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which contingencies might make neces sary, was placed out of sight.

After the second day of his Majesty's removal, longer intervals, and less violent paroxysms, suggested the flattering hope, that change of system had produced beneficial effects; but, on the Thursday, the worst symptoms reappeared. The night was restless, and the two succeeding days destroyed the dawning hope.

Dr. Willis, who had been sent for from Lincolnshire, first saw his Majesty on Friday the 5th. He scrupled not to blame the delay in calling in practition. ers peculiarly devoted to the study of his Majesty's complaint, and he highly condemned the degree of liberty allowed the royal patient. He encouraged the Queen to think that a cure was not improbable; and he represented that it might the rather be expected, as the means peculiarly adapted to the disorder still remained untried. He begged, if his attendanee should be commanded, that he might be permitted to act with out control. He said that there was but one method in that complaint, by which the lowest and the highest person could be treated with effect, and that his reputation was too much concerned in the event for him to attempt any thing, if he might not be invested with unlimited powers.

It t may be conceived with what anguish her Majesty yielded to this requisition. But her conviction of its propriety fortified the magnanimity that prefers the performance of duties to the indulgence of feelings. It was known to her, that the first principle of Dr. Willis's practice is to make himself formidable, to inspire awe. In these terrible maladies, those who superintend the unhappy patients, must so subjugate their will, that no idea of resistance to their commands can have place in their minds. It was but too obvious, that the long and habitual exercise of high command must increase the difficulty of accomplishing this in the present instance; and an apprehension of the necessity of peculiar rigour, gave all possible aggravation to the Queen's distress.

A council was held at Mr. Pitt's on Sunday the 7th, at noon. Upon its rising, a messenger was dispatched to Kew, with a letter to the Queen. At nine o'clock in the evening of the same day, the Prince of Wales received a letter from her Majesty, in which were strongly expressed sentiments of that prudence, good scose, and maternal and

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conjugal affection, by which her Majes ty's conduct had ever been distinguished. Her Majesty informed the Prince, that she had been applied to, and urged, to take a share in the regency, as the only means of securing to herself a certainty of preserving the care of the king's perBut her Majesty added, "she authorized his Royal Highness to declare, that she would on no account take any share in the political affairs of this kingdom; it being her determination to remain at Kew, or wherever else his Majesty might be, and to devote herself wholly to him, as his friend and companion."

His Royal Highness's answer, which was immediately returned, contained the most dutiful and tender professions. It concluded with the assurance, that, "if her Majesty's taking any share in the government of this country, could give her any additional care or authority over his royal father's person, he should be the first to propose its being conferred; but her Majesty being the only person upon whom such a trust ought to devolve, she might assure herself, that she should be considered as his Majesty's sole guardian so long as the unhappy malady should continue."

December 13th. A great change in the Queen's sentiments became apparent at this time. The neutrality her Majesty had originally adopted was dismissed, and the proceedings of the minister received her approbation and support. Many causes probably combined to produce the alteration. It was said, that apprehension of the abuse of power by Opposition had been industriously infused by those whose interest it was to withhold it from them. It was certainly known, that her Majesty gave implicit belief to the assurances of Dr. Willis, that the recovery of the royal patient was not only probable, but possibly near at hand. With this persuasion, not only tenderness but wisdom dictated the conduct the Queen pursued. On the other hand, the Prince, confiding in the great and universally acknowledged preeminence of Dr. Warren; and remembering, that, to his perspicuity and ingenuousness he owed the first knowledge of the real cause of his Majesty's indisposition, naturally considered his opi-' nion as entitled to respect and deference. This gentleman in strong terms reprobated the assertion of an amended state, and unqualifiedly declared his incredulity respecting a happy issue. Influenced by such contrary impressions,

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unanimity of sentiment could not be expected. Doubt, distrust, and coldness, unhappily succeeded to the confidence, estcem, and cordial affection, which had hitherto soothed the sorrows of the august relatives of the afflicted Monarch.

The King's state, at this time, encouraged no hope of speedy restoration. On Friday and Saturday his Majesty, was much indisposed; and on Sunday his situation was deplorable. The coercive waistcoat was found to be insufficient, and a necessity arose of confining the royal sufferer to his bed for several hours. Exhausted strength, by degrees, rendered his efforts less powerful; and the failure of nature, rather than an abatement of the malady, produced an appearance of tranquillity. Violent exertions frequently repeated, long confinements, want of usual air and exercise, produced the most lamentable effects. The flesh, gradually wasted away, had left the bones of every joint bardly covered; and the whole of his Majesty's appearance was become so affecting, that even the Chancellor's strong mind was overpowered at the first interview, and a flood of tears witnessed the involuntary sensibility.

