Premium
Pains and Penalties Procedure: How the House of Lords ‘Tried’ Queen Caroline*
Author(s) -
MELIKAN R. A.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
parliamentary history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.14
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1750-0206
pISSN - 0264-2824
DOI - 10.1111/j.1750-0206.2001.tb00380.x
Subject(s) - queen (butterfly) , citation , law , sociology , history , political science , hymenoptera , botany , biology
In the summer of 1820, King George IV demanded that his government secure the punishment of his estranged wife, Caroline, for her allegedly adulterous behaviour. Ministers acquiesced, and introduced a bill of pains and penalties to deprive the Queen of all royal titles and privileges, and to affect a divorce. After lengthy consideration by the House of Lords the bill was withdrawn, to the King’s annoyance and the embarrassment of his government. This incident is well known to historians of early nineteenth-century social and political history. The actual process undertaken against the Queen is less so. Nor was it generally understood at the time. Writing to her brother in August of 1820, Lady Cowper complained, ‘A bill of Pains and Penalties is an awkward name, it sounds to the ignorant as if she was going to be fried or tortured in some way.’ It is the aim of this chapter to examine in some detail the bill procedure as a parliamentary phenomenon. It conferred on Parliament considerable authority, but its unusual process also subjected the legislature to considerable strain. In the Queen’s case this strain fell upon the House of Lords, and it is enlightening to consider how this was borne by a group described by one observer as notable for its education and experience of public affairs, and by a member as ‘by far the stupidest and most obstinate collection of men that could be selected from all England’. It is appropriate to begin with a brief chronology of the Queen’s domestic problems. On 8 April 1795 Caroline of Brunswick married her cousin George, the Prince of Wales. Despite the birth of their daughter, Charlotte, on 7 January 1796, the marriage was a failure. As early as May of that year the Prince submitted a request to George III for a formal separation. While this was refused, a separate establishment was purchased for the Princess, and the Prince avoided any unnecessary contact with her. The Prince’s conduct towards his wife, together with his dissolute lifestyle, resulted in considerable public sympathy for Caroline. This state of affairs was not to last, however. Stories spread about her eccentric, indecorous, and improper behaviour, and in the spring of