The Impeachment of the House of BrunswickBradlaugh, Charles
History
The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick
Bradlaugh, Charles
Great Britain -- History -- 1714-1837; Hanover, House of
In September, 1791, the Duke of York was married to the Princess
Frederica, daughter of the King of Prussia, with whom he lived most
unhappily for a few years. The only effect of this marriage on the
nation was that £18,000 a year was voted as an extra allowance to his
Royal Highness, the Duke of York. This was in addition to 100,000 crowns
given out of the Civil List as a marriage portion to the Princess.
Dr. Doran says of the Duchess of York: "For six years she bore with
treatment from the 'Commander-in-Chief' such as no trooper under him
would have inflicted on a wife equally deserving. At the end of that
time the ill-matched pair separated." Kind husbands, these Brunswicks!
In a print published on the 24th May, 1792, entitled "Vices Overlooked
in the New Proclamation," _Avarice_ is represented by King George
and Queen Charlotte, hugging their hoarded millions with extreme
satisfaction, a book of interest tables lying at hand. This print
is divided into four compartments, representing: 1. Avarice; 2.
Drunkenness, exemplified in the person of the Prince of Wales; 3.
Gambling, the favorite amusement of the Duke of York; and 4. Debauchery,
the Duke of Clarence and Mrs. Jordan--as the four notable vices of the
Royal family of Great Britain. If the print had to be re-issued to-day,
it would require no very vivid imagination to provide materials from the
living members of the Royal Family to refill the four compartments.
Among various other remarkable trials occurring in 1792, those of Daniel
Holt and William Winterbottom are here worthy of notice, as illustrating
the fashion in which the rule of the Brunswick monarchy has trenched
on our political liberties. The former, a printer of Nottingham, was
convicted and sentenced to two years' imprisonment for re-publishing,
verbatim, a political tract, originally circulated without prosecution
by the Thatched House Tavern Association, of which Mr. Pitt and the
Duke of Richmond had been members. The other, a dissenting minister at
Plymouth, of virtuous and highly respectable character, was convicted
of sedition, and sentenced to four years' imprisonment in the jail of
Newgate, for two sermons preached in commemoration of the revolution of
1688. The indictment charged him with affirming, "That his Majesty was
placed upon the throne on condition of keeping certain laws and rules,
and if he does not observe them, he has no more right to the crown than
the Stuarts had." All the Whigs in the kingdom might, doubtless, have
been comprehended in a similar indictment. And if the doctrine affirmed
by the Rev. Mr. Winterbottom be denied, the monstrous reverse of the
proposition follows, that the King is bound by no conditions or laws;
and that, though resistance to the tyranny of the Stuarts might be
justifiable, resistance under the same circumstances to the House of
Brunswick is not. This trial, for the cruelty and infamy attending it,
has been justly compared to the celebrated one of Rosewell in the latter
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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