THE BOOK. can be any question upon the legality of such a Warrant or Commission, the extreme hardship with which it has operated upon me, the extreme prejudice which it has done to my character, and such persons as they think fit: and to report to to which such a proceeding must ever expose your Majesty the result of their Examination. the person who is the object of it, obliges me, By referring to the written Declarations, it ap- till I am fully convinced of its legality, to forpears that they contain allegations against me, bear from acknowledging its authority; and, amounting to the charge of High Treason, and with all humility and deference to your Majesty, also other matters, which, if understood to be to protest against it, and against all the proceed. as they seem to have been acted and reported ings under it. If this, indeed, were matter of upon, by the Commissioners, not as evidence mere form, I should be ashamed to urge it. But Confirmatory (as they are expressed to be in the actual hardships and prejudice which I have ther title) of the principal charge, but as distinct suffered by this proceeding are most obvious; and substantive subjects of examination, can- for, upon the principal charge against me, the not, as I am advised, be represented as in law, Commissioners have most satisfactorily, and amounting to crimes. How most of the De- "without the least hesitation," for such is their clarations referred to were collected, by whom, expression, reported their opinion of its falseat whose solicitation, under what sanction, hood. Sir John and Lady Douglas, therefore, and before what persons, magistrates, or others, who have sworn to its truth, have been guilty of they were made, does not appear. By the title, the plainest falsehood; yet upon the supposition indeed, which all the written Declarations, of the illegality of this Commission their false. except Sir John and Lady Douglas's bear, viz. hood must, as I am informed, go unpunished. "That they had been taken for the purpose Upon that supposition, the want of legal authoof confirming Lady Douglas's Statement," it rity in the Commissioners to inquire and to admay be collected that they had been made by minister an oath, will render it impossible to give her, or, at least, by Sir John Douglas's pro- to this falsehood the character of perjury. But curement. And the concluding passage of one this is by no means the circumstance which I feel of them, I mean the fourth declaration of W. the most severely. Beyond the vindicating of Cole, strengthens this opinion, as it represents my own character, and the consideration of proSir John Douglas, accompanied by his Solicitor viding for my future security, I can assure your Mr. Lowten, to have gone down as far as Chel- Majesty, that the punishment of Sir John and tenham for the examination of two of the wit- Lady Douglas would afford me no satisfaction, nesses whose declarations are there stated. I It is not, therefore, with regard to that part of am, however, at a loss to know, at this mothe charge which is negatived, but with respect ment, whom I am to consider, or whom I could to those which are sanctioned by the Report, legally fix, as my false accuser. From the cir- those, which, not aiming at my life, exhaust themcumstance last mentioned, it might be inferred, selves upon my character, and which the Commis that Sir John and Lady Douglas, or one of them, sioners have, in some measure, sanctioned by is that accuser. But Lady Douglas, in her their Report, that I have the greatest reason to written Declaration, so far from representing complain. Had the Report sanctioned the printhe information which she then gives, as mov- cipal charge, constituting a known legal crime, ing voluntarily from herself, expressly states my innocence would have emboldened me, at all that she gives it under the direct command risques (and to more no person has ever been exof His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, posed from the malice and falsehood of accusers) and the papers leave me without information, to have demanded that trial, which could legally from whom any communication to the Prince determine upon the truth or falsehood of such originated, which induced him to give such charge. Though I should even then, indeed, commauds.Upon the question, how far have had some cause to complain, because I the advice is agreeable to law, under which it should have gone to that trial under the prejuwas recommended to your Majesty to issue this dice necessarily raised against me by that ReWarrant or Commission, not countersigned, nor port; yet, in a proceeding before the just, open, under Seal, and without any of your Majesty's and known tribunals of your Majesty's kingdom, advisers, therefore, being, on the face of it, re- I should have had a safe appeal from the result sponsible for its issuing, I am not competent to of an ex parte investigation; an investigation determine. Aud undoubtedly, considering that which has exposed me to all the hardships of a the two high legal authorities, the Lord Chancel- secret Inquiry, without giving me the benefit of lor, and the Lord Chief Justice of the King's secrecy, and to all the severe consequences of a Bench, consented to act under it, it is with the public investigation, in point of injury to my greatest doubt and diffidence that I can bring character, without affording me any of its submyself to express