who has read them at White's to the M.P.'s, giving assurance of the king's great amendment and of his and this in days when he Warren has remons

immediate recovery

was in a trated."

strait-waistcoat.

From the attacking the ladies of the court it was an easy stage to proceed to attacking the queen herself, and the poor lady was presently assailed as being engaged in an ignoble plot for concealing the king's serious state, so as to secure the continuance of his powers in her own hands. Everything she did was distrusted, and everything Warren could pick up on his visits was ingenuously coloured so as to support the views of the faction. "She is playing a game," wrote Elliot, "and has been all this time at the bottom of the cabals and intrigues against the prince. It is believed that she is ready to accept the regency. One principal engine of the intriguers is the opinion which they contrive to maintain in the public, that the king's recovery is to be expected with certainty," and it cannot be denied that there was much indiscretion and passion in the proceedings of the court party. But what seems amazing was the open, unblushing way in which the queen was denounced at Brookes' and other resorts, as being at the bottom of all the mischief. Sir Gilbert Elliot wrote in perfect good faith: "Dr. Willis was brought about him for the purpose, the other physicians not being sufficiently subservient, and he being a noted shot with the long-bow, and besides being a quack. You see by this news the queen

M

is set at the head of a strong separate party or faction against the government of the country."

And here was yet another anxiety for the queen in her perilous task, the failing spirit and strength of the aged Dr. Willis, the king's faithful friend and shield. He was beginning to sink and lose heart, the attack was so persistent and unrelenting; he was old and weary, and was talking of withdrawing altogether. This was a real anxiety for the family, as without his trusty support they would have been altogether unprotected.

But not only Sir Gilbert, but Burke himself nourished these suspicions of the queen's artifices, When the bill for committing the care of the king and of the household to the queen was passed, he thundered again and again against the opportunities it gave her for deception. Not content with this insinuation, he concluded with saying, "I don't suspect her of ever intentionally acting with impropriety, but situations and temptations may pervert the purest mind and draw it aside from the path of rectitude. Led on, step by step, to commit these acts, like Macbeth after the murder,—

"I am in blood

Steept so far, that I should wade no more;
Returning were as tedious as go o'er-'

so they found themselves inclined to proceed, from a want of courage to retrace their steps."

Again let us hear Sir Gilbert on the Regency Bill. "It surpassed," he said, “all that we conceived possible even from Pitt. Nobody but the queen will have the power

of seeing the king at all, except those she puts about him, and she will dismiss all the physicians except Dr. Willis, and perhaps one other to attend now and then, whom she thinks she can depend on. Even her own council are not to have a right to see the king, but are to take the accounts from the physicians-that is to say, from Dr. Willis. When the queen chooses to declare that the king has recovered, the king may summon a certain number of Privy Councillors, to be selected and named by himself—that is, by the queen and Dr. Willis-and he may then declare his intention to resume the government; after which a proclamation is to be issued, and the regency is to be at an end at once. The scheme is calculated to enable the queen and Mr. Pitt to reinstate the king whether he will or not. They will then get him to nominate a regency, and probably to appoint the queen regent."

That partisan spirit should have so blinded this amiable and sensible man to imagine such a nonsensical plan as this, seems almost incredible. For it is plain that the queen could never have been able to carry out successfully such a plot as this; indeed such notions could never have entered her head.

A few days later Sir Gilbert is angry because the queen was made guardian of the younger part of the royal family; "and they have given her all the houses and gardens in the country, which gives her the patronage of the rangers, housekeepers, apartments, &c."

Through all this long struggle, the king, it is plain,

The

The

was gradually being restored to his reason. bulletins became more and more favourable. Regency Bill, however, went on, but the court party began to feel quite secure as to the result. Naturally, the princes, as their hopes seemed so likely to be baffled, grew more distrustful. They wished to see with their own eyes, under pretence of a filial visit, the state of their father; but they were refused admission, on the ground of the agitation it would produce, and also because the king's occasionally rambling speeches would be distorted.

It is almost amusing to see how they were baffled in these schemes, and how faithfully the queen's ladies stood by their mistress. Failing the king, they determined to see the queen, and on January 28th, 1789, were admitted. Lady Harcourt describes the meeting :

"We had some great visitors yesterday," she writes; "I got the doctor (Willis) clear off. They sent no page to announce their arrival. I fancy they hoped to see the queen alone. The abord on each side was à la glace." She had to keep the conversation going by talking of Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Abingdon, otherwise there would have been a most painful silence. When it came to four they announced that "it was dinner time," and took their leave. In the library they found Mr. Harcourt, and told him that the king was not at all better. Mr. Harcourt assured them that he was. "Aye," they answered, "so old Willis says." "Not only Dr. Willis,"

was the reply, "but Sir L. Pepys told me the same thing

this morning."

When the Regency Bill was passed, or sufficiently advanced, there was a trying scene in store for the harassed queen. It had been settled that she was to have control of the king, direction of his household, with a very handsome provision, and was to be assisted by a sort of council of notables or advisers. A deputation of the Lords and Commons waited on her to announce these arrangements. "She was agitated," her lady-inwaiting tells us, "but endeavoured to command herself, and went through the scene as well as one could expect. In her reply, which was conventional, she spoke of the momentous trust reposed in her, and said it would be a great consolation to her to receive the aid of a council."

The princes were at last admitted to see their father, but not for six weeks. Of this visit to the king the prince's friends gave a version of their own. "They had gone down constantly to Kew, but were always refused on one pretext or another, though the Chancellor and many other strangers they said were let in. The prince at last wrote to the queen, and after many shifts and delays, the prince and the Duke of York were yesterday (February 22nd, 1789) admitted. The meeting was extremely affecting and affectionate on both sides." The king had to wait at the door before he could collect himself to enter, embraced both and shed tears on their faces. "Both the princes were much touched by the scene." He avoided business, talked of horses, soldiers, &c. "The queen was present, and walking to and fro in the room with a countenance and