Unpleasant altercations had arisen amongst the physicians. Willis, introduced by Addington, was strongly suspected of circulating reports rather gratifying to the minister than consonant to truth. He regularly scnt to him every night a particular message, and generally by his son. On the 16th, whilst the propositions were debating in the House of Commons, Mr. Pitt and his friends declared that that evening, at eleven o'clock, the son of Dr. Willis arrived at the Treasury, with the satisfactory account that a happy change had taken place, and that Dr. Willis considered it as a certain indication of speedy and perfect recovery. Dr. Warren, whose observations on the morning of that day had suggested a very different opinion, was much surprised at this account. He hastened to Kew early on the morning of the 18th. Dr. Willis met him in an anti-chamber; assured him the King was going on vastly well; said he was perfectly composed; and begged that Dr. Warren would not make a point of seeing his Majesty, as his appearance would certainly disturb him. Warren, surprised at this language, desired to see the pages. To his first question, "How is the King?" the reply was, Very bad indeed. To his second, "What sort of night has his Majesty passed?" A

terrible one,' was the melancholy answer.

Warren then insisted upon being introduced; and he had the affliction to find the person of the illustrious sufferer under the powerful restriction which violent paroxysms make indispensable.

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The sight of Warren produced no painful sensation. The King was not discomposed by it. A partial recollection, operating on an habitual consciousness of dignity, (which never forsook his Majesty in his most unhappy moments,) he was prompted to say, I have been very ill indeed, Dr. Warren, and I have put myself into this waistcoat, but it is uneasy to me; will you take it off?" Warren hesitated for "a moment; but, attentively surveying the royal sufferer, he perceived that his exhausted strength made the indulgence safe; and he replied, untying the sad bonds, "Most willingly do I obey you, sir."

Warren afterwards remonstrated with Willis upon the disingenuousness of his conduct, and protested that, so long as he should have the honour to retain his appointment to the care of the royal person, he should scrupulously discharge his duty to his Majesty and to the public, whose anxious solicitude entitled them to full and true information respecting his state. Willis then resisting the request to subscribe the bulletin which the attending regular physician conceived to be the proper one, great. altercation ensued; but he was at length induced to set his name to that which appeared on the 18th instant.

The perpetual diversity in opinion between the regular physicians and Dr. Willis, was a source of much affliction to the Queen, and of perplexity to the people. The high reputation of the court-physicians, the extensive popularity they had justly acquired, not only amongst the inhabitants of the capital, but throughout the kingdom, gave them great superiority, in the general estimation, in a competition with Dr. Willis, whose retired situation, and restricted practice, had left him in a state of comparative obscurity.

The Prince, having understood that the Chancellor had used some expressions of which he thought he had cause to complain, desired to see his lordship, and generously afforded him an opportunity of vindicating himself, if the rumour were unfounded. The Chancellor assured his Royal Higness, that he never had, even in thought, deviated from the very profound respect he owed him.

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He begged to know the full extent of what he had been charged with, in the full confidence of being able to exculpate himself. His lordship proceeded to say, that what opinions he had publicly advanced, his legal situation com. pelled; but that be felt himself strongly devoted to his Royal Highness; and that he might assure himself that he should on no account unite with Mr. Pitt, or enter into any opposition to his Royal Highness's government, when his dismission, which he saw was at hand, should take place. He should, on the contrary, give it every support in his power; and if, at a future day, his services should be thought of use, he should be happy to offer them. The Chancellor spoke of Mr. Pitt as a haughty, impracticable spirit, with whom it would be impossible for him ever cordially to unite. He added, that the whole party was split, divided, disunited, in a manner that would prevent their ever acting in opposition with vigour and effect.

January 2d. The Prince received a letter from Dr. Willis, to inform him of essential amendment in the King. The Queen wrote to Mr. Pitt to the same effect. Ministry presumed much upon these communications, and expressed their hopes, that his Majesty might be well enough on Monday to signify his approbation of a Speaker. Dr. Warren was still tenacious of his former opinion; and assured the Prince that, though the King was not then in the deplorable way in which he had often seen him, there was nothing in his Majesty's present state that could warrant the expectation of recovery. The Prince, confiding in Warren's judgment, naturally considered the favourable reports as mere fabrications, to serve a sinister purpose, and could not refrain from some expressions against the who, relying upon the infalli bility of Willis, considered the Prince's backwardness to credit her assurances as an argument of his discontent at the nature of them. Officious persons, acting from indiscreet zeal, if not from still more reprehensible motives, contributed to increase the subsisting discontents.