any suspicion of its illegality. stantial benefits in point of security. But the But if it be, as I am given to understand it is, charges which the Commissioners do sanction by open to question, whether, consistently with law, their Report, describing them with a mysterious your Majesty should have been advised to com- obscurity and indefinite generality, constitute, mand, by this warrant or commission, persons as I am told, no legal crime. They are described (not to act in any known character, as Secreta- as "instances of great impropriety and indecen ries of State, as Privy Counsellors, as Magistrates "cy of behaviour," which must “occasion the otherwise empowered, but to act as Commission-" most unfavourable interpretations," and they ers, and under the sole authority of such warrant) to inquire, (without any authority to hear and determine any thing upon the subject of those inquiries) into the known crime of high treason, under the sanction of oaths, to be administered by them as such Commissioners, and to report the result thereof to your Majesty. If, I say, there are reported to your Majesty, and they are stated to be, "circumstances which must be credited till they are decisively contradicted."-From this opinion, this judgment of the Commissioners bearing so hard upon my character (and that a female character, how delicate, and how easily to be affected by the breath of calumny, your in Majesty well knows), I can have no appeal; other proceedings may be had against me (desirfor, as the charges constitute no legal crimes, able as it may have been thought that the Inquiry they cannot be the subjects of any legal trial. should have been of the nature which has, in this I can call for no trial. I can, therefore, instance, obtained), your Majesty would be grahave no appeal; I can look for no acquittal, ciously pleased to require to be advised, whether Yet this opinion, or this judgment, from which my guilt, if I were guilty, could not be as effecI can have no appeal, has been pronounced tually discovered and punished, and my honour against me upon mere ex parte investigation. and innocence, if innocent, be more effectually -This hardship, Sire, I am told to ascribe to secured and established by other more known the nature of the proceeding under this Warrant and regular modes of proceeding.Having, or Commission; for had the inquiry been entered therefore, Sire, upon these grave reasons, veninto before your Majesty's Privy Council, or be- tured to submit, I trust without offence, these fore any magistrates, authorized by law as such, considerations upon the nature of the Commis to inquire into the existence of treason, the sion and the proceedings under it, I will now known course of proceeding before that Council, proceed to observe upon the Report and the exor such magistrates, the known extent of their aminations; and, with your Majesty's permission, jurisdiction over crimes, and not over the pro- I will go through the whole matter, in that course prieties of behaviour, would have preserved me which has been observed by the Report itself, from the possibility of having matters made the and which an examination of the important matsubjects of inquiry, which had in law no substan- ters that it contains, in the order in which it tive criminal character, and from the extreme states them, will naturally suggest. The Rehardship of having my reputation injured by ca- port, after referring to the Commission or Warlumny altogether unfounded, but rendered at rant under which their Lordships were acting, once more safe to my enemies, and more injuri- after stating that they had proceeded to examine ous to me, by being uttered in the course of a the several witnesses, whose depositions they proceeding assuming the grave semblance of legal annexed to their report, proceeds to state the form. And it is by the nature of this proceed-effect of the written declarations, which the ing (which could alone have countenanced or admitted of this licentious latitude of inquiry into the proprieties of behaviour in private life, with which no court, no magistrate, no public law has any authority to interfere), that I have been deprived of the benefit of that entire and unqualified acquittal and discharge from this accusation, to which the utter and proved falsehood of the accusation itself so justly entitled me. -I trust, therefore, that your Majesty will see, that if this proceeding is not one to which, by the known laws of your Majesty's kingdom, I ought to be subject, that it is no cold formal objection which leads me to protest against it.I am ready to acknowledge, Sire, from the consequences which might arise to the public from such misconduct as have been falsely imputed to me, that my honour and virtue are of more importance to the State than those of other women. That my conduct, therefore, may be fitly subjected, when necessary, to a severer scrutiny. But it cannot follow, because my character is of more importance, that it may, therefore, be attacked with more impunity. And as I know, that this mischief has been pending over my head for more than two years, that private examinations of my neighbours' servants, and of my own, have, at times, during that interval, been taken, for the purpose of establishing charges against me, not, indeed, by the instrumentality of Sir John and Lady Douglas alone, but by the sanction, and in the presence of the