Strange times!

While I’ve been wallowing in the mid-eighteenth century, we’ve been experiencing some strange times in the UK. We had a referendum, then the Prime Minister resigned, and so did the favourite to take his place.

Changes of regime are never straightforward. We wait on events. We certainly live in interesting times!

And yet, someone looking back at this time and whatever happens next will see the events as inevitable. Just as we think of George III following George II to the throne. If you read the history books, they say that Culloden was the end of the Jacobite threat.

But it wasn’t.

Several events occurred to make the 1750’s a time of uncertainty, of shifting opinions and events. There are so many “what if”s and turning points in the decade that I’m constantly surprised that more authors haven’t grabbed the opportunities and run with them.

Diana Gabaldon, for sure, took the Jacobite cause and looked at it anew. But she examined it from the point of view of the hapless Scots. There are other ramifications that have been obscured only by the passage of time, but once they were raw and new.

In 1751, the Prince of Wales died. Frederick was a popular prince, even though he didn’t get along with his father and had a court separate from him. Nevertheless, he was the King’s successor. We could have had a King Frederick! Frederick left a young family, all healthy, but none of them were out of the shcoolroom. The oldest, George, was the new Prince of Wales, but he was only thirteen when his father died.

The Princess of Wales, Augusta, was particularly close to Prince George’s tutor, John Stuart, the Earl of Bute. Of course, Bute was more of an advisor than a hands-on tutor, but it meant he saw the prince a great deal, and became very important in his life, just as Lord Mountbatten did to Prince Charles. However, it was also rumoured that Bute was the lover of Princess Augusta. Bute was not popular.

Parliament was settled until 1754, when the Prime Minister, Henry Pelham-Holles, died. His brother, the Duke of Newcastle, took over, but it soon became obvious that he wasn’t up to the job, and a change of political alliances was going to rock the House of Commons.

King George was in frail health during the 1750’s. He died in 1761, long enough for Prince George to attain his majority, but it was a close run thing.

If the old king had died before his grandson had come of age, George III would have had to have a Regent. There could have been a revolution.

Times of uncertainty make a country vulnerable. And so, into that potential perfect storm, came the Stuarts in exile.

The Young Pretender visited London in 1751 and converted to Protestantism. If the opportunity arose, he wasn’t going to let religion get in the way of his succession. He talked with several important people while he was there, and he could have returned throughout the decade. When he came to London, the government kept an eye on him, but preferred not to arrest him and make a martyr of him. Either that, or Charles came under an amnesty, but if there was one, it hasn’t come to light. He could have returned, but there is no evidence either way that he did so.

However, Charles had become a disillusioned drunk who refused to marry and sire children who would have been a threat to the throne. He was living with a woman who he beat regularly, and who bore him a daughter. His own folly disbarred him this time, and as the decade wore on, the establishment settled into a new pattern. The rise of the brilliant politicians Fox and Pitt, and the onset of the Seven Years’ War moved Britain into a new process, and Prince George grew older.

But for a few years, anything could have happened. And that is what authors rely on for their stories. At least this one does.

I’ve been commissioned to write three more books set in the 1750’s, this time about the Shaw family, and I’m spoiled for choice with plots. I’ve written another book, yet to find a home, about another aspect of life back then, the race to discover longitude, and the craze for astronomy.

I can’t see my interest ever waning!

Crowns through the Ages

This week I visited the Tower of London to see both the World War I poppy installation and also to go on a tour of the Tower itself. My favourite part of the day (other than seeing the extraordinary and poignant poppy display) was an exhibition called Crowns through the Ages. These spanned the Georgian and Victorian eras and it was fascinating to see them.

The earliest crown on display had been worn by George I at his coronation in 1714. George decided

to have a new crown made as Charles II’s crown from 1661 was in a poor state of repair and George also wanted to make a statement of “new dynasty, new crown.” It was set with stones of glass and paste rather than precious jewels but in 1727 these were removed and diamonds were hired especially for the coronation of George II. I was fascinated to see how many diamonds they had brought in for this purpose and wondered where you would source such a huge pile of precious stones!  I could imagine the lenders counting them in and counting them out again very carefully.

George III recycled the crown but his son George IV had a new diamond crown made for his coronation. It was the most lavish in the collection (why does that not surprise me?!) but again the diamonds were borrowed and although George was determined that the government should buy them he failed to convince parliament that it was worth the expense. Because of the frugal tradition of hiring rather than buying the gems, most of the crowns in the exhibition were therefore set with false stones or were just empty frames, which was interesting to see but rather sad.

My favourite crown was that of a Queen Consort, Adelaide, wife of William IV. This had been made especially for he coronation in 1831 because the previous crown, that of Mary of Modena, second wife of James II, was considered too “theatrical.” Adelaide’s crown was a gorgeous, rich scarlet velvet that looked beautiful with the silver. The other thing that struck me from looking at Adelaide’s crown and that of Queen Victoria was what small heads they must have had!

News from a Country Town in 1815

I have just acquired a copy of the Norwich Mercury and Yarmouth, Lynn and Ipswich Herald for Saturday December 9th 1815. I love old newspapers and I particularly enjoy regional ones where the preoccupations of the readers are not always those of London folk.

 

These two advertisments caught my eye first. The top one is for a new stagecoach "The Day"  running out of the Rampant Horse inn in Norwich. Rampant Horse Street is still there, although the inn is long gone, and you often hear visitors commenting on the strange name. The proprietors promise the journey can be done in fourteen hours - and assure us there are only four "insides" or inside passengers  for added comfort. The owners include Richard Gurney - doubtless a relative of the Gurney banking family and Ann Nelson & Son - a good Norfolk name and an interesting example of the involvement of women in the stagecoach business.

