A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV | Page 4

Among her most confidential advisers
was Alderman Wood, the head of a great firm in the City of London, a
leading man in the corporation of the City, and a member of the House
of Commons. Many eminent Englishmen--among whom were
Wilberforce, Canning, and Denman, afterwards Lord Chief
Justice--were {6} were warm supporters of her cause, for the good
reason that they sincerely believed her to be innocent of the more
serious charges against her and deeply wronged by the conduct of the
King. Even her most resolute enemies had to admit that whether her
conduct in thus rushing back to England and forcing herself on public
notice were wise or unwise, from the worldly point of view, it certainly
seemed at least like the conduct of a woman proudly conscious of her
own innocence, and determined to accept no compromise which might
put her in the position of a pardoned sinner. The nearer she came to
England the more cordial were the expressions of sympathy she

received, and from the moment she landed on English shores her way
to London became like a triumphal procession.
[Sidenote: 1820--The King's divorce proceedings]
In the mean time the King and his ministers had come to an agreement
which was exactly what the King had struggled for from the first, an
agreement that steps should be taken in the ordinary way, according to
the legal conditions then existing, for the purpose of obtaining a
divorce. The course to be adopted was to bring in a Divorce Bill, and
endeavor to have it passed through both Houses of Parliament. The
proceedings were to open in the House of Lords, and the Queen's
leading defenders--for her cause was of course to be defended by
counsel as in an ordinary court of law--were Brougham and Denman.
The Queen's arrival in London was a signal for the most tumultuous
demonstrations of popular devotion and favor towards her, and popular
anger, and even fury, against all who were supposed to be her enemies.
The house in which she took up her abode was constantly surrounded
by vast throngs of her sympathizers, and she used to have to make her
appearance at the windows at frequent intervals and bow her
acknowledgments to the crowds below. Sometimes the zeal of her
admirers found a different way of expressing itself, and the
window-panes of many houses were broken because the residents were
known to be on the side of the King and not of the Queen. Conspicuous
public men who were known, or were believed, to have taken part
against her were mobbed in the streets, and even the Duke {7} of
Wellington himself was more than once the object of a hostile
demonstration. So widely spread, so deeply penetrating was the feeling
in favor of the Queen that it was said to have found its way even into
the ranks of the army, and it was believed that some soldiers of
regiments quartered in London itself were to be found carousing to the
health of Queen Caroline. A crowd of Italian witnesses had been
brought over to bear evidence against the Queen, and these foreign
invaders, nearly all of humble rank, had to be sheltered in buildings
specially erected for their protection in the near neighborhood of
Westminster Hall, and had to be immured and guarded as if they were
malefactors awaiting trial and likely to escape, in order that they might

be safe from the outbreaks of popular indignation.
It told heavily for the case of the Queen, in the minds of all reasonable
and impartial people, that while the King's foreign witnesses were
drawn for the most part from a class of persons who might be supposed
easily open to subornation and corruption, a great number of
distinguished men and women came from various parts of Europe in
which the Queen had resided to give evidence in her favor, and to
speak highly of her character and her conduct. The manner in which the
proceedings against the Queen were pressed on by the Ministry had one
immediate result to their disadvantage by depriving them of the
services of George Canning, then one of the most rising of European
statesmen. Canning was strongly impressed with a belief in the Queen's
innocence and he could not consent to become one of her formal public
accusers, which he must have done were he to remain a member of the
administration. Canning, therefore, after a time, gave up his place as a
member of the Government, and he left the work of the prosecution, as
it may be called, to be carried on by men less chivalrous and less
scrupulous. It is not necessary to go at any length into the story of the
proceedings before the House of Lords. These proceedings would have