Earl of Moira (as your Majesty will perceive by the deposition of Jonathan Partridge, which I subjoin); and as I know also, and make appear to your Majesty likewise by the same means, that declarations of persons of unquestionable credit respecting my conduct, attesting my innocence, and directly falsifying a most important circumstance respecting my supposed pregnancy, mentioned in the declarations, on which the Inquiry was instituted; as I know, say, that those declarations, so favourable to me, appear, to my infinite prejudice, not to have been communicated to your Majesty when that Inquiry was commanded; and as I know not how soon nor how often proceedings against me may be meditated by my enemies, I take leave to express my humble trust, that, before any Commissioners considered as the essential foun- upon His Royal Highness as his child. Nay, they were to believe, that I had stated, and that Lady Douglas had believed the statement to be true, that I had in fact attempted to suckle it, and only gave up that part of my plan, because it inade me nervous, and was too much for my health. And, after all this, they were then to believe, that having made Lady Douglas, thus unnecessarily, the confidant, of this most important and dangerous secret; having thus put my character and my life in her hands, I sought an occasion, wantonly, and without provocation, from the mere fickleness and wilfulness of my own mind, to quarrel with her, to insult her openly and violently in my own house, to endeavour to ruin her reputation; to expose her in infamous and indecent drawings enclosed in letters to her husband. The letters, indeed, are represented to have been anonymous, but, though anonymous, they are stated to have been written with my own band, so undisguised in penmanship and style, that every one who had the least acquaintance with either, could not fail to discover them, and (as if it were through fear, lest it should not be sufficiently plain from whom they came) that I had sealed them with a seal, which I had shortly before used on an occasion of writing to her husband. All this they were to believe upon the declaration of a person, who, with all that loyalty and attachment which she expresses to your Majesty and His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, with all her obligation to the whole Royal Family (to whom she expresses herself to be bound by ties of respectful regard and attachment, which nothing can ever break), with all her dread of the mischievous consequences to the country which might arise from the disputed succession to the crown, on the pretensions of an illegitimate child of mine, nevertheless continued, after this supposed avowal of my infamy and my crime, after my supposed acknowledg ment of the birth of this child, which was to occasion all this mischief, to preserve, for near a twelvemontlı, her intimacy and apparent friendship with me. Nay, for two years more, after that intimacy had ceased, after that friendship had been broken off, by my alleged misbehaviour to her, continued still faithful to my secret, and never disclosed it till (as her declaration states it) "The Princess of Wales recommenced a fresh His Royal Highness was properly advised (for your Majesty will undoubtedly conclude, that, upon a subject of this importance, His Royal Highness could not but have acted by the advice of others), in referring this complaint to your Majesty, for the purpose of its undergoing the investigation which has followed. And unquestionably, if the charge referred to in this Report, as made by Sir John and Lady Douglas, had been presented under circumstances in which any reasonable degree of credit could be given to them, or even if they had not been presented in such a manner as to impeach the credit of the informers, and to bear internal evidence of their own incredibility, I should be the last person who would be disposed to dispute the wisdom of the advice which led to make them the subject of the gravest and most anxious inquiry. And your Majesty, acting upon a mere abstract of the declarations, which was all that, by the recital of the warrant, appears to have been laid before your Majesty, undoubtedly could not but direct an inquiry concerning my conduct. For though I have not been furnished with that abstract, yet I must presume that it described the criminatory contents of these declarations, much in the same manner as they are stated in the Report. And the criminatory parts of these declarations, if viewed without reference to those traces of malice and resentment with which the declarations of Sir John and Lady Douglas abound; if abstracted from all these circumstances, which shew the extreme improbability of the story, the length of time which my accuser had kept my alleged guilt concealed, the contradictions observable in the declarations of the other witnesses, all which, I submit to your Majesty, are to an extent to cast the greatest discredit upon the truth of these declarations;-abstracted, I say, from these circumstances, the criminatory parts of them were unquestionably such as to have placed your Majesty under the necessity of directing some inquiry concerning them. But that those, who had the opportunity of reading the long and malevolent narration of Sir John and Lady Douglas, should not have hesitated be fore they gave any credit to it, is matter of the greatest astonishment to me.