The entertainments given by the Duke of York, having for their avowed object the conciliation of members of both Houses, the conversations then naturally rested upon subjects interesting to the Prince. At the three first his Royal Highness was present, and expatiated with great eloquence upon "the indig nities and injustice he had experienced

from the usurpers of those powers of which he conceived he ought to be possessed as the natural representative of a father, unhappily incapable of exercising them; and, to the infinite affliction of his family, not likely to be ever again in a situation to hold the reins of government." The Prince spoke copiously, expressed himself with great propriety, and a degree of cloquence that would have ensured attention, if his rank had not commanded it. His Royal Highness gave a particular detail of some transactions at Windsor, in the beginning of the King's illness. He said, Reports have been circulated, that I had frequent interviews with Mr. Pitt. The truth is, I saw him but once during my stay at Windsor. In the first days of the King's illness, and before I had recovered from the shock it occasioned me, some person told me that Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Richmond were come. My mind fully occupied by the sad state of things, I hardly heard, and it soon escaped my recollection, that they were there.

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"Some time after, Mr. St. Leger entered the room, and told me that the Duke of Richmond and Mr. Pitt had been waiting two hours. I awoke as it were from a trance, and desired that they might instantly be admitted. The duke was most obsequious, bowed incessantly. Mr. Pitt was most stately: he said he should do so and so, and looked with unforgiving haughtiness."

Adverting to the King's private concerns, the Prince said, "That in a lucid interval of some hours, before his Majesty left Windsor, he had talked consistently of the state of his affairs; said he had written, some time since, directions respecting the distribution he wished to have made of his property; but he doubted whether they were properly prepared. He hoped, however, that the purport would be attended to, The money he could dispose of was, he said, six hundred thousand pounds, Having six daughters, it was his wish to give each one hundred thousand pounds: his daughters he had ever considered as the objects of his peculiar

care.

His sons easily might, and certainly would, be provided for by the nation; but, for his daughters, a provision might not perhaps be made without difficulty."

The Prince proceeded to say, “he had assured the Queen he should be happy to conform in every thing to the wishes of his royal father; and he pro

mised that every indication of his intentions previous to his lamented indisposition should be religiously observed. Her Majesty having then received no unworthy impression, was satisfied and happy in receiving this assurance; and permitted him and the Duke of York to assist in packing up, and to put their seals upon, the crown-jewels, and some valuable movables of the King's, which, together with the Queen's jewels, were conveyed to Kew when the Queen went thither." The Prince added, "he had now to lament a sad revolution in her Majesty's opinion, which had been effected by mischievous and designing persons. He had received a letter from her Majesty, of her own writing, but not of her own dictating. It charged him with designing to take advantage of the weak state of the King, to get possession of his treasures; and to change the whole face of things." Ladies H, and C, were censured by his Royal Highness as the advisers of this letter. He said he had charged the last-mentioned with a knowledge of it; and, if he had not before had a certainty of it, her confusion would have given it.

The Prince complained of the personal indignity with which Mr. Pitt had treated him on every occasion. He specified two important instances of most indecorous conduct towards him. The summonses to members of privy council to examine the physicians, (of which he had received no previous intimation,) and the restrictions upon the power of a Regent, had both been sent by common Treasury-messengers, and left withont ceremony with a porter at Carlton House!

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The Prince was not present at the fourth and last entertainment. Duke of York entered upon the interesting detail of the injury done to his brother in withholding his acknowledged rights, and of the imposition practised upon the public by fallacious representations of the King's state. His Royal Highness said, It must be immagined that the subject was a most painful one to him; that only the solicitude he felt to impress a sense of his brother's wrongs, and to warn gentlemen whom there was a design to mislead, could have induced him to enter upon it." His Royal Highness spoke concisely but clearly. He declared "that a string of fallacies had been obtruded upon the public; gave his royal word that not one MONTHLY MAG. NO. 337.

of the King's children was permitted to approach him; and lamented that "the Queen, wrought upon by insidious arts, particularly by the machinations of the Chancellor, seemed resolved to abet the daring attempt to supersede his brother's just pretensions, and to promote the views of those most inimical to him.”

His Royal Highness then mentioned an attempt, on the preceding Thursday, to prevent Sir G. Baker's seeing the King, which was rendered abortive, by his steadily refusing to sign the bulletin, if that were not permitted. The Duke said "that endeavours had also been used, the following day, to prevent Dr. Warren's entering the royal chamber, Willis assuring him that the King was in such a state as promised immediate recovery, and that his presence would do harm. Warren, upon an acknowledgment being extorted that the Queen had seen the King that morning, insisted upon being admitted, as one whose presence was less likely to agitate the royal mind. He found his Majesty sitting quietly, and attentively considering a Court calendar, which he was translating from beginning to end into doggerel Latin. He accosted Warren upon his entrance, Ricardensus Warrenensus baronetensus.' The Duke said, "Warren had assured him that, after a long and minute examination, he brought away the melancholy conviction that the mind was only subdued, and that its sanity was in no degrce restored."

