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CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS
Caroline,
Princess of Wales.
Walter L. Colls, Ph. Sc.
Caroline the Illustrious
Queen-Consort of George II. and
sometime Queen-Regent
A Study of her Life and Time
BY
W. H. WILKINS, M.A., F.S.A.
AUTHOR OF “THE LOVE OF AN UNCROWNED QUEEN”
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1901
TO
THE COUNTESS OF WARWICK
La beauté est le partage des uns, l’intelligence celui des autres; la réunionde ces dons ne se rencontre que chez certains mortels favorisés des dieux.
Leibniz to Queen Caroline.
vii
PREFACE.
It is characteristic of the way in which historianshave neglected the House of Hanover that no lifewith any claim to completeness has yet beenwritten of Caroline of Ansbach, Queen-Consort ofGeorge the Second, and four times Queen-Regent.Yet she was by far the greatest of our Queens-Consort,and wielded more authority over politicalaffairs than any of our Queens-Regnant with theexception of Elizabeth, and, in quite another sense,Victoria. The ten years of George the Second’sreign until her death would be more properly called“The Reign of Queen Caroline,” since for thatperiod Caroline governed England with Walpole.And during those years the great principles ofcivil and religious liberty, which were then boundup with the maintenance of the Hanoverian dynasty,were firmly established in England.
Therefore no apology is needed for attemptingto portray the life of this remarkable princess, andendeavouring to give some idea of the influenceviiiwhich she exercised in her day and upon her generation.The latter part of Caroline’s life is coveredto some extent by Lord Hervey’s Memoirs, and weget glimpses of her also in Horace Walpole’s worksand in contemporary letters. But Lord Hervey’sMemoirs do not begin until Caroline became Queen,and though he enjoyed exceptional facilities ofobservation, he wrote with an obvious bias, andoften imputed t