- The improbability of the story would of itself, I should have imagined (unless they believed me to be as insane as Lady Douglas insinuates), have been suf-" torrent of outrage against Sir John; and Sir ficient to have staggered the belief of any unprejudiced mind: for, to believe that story, they were to begin with believing, that a person guilty of so foul a crime, so highly penal, so fatal to her honour, her station, and her life, should gratuitously and uselessly have confessed it. Such a person, under the necessity of concealing her pregnancy, might have been indispensably obliged to confide her secret with those, to whom she was to look for assistance in concealing its consequences. But Lady Douglas, by her own account, was informed by me of this fact, for no purpose whatever. She makes me, as those who read her declarations cannot fail to have observed, state to her, that she should, on no account, be intrusted with any part of the management by which the birth was to be concealed. They were to believe also, that, anxious as I must have been to have concealed the birth of any such child, I had determined to bring it up in my own house; and what would exceed, as I should imagine, the extent of all human credulity, that I had determined to suckle it myself: that I had laid my plan, if discovered, to have imposed it "John discovered that she was attempting to "undermine his and Lady Douglas's character." Those, then, who had the opportunity of seeing the whole of this Narrative, having had their jealousy awakened by these circumstances to the improbability of the story, and to the discredit of the informer, when they came to observe, how maliciously every circumstance that imagination could suggest, as most calculated to make a woman contemptible and odious, was scraped and heaped up together in this Narrative, must surely have had their eyes opened to the motives of my accusers, and their minds cautioned against giving too easy a credit to their accusation, when they found my conversation to be represented as most loose, and infamous, my mind uninstructed and unwilling to learn; my language, with regard to your Majesty and the whole of your Royal Family, foully disrespectful and offensive; and all my manners and habits of life most disgusting, I should have flattered myself, that I could not have been, in character, so wholly unknown to them, but that they must have observed a spirit, and a colouring at least in this representation, which false as they are malicious, could never have must have proved much more against the dispo-proved crime in me, however manifestly they sition and character of the informers, and the might display the malice of my accusers.→→ quality of their information, than against the Must it not, then, have occurred to any one, person who was the object of their charge. But who had seen the whole of this Narrative, if the when, in addition to all this, the Declaration motive of my accusers was, as they represent it, states, that I had, with respect to my unfortu- merely that of good patriots, of attached and nate and calamitous separation from His Royal loyal subjects, bound, in execution of a painful Highness, stated that I had acknowledged my duty, imposed upon them by His Royal Highself to have been the aggressor, from the begin- ness the Prince of Wales, to disclose, in detail, ning, and myself alone; and when it further all the facts which could establish my guilt, that states, that if any other woman had so played these circumstances never would have made a and sported with her husband's comfort and po- part of their detail? But on the other hand, if pularity, she would have been turned out of his their object was to traduce me;-if, falsely athouse, or left alone in it, aud have deservedly tributing to His Royal Highness, sentiments forfeited her place in society; and further still, which could belong to no generous bosom, but when, alleging that I had once been desirous of measuring his nature by their own, they thought, procuring a separation from His Royal Highness, vainly and wickedly, to ingratiate themselves and had pressed former Chancellors to accom- with him, by being the instruments of accomplish this purpose, it flippantly adds, that "The plishing my rnin;-if aiming at depriving me of Chancellor may now perhaps be able to graut my rank and station, or of driving me from this her request." The malicious object of the whole country, they determined to bring forward a must surely have been most obvious. For sup- charge of treason against me, which, though. posing these facts to have been all true; sup- they knew in their consciences it was false, yet posing this infamous and libellous description of they might hope would serve at least as a cover, my character had been nothing but a correct and a pretence, for such an imputation upon my and faithful representation of my vices and my character, as, rendering my life intolerable in infamy, would it not have been natural to have this country, might drive me to seek a refuge in asked why they were introduced into this De- another; if, the better to effectuate this purpose, claration? What effect could they have had they had represented all my misfortunes as my upon the charge of crime, and of adultery, which faults, and my faults alone, drawn an odions and it was intended to establish? If it was only, in disgusting picture of me, to extinguish every execution of a