there were facts proved by witnesses of credit from which, had she been a woman of sober sense and ordinary regard for the opinions of others, the inference of guilt was almost inevitable. Her chance of a favourable verdict from posterity must depend upon the weight given to the bizarrerie (as she called it) which she affected, and to her culpable contempt for appearances. She sometimes talked and acted as if with a view to excite suspicion, when no actual guilt had been incurred. This might be from a love of mystification, without ulterior object, or it might be designedly to take off the effect of evidence which she might apprehend of her being seen in situations which primâ facie would prove her guilt. She certainly conferred no credit on her station, and her conduct can only be palliated by the unfortunate circumstances in which she was placed, and the ill-usage which she experienced from her worthless husband. He has been severely punished. Considering the glories of the Regency from Wellington's Peninsular campaigns, the battle of Waterloo, and the transportation of Napoleon to St. Helena, his name might have shone forth with the most distinguished of the Edwards and Henrys; but he is detested as the worst of the Georges-as a selfish voluptuary, whose

* The attempts that he made to reconcile with her innocence the proposal which he made in 1819, that in consideration of 35,000l. a year for life she would always reside abroad and never assume the title of Queen, by pointing out that she was then only Princess of Wales, and might never be Queen, were most futile; and his assertion that he made the offer entirely without her anthority, knowledge, or privity, is almost incredible; while, if believed, it convicts him of unexampled temerity. See 4 Hansard, N. S., 495. His conduct as her adviser from the time she went abroad in 1814, till the trial began in 1820, is the most equivocal part of his whole career.

CHAP.
III.

A.D. 1820.

the Queen.

flagrant vices were unredeemed by a single public or private virtue.

Brougham acquired immense glory and popularity from his Brougham's defence of the Queen. Denman was said to have stood by her great popularity from with more sincerity and disinterestedness; but his fame his defence of was tarnished by his go and sin no more peroration, and Brougham was celebrated as her great deliverer. The freedoms of corporations in gold boxes poured in upon him from all quarters; a splendid candelabra was presented to him, paid by a penny subscription of peasants and mechanics; his bust was carried about for sale in the streets by Italian boys, along with Queen Caroline's; and the Brougham's Head became a common sign for beershops.

Sudden increase to

at the bar.

What was of more importance, his practice at the bar his practice was suddenly increased fivefold. When he next appeared on the Northern Circuit the attorneys crowded round him with briefs, that they. might be privileged to converse with Queen Caroline's illustrious advocate. During one whole round of the assizes at York, Durham, Newcastle, Carlisle, Appleby, and Lancaster, crowds came from distant parts to see and listen to him, and the Civil Court and the Crown Court were respectively overflowing or deserted as he appeared in the one or in the other. Here he did not long maintain his ascendancy, for Scarlett (afterwards Lord Abinger) and even Pollock (afterwards Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer) when opposed to him, by their superior knowledge of law and nisi prius tact easily got the verdict, unless from the overpowering strength of his case there was an impossibility that he should lose it; but ever after, both on the circuit and in London, whenever there was a cause to be tried exciting great popular interest, he was sure to be retained in it. Nevertheless he did not get into regular employment in the ordinary routine business of the courts; and it used still to be said that whereas Erskine never spoke a word except with a view to the verdict, Brougham, chiefly solicitous about himself, having made a brilliant speech, was rather apathetic as to the event of the trial

His fame as an advocate, however, now added considerably to his ascendancy in the House of Commons. Debates arose,

CHAP.

III.

after the Queen's trial, about restoring her name to the liturgy, and about making a provision for her support, in which he took a leading part and successfully assailed the A.D. 1821. proceedings of the government. He was often taunted about the mysterious part he had acted in the negotiations for the status of the unhappy Caroline at the close of the last reign and the beginning of the present; but so bold had he become that he considered it enough to assert, with an air of defiance and of triumph, that without her authority he had made the offer, when she was Princess of Wales, for her to remain abroad for life, without assuming the title of Queen, in consideration of an allowance of 35,000l. a year; that he had not communicated to her Lord Liverpool's proposal, after she became Queen, to allow her 50,000l. a year on the same conditions; that his reason for this omission was because it was not convenient to him to go to Geneva in person; that there was no medium through which the proposal could be transmitted to her before the interview at St. Omer; and that he then considered himself superseded as a negotiator by Lord Hutchinson. In spite of the suspicions secretly entertained or whispered against him, he was now listened to in public with attention, deference, and admiration, and he held a position in the House of Commons equal to that of any Member of it either in office or in opposition.

The session of 1821 having been brought to a close, the agitation in favour of Queen Caroline was continued by her claim to be crowned along with her husband. An intimation being given that no preparations were to be made for her to take a part in the ceremony, she petitioned that she might be heard by her Attorney General before the Privy Council in support of her right, and he argued at great length that, although the King must give the order for the Queen's coronation, he was as much bound by law to do so as to issue a writ to an hereditary peer to sit in Parliament. He succeeded in showing that in a great majority of cases the Queens Consort of England had been crowned along with the King; but, unfortunately, it turned out that in five instances the King had been crowned alone, with a wife living and

Queen's

claim to be

crowned.

CHAP.
III.

then in England. Brougham was so hard pressed as to be obliged to argue that although there was no proof that A.D. 1821. Henrietta Maria was crowned along with Charles I., the event might have happened without being noticed by heralds or historians, and that the explanations of her absence given by contemporary writers-from the difficulty of conducting the ceremony, she being a Roman Catholic-were wholly to be disregarded. Uniform usage failing, he was driven to such arguments as these :

"Doubts may exist as to the validity of a King's marriage, and as celebrating the coronation of the Consort tends to make the testimony of it public and perpetual, so omitting it, and, still more, the withholding that solemnity, has a tendency to raise suspicions against the marriage, and to cast imputations upon the legitimacy of the issue, contrary to the genius and policy of the law. The Queen Consort's coronation is not so much a right in herself as in the realm; or rather it is a right given to her for the benefit of the realm, in like manner as the King's rights are conferred upon him for the common weal; and hence is derived an answer to the objection that the Queen has always enjoyed it by favour of her Consort, who directs her to be crowned as a matter of grace. The law and constitution of this country are utterly repugnant to any such doctrine as grace or favour from the crown regulating the enjoyment of public rights. The people of these realms hold their privileges and immunities by the same title of law whereby the King holds his crown, with this difference, that the crown itself is only holden for the better maintaining those privileges and immunities."

The claim was unanimously rejected by the Privy Council, and the manner in which it was urged rather turned public opinion against the Queen, for although it might be very fit that she should be prayed for, whatever her character and conduct might have been, the notion of her being exhibited before the people in Westminster Hall by the side of her husband, and that they should be jointly consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury with the holy oil, shocked the cominon sense and right feeling of all.

In making the claim she acted by the indiscreet advice of her Attorney General; but she injured herself still more 19th July. by attempting, contrary to his earnest remonstrances, to

force her way into Westminster Abbey on the day of the Coronation. She was repulsed amidst the hisses, instead

CHAP.

III.

of the plaudits, of the mob, and the mortification she A.D. 1821. suffered was supposed to have brought on the disorder which, Queen's very soon afterwards, suddenly put an end to her melancholy 7th Aug. career. (See Appendix).

death.