On the Duke's being asked what was the general state of his Majesty's health, he replied, "he was told that he was deplorably emaciated; but that that circumstance was as much concealed as possible." His Royal Highness said

that the Queen seemed no longer to have confidence in any person but the Chancellor, who, while he was flattering her Majesty with every demonstration of zeal, was paying obsequious court to his brother." He added, "he seems to have learnt a lesson of duplicity from Pitt. The Chancellor," the Duke continued, "seldom fails to receive three or four letters a-day from the Queen, and he generally sees her once every day. Till concealments respecting the King began to be practised, and till the Queen suddenly declared her resolution to accept the Regency, if the Prince would not accept it with severe restrictions, my brother and myself omitted not one day paying our duty to her. But since *P.

these

these events, our visits have been discontinued."

The Duke concluded by expressing in strong terms "the misery he felt at being compelled to make an appeal to the public, that induced the necessity of exposing circumstances, over which every principle of delicacy, feeling, and filial affection, prompted his royal brother and himself to throw a veil; and which a sense of what they owed to that public could alone prevent their interposing; their duty to that outweighing, in their estimation, all that could affect themselves."

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24th of Jan. The King had been ter ribly affected during the last seven or eight days. On the 19th his Majesty had been induced to walk in the garden, The anxiety of the amiable and royal female relatives drew them to an upper window. Regardless of every thing but his own impulses, his Majesty threw his hat into the air, and hurled a stick he held in his hand to an incredible distance; such was the force that animated him. His Majesty then proceeded with a rapid movement towards the Pagoda, which he was very desirous to ascend. Being thwarted in that, he became sullen and desperate, threw himself upon the carth; and so great was his strength, and so powerful his resistance, that it was three-quarters of an hour before Willis and four assistants could raise him.

19th of February. The Prince and the Duke of York repeated their visit to Kew; but the Queen still judged it inexpedient for them to be admitted to the King. Her Majesty informed their Royal Highnesses, that, as soon as it should become proper for them to see the King, they should be apprised of it by her.

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February the 20th. The Chancellor acquainted the Lords that the King's health was then in such a progress towards perfect re-establishment, that there was a probability their Lordships' interference would be no longer uccessary. The Duke of York replied, that, as nothing could give him greater happiness than the restoration of his royal father, so he should have felt it a peculiar gratification to have been enabled to give their Lordships an assurance of its probability from any authority; and he could not without infinite regret acknowledge, that he had not yet been per mitted to see the King, though he had gone to Kew the preceding day in the

hope of receiving that indulgenee.” His Royal Highness added, “that his brother must rejoice even more than himself at his Majesty's perfect recovery, as that must deliver him from embarrasments, which the nature of the Bill must render almost insupportable; and which only his attachment to the state, and affection for the people, could have induced him to subject himself to."

On the 23d the Prince and the Duke of York went, upon invitation from the Queen, to Kew, and were admitted to the King. Her Majesty and Colonel Digby only were present. The King behaved with composure, and talked rationally. The conversation was confined to topics that were general and indifferent; the death of General Wynyard, and the resignation of General Hyde, were principally dwelt upon. It was observed by the royal brothers that the King's attention was chiefly directed to the Duke of York, for whom it was supposed he had ever entertained a partiality.

Both Houses met on the 3d of March ; the Chancellor spoke in strong and decided terms of His Majesty's capacity to exercise his royal functions.

Mr. Pitt simply informed the Commons, that His Majesty's amended health gave him reason to hope he might make his pleasure known to them on Tuesday, the 10th of March, to which day the House immediately adjourned.

The Ministerial party employed the interval in rejoicing in the accomplishment of their hopes;-Opposition, in reprobating the arts which, they maintained, had substituted fallacy for truth. The extreme caution and reserve that enveloped the proceedings at Kew, were not calculated to disperse suspicion. Mr. Rammeau, his Majesty's oldest and most trusted page, the person whom he had long employed to copy his private correspondences, was dismissed; he was said to be too inquisitive and too communicative. Three other pages were also displaced. Dr. John Willis, son to the eminent practitioner, and a student of his art, was ap pointed private secretary to the King; and four of Dr. Willis's men remained about the royal person, performing those offices which were in the page's province.

The Prince had been refused admittance to the King, and had patiently acquiesced. The Duke of York attempting to visit him, and being told by Dr. Willis, on the 4th of March, that

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