painful duty, which a sense of sentiment of pity and compassion, which, in the loyalty to your Majesty, and obedience to the generosity, not only of your Majesty's royal commands of the Prince of Wales at length re- bosom, and of the members of your Royal luctantly drew from them, why all this malicious Family, but of all the inhabitants of your kingaccompaniment?" His Royal Highness" indeed, dom, might, arise to commiserate the unfortuthey say, "desired that they would communi- nate situation of a stranger, persecuted under a cate the whole circumstances of their acquaint- charge originating in their malice ;-if, for this, ance with me, from the day they first spoke with they flung out, that I had justly forfeited my me till the present time; a full detail of all that station in society, and that a separation from my passed during our acquaintance," and "how they husband was, what I myself had once wished, became known to me, it appearing to His Royal and what the Chancellor might now perhaps Highness, from the representation of his Royal procure for me;-or, if, in short, their object Highness the Duke of Sussex, that His Majesty's was to obtain my condemnation by prejudice, dearest interests, and those of this country, inflamed by falsehood, which never could be obwere very deeply interested in the question," tained by justice informed by truth, then the and "that he particularly commanded them to whole texture of the declaration is consistent, be very circumstantial in their detail respecting and it is well contrived and executed for its purall they might know relative to the child that I pose. But it is strange, that its purpose should affected to adopt."-But from the whole of have escaped the detection of intelligent and this it is sufficiently apparent, that the parti- impartial minds. There was enough at least to cularity of this detail was required, by His have made them pause before they gave such a Royal Highness, in respect of matters connected degree of credit to informations of this descripwith that question, in which the dearest inte- tion, as to have made them the foundations of so rests of your Majesty and this country were in- important and decisive a step, as that of advisvolved; and not of circumstances which could ing them to be laid before your Majesty.—And, have no bearing on those interests. If it had indeed, such seems to have been the effect which been therefore true, as I most solemnly protest this declaration at first produced. Because if it it is not, that I had in the confidence of private had been believed, the only thing to have been conversation, so far forgot all sense of decency, done (according to the judgment of the Comloyalty, and gratitude, as to have expressed missioners,) would have been to have laid it immyself with that disrespect of your Majesty mediately before your Majesty, to whom, upon which is imputed to me; If I had been what I every principle of duty, the communication was trust those who have lived with me, or ever due. But the declaration was made on the 3d have partaken of my society, would not confirm, of December, in the last year, and the commuof a mind so uninformed and uncultivated, without nication was not made to your Majesty till the education or talents, or without any desire of very end of May. And that interval appears to improving myself, incapable of employment, of have been employed in collecting those other a temper so furious and violent, as altogether to additional declarations, which are referred to in form a character, which no one could bear to the Report, and which your Majesty has likelive with, who had the means of living else wise been pleased, by your gracious commands, where;-What possible progress would all this to have communicated to e.These addimake towards proving that I was guilty of adul- tional declarations do not, I submit, appear to tery? These, and such like insinuations, as furnish much additional reason for believing the | incredible story. They were taken indeed " for transmission of it to your Majesty, (who, once the purpose," (for they are so described, this formally in possession of it, could not fail to is the title which is prefixed to them in the au- subject it to some inquiry.) I have dwelt, perthentic copies, with which I have been furnish-haps, at a tedious length, in disputing the proed,)" for the purpose of confirming the state- priety of the Commissioners' judgment, in thas ment made by Lady Douglas of the circum-approving the course which was pursued. And, stances mentioned in her narrative," and they looking to the event, and all the circumstances are the examinations of two persons, who appear connected with it, perhaps I have reason_to to have formerly lived in the family of Sir John rejoice that the Inquiry has taken place. For and Lady Douglas, and of several servants of if three years' concealment of my supposed my own; they are filled with the hearsay details crime could not impeach the credit of my aeof other servants' declarations. And one of cusers, three times that period might perhaps be them, W. Cole, seems to have been examined thought to have left that credit still unimpaired. over and over again. No less than four of his And, had the false charge been delayed till examinations are given, and some of these evi- death had taken away the real parents of the dently refer to otlier examinations of his, which child, which Lady Douglas charges to be mine; are not given at all. if time had deprived me of those servants and attendants who have been able so fully to disprove the fact of my alleged preg nancy, I know not where I could have found the means of disproving facts and charges, so falsely, so confidently, and positively sworn to, as those to which Lady Douglas has attested.Following, as I proposed, the course taken in the Report, I next come to that part of it, to which unquestionably I must recur with the greatest satisfaction; because it is that part, which so completely absolves me of every pos sible suspicion, upon the two material charges, of pregnancy and child-birth.