Below it is a charming ilustration of a "Thieves' Alarm" - advertised as being more humane than man traps and spring guns. The inventor has patented something that looks like a cross between a trip wire and a shop door bell - yours for a mere 30 shillings.

There are two adverts for schools in the paper. Here is the one for young ladies -

 

 

Miss Ditchell does not give any information about the numbers of young ladies at her establishment, although the range of ages suggests a reasonable size, nor does she tell us what is taught. For 30 guineas (£31 and ten shillings) I would expect a varied curriculum!

 

1815 was Waterloo year and there are two items of relevance, plus part of a series on the Life of Wellington. The mayor and town council had obviously got up a collection to buy presentation swords for leading figures in the final campaign against Napoleon and - no doubt quivering with pride - His Worship was able to report back to the council that the Duke of Wellington had written to him -

 

 

 

The court pages, as well as reporting on the health of King George III - still suffering from "madness" - has a brief message from St Helena where Napoleon had just been exiled.

 

 

 

The remark that members of Napoleon's entourage were "heartily sick" of their new abode is not surprising: St Helena was considerd to be a thoroughly unpleasant place.

 

And finally, given recent concern about the quality of food in hospitals, I was interested in the advert inviting tenders to supply the General Hospital at Yarmouth. Virtually everything required, from meat to bread to port wine, must be of the "best". Salt and water must be used for the bread - not sea water; soap must be well-dried before delivery; beer should be of the quality "sold by the brewers to private families at six-pence per gallon"; sago, well sifted and free from dust and the tea must be "good Souchong". It is fascinating to read between the lines and to see to what extent food was adulterated  - milk, for example, must be "neat as it comes from the cow"!

 How much of these admirable provisions actually reached the patients is another matter, of course.

 

 

 

I am now going to settle down with a magnifying glass to read every detail of the scandalous crim.con. ("criminal conversation") case between Sir William Abdy and Lord William Cavendish Bentinck who was accused of seducing Sir William's wife, the natural daughter of Wellington's elder brother the Marquiss of Wellesley.

As this is a family blog I will spare you the details, other than to report that Lord William, after stalking Lady Abdy from London to Paris to Worthing, "rendered the unfortunate object of his illicit passion the most unhappy of women."

 

Louise Allen



 

 

 



 



 

 

 

A Most Unusual Palace

I had been meaning to visit Kew Palace for ages, ever since I saw a TV programme about its restoration, so a sunny June day was perfect to show it off in the setting of Kew Gardens which surround it.
The brick house - it is far too domestic and small-scale to be thought of as a palace - was built in 1631 by a Flemish merchant at a time when many wealthy men had a Thames-side home to escape from the dirt and noise of London. It was built on the foundations of an Elizabethan mansion, possibly once owned by Robert Dudley.
Frederick, Prince of Wales and son of George II, built his own country retreat, the White House, almost opposite this old redbrick house - a good distance from the rest of the family who used Richmond Lodge as their retreat: he did not get on well with his siblings, it seems!
Frederick died in 1751, apparently as a result of an infection following a blow from a cricket ball - Wisden's Almanac cannot record many cricketing deaths, I imagine, and certainly no other royals! His son, shy George, succeeded his grandfather in 1760 and he and his wife Charlotte set about producing a large family - nine sons and six daughters. They used Richmond Lodge, but as the sons grew up the elder two, George (later Prince Regent and George IV) and Frederick (The Grand Old Duke of York of the nursery rhyme), went to live in the red brick house which became known as Kew Palace.
When the unfortunate king first fell victim, in 1788, to the "king's malady" - the little-understood porphyria - he was forced to stay at the White House then and again in 1801. It held such unpleasant memories for him that he had it demolished in 1802 once he recovered.

Then in 1804 he fell ill again and Kew Palace was the only sizeable building that afforded the necessary privacy and peace. It was renovated (it even had water closets installed, the one on the third floor is shown, left)  and the family used it extensively. In 1810 the king went into a severe decline from which he never recovered and the family, his unmarried daughters in particular, settled into a quiet domsticity that would not have been out of place for a middle class family of retiring habits.

The ground and first floors have been beautifully restored. The king's library, the dining room where he was tricked by his doctors into confinement in 1801 by the tale that he was to meet the queen at Kew, the queen's boudoir with its fashionable decor, the drawing room and the bedrooms of the queen and Princess Elizabeth are all perfectly in period but the third floor was abandoned in 1818 after the queen died at Kew and has been left conserved rather than restored so that the structure of the building can be seen. In many ways it is even more atmospheric and haunting for being so stark and it was here that the Princesses Augusta and Amelia spent their quiet and rather lonely years at Kew, both of them yearning to get married and escape.
Meanwhile their eldest brother George was launched on a career of excess and indiscretion that included a totally unacceptable and illegal marriage to Mrs Fitzherbert.
When George III died in 1820, and the Regent was finally monarch, Kew was far too humble and quiet to suit his tastes. The royal family never used it again and it fell into decline until restoration began in 1996.
Now it is a charming little palace, filled with ghosts and an air of quiet melancholy. Hanging in my writing studio I have a reproduction toile de jouy fabric, designed in the late 18thc, that shows George III and his family enjoying the rustic pleasures of life in the grounds at Kew: it is good to think that sometimes, despite everything, they were happy there.
Louise Allen