—The Com missioners state in their Report, that they began by examining" on oath the two principal informants, Sir John and Lady Douglas, who both positively swore, the former to his hav "ing observed the fact of pregnancy, and the latter to all the important particulars contain"ed in her former declaration, and above re"ferred to. Their examinations are annexed to "the Report, and are circumstantial and posi❝tive." The most material of "the allegations These, I submit to your Majesty, are rendered from this marked circumstance, particularly undeserving of credit; because, in the only instance in which the hearsay statement, related to one servant, was followed by the examination of the other, who was stated to have made it, (I mean an instance in which Cole relates what he had heard said by F. Lloyd) F. Lloyd does not appear to have said any such thing, or even to have heard what she is by him related to have said, and she relates the fact that she really did hear, stripped of all the particulars with which Cole had coloured it, and which alone made it in any degree deserving to be mentioned. Be sides this, the parents of the child which is ascribed to me by Lady Douglas, are plainly" pointed out, and a clue is afforded, by which if followed, it would have been as easy to have ascertained, that that child was no child of mine," (if indeed it ever had been seriously believed to be so) and to have proved whose child it was, before the appointment of the Commissioners, as it had been found to be afterwards. So far, therefore, from concurring with the Com-" into the truth of which they had been directed missioners in approving the advice, under which “to inquire, being thus far supported by the His Royal Highness had acted, I conceive it to "oath of the parties from whom they had prohave been at least cruel and inconsiderate, to "ceeded," they state, "that they felt it their have advised the transmission of such a charge" duty to follow up the Inquiry by the examito your Majesty, till they had exhausted all the "nation of such other persons, as they judged means which private inquiry could have afforded," best able to afford them information, as to the to ascertain its falsehood or its truth.And "facts in question." "We thought it," they when it appears that it was not thought necessary, say, "beyond all doubt, that in this course of upon the first statement of it, as the Commis-" Inquiry many particulars must be learnt which sioners seem to have imagined, forthwith to "would be necessarily conclusive on the truth or transmit to your Majesty; but it was retained "falsehood of these declarations. So many per for near six months, from the beginning of De. sons must have been witnesses to the appear cember till near the end of May; what is due to "ances of an actual existing pregnancy, so many myself obliges me to state, that if there had but "circumstances must have been attendant upon been in that interval, half the industry employed "a real delivery, and difficulties so numerous to remove suspicions, which was exerted to "and insurmountable must have been involved raise them, there would never have existed a "in any attempt to account for the infant in necessity for troubling your Majesty with this question, as the child of another woman, if it charge at all. I beg to be understood as im- "had been in fact the child of the Princess; that puting this solely to the advice given to His we entertained a full and confident expecta Royal Highness. He must, of necessity, have ❝tion of arriving at complete proof, either in left the detail and the determination upon this "the affirmative, or negative, on this part of the business' to others. And it is evident to me," subject. "This expectation," they proceedfrom what I now know, that His Royal Highnessed to state," was not disappointed. We are was not fairly dealt with; that material infor❝ happy to declare to your Majesty, our perfect mation was obtained to disprove part of the "conviction that there is no foundation what? case against me, which, not appearing in the ever for believing that the child now with the declarations that were transmitted to your Ma❝ Princess is the child of Her Royal Highness, jesty, I conclude was never communicated to “or that she was delivered of any child in the His Royal Highness,Feeling, Sire, strongly, “year 1802; nor has any thing appeared to us that I have much to complain of, that this foul "which would warrant the belief that she was charge should have been so readily credited to "pregnant in that year, or at any other period my great prejudice, as to have occasioned that" within the compass of our inquiries." They advice to be given which recommended the then proceed to refer to the circumstantial evi. 66 |