Blood Royal (eBook)

Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2012 | 1. Auflage
256 Seiten
Faber & Faber (Verlag)
978-0-571-28890-8 (ISBN)

Infos

The four Hanoverian King Georges may have become fixed in history as 'faintly absurd, certainly unattractive, figures' but in this colourful account of their lives and times, families and courts, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson restores a sprinkling of credit where it has been due. His account does not neglect the marital discords of George I, the towering paternal disdain of George II or the tragically misunderstood 'madness' of George III. But the reader is also encouraged to consider how the Hanoverian monarchs reacted to the climate of art and fashion in their times, from George II's espousal of Handel to George IV's patronage of Beau Brummell. By its own admission not a comprehensive history, Blood Royal is nevertheless an elegant and shining string of linked vignettes and short studies.

Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson was born in 1939, and educated at Eton and St. John's, Cambridge. He has been an author (Faber Finds is reissuing Inglorious Rebellion, Blood Royal and That Sweet Enemy), publisher and is now a literary agent.

Textauszug

Prologue

Vivat Rex

The King in his Royal Robes of crimson velvet, furr’d with ermine and border’d with a rich broad, gold lace, wearing the collar of the order of St George … and on his head a cap of estate, turn’d up with ermine, adorned with a circle of gold, enrich’d with diamonds.

Description of George I’s coronation

The entire ceremony was one pleasant muddle from beginning to end.

Description of George III’s coronation

George I was crowned King in Westminster Abbey on October 20, 1714. Those who had been present at the three previous coronations agreed that the inauguration of the Hanoverian dynasty lacked a certain style and splendour. The Queen could hardly be present as she was incarcerated at Ahlden, and though the Princess of Wales had arrived in time she did not take part in the procession. There was, consequently, less opportunity for ceremonial, though public interest could hardly have been more intense.

The Abbey contained a number of prominent Jacobites, and there was considerable speculation as to how they would behave. Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, could not be excluded, and Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was observed to bow three times almost down to the ground when the King enquired who he was. Lady Cowper later noted in her diary:

One may easily conclude this was not a Day of real Joy to the Jacobites. However they were all there, looking as cheerful as they could, but very peevish with Everybody that spoke to them. My Lady Dorchester stood underneath me; and when the archbishop went round the Throne, demanding the consent of the People, she turned to me and said, ‘Does the old Fool think that Anybody here will say no to his Question, when there are so many drawn swords?’

But Lady Dorchester was unusually outspoken. A former mistress of James II, when she espied the Duchess of Portsmouth, one of Charles II’s mistresses, and Lady Orkney, who had fulfilled the same function for William III, she exclaimed, ‘Good God! Who would have thought we three whores would have met together here.’

Drawn swords or no, the Tory peers gave every appearance of enthusiasm for the new monarch as he was crowned. The coronation service proceeded on its leisurely way. The Bishop of Oxford delivered himself of an interminable sermon, mingling piety with politics (Dr Tennison, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was far from well, and a new Primate of England might be required any day), congratulating God on having selected so propitiously the hour of Queen Anne’s death, when ‘the unsettled posture of affairs abroad would not permit the Pretender’s foreign friends to send any forces to encourage an insurrection, and the unreadiness of his surprised abettors here would not permit them to appear in such a manner, as to invite an invasion’, and deploring the faintest possibility of the Old Pretender ascending the throne of England. Warming to his theme, the Bishop referred darkly to ‘the maxims of French tyranny’ and ‘the principles of Popish superstition’, looked back in sadness to the reigns of Charles II and James II – ‘if those Princes chastised us with whips, this would have done it with scorpions, who would have come with a spirit, not only of popery and bigotry, but also of resentment and revenge’; and was convinced that, with the accession of George I, a new era of lasting happiness was on the point of being ushered in. Outraged references to Louis XIV were given a touch of irony by the presence, in the Abbey, of two gentlemen in robes of crimson velvet edged with miniver. These were supposed to represent the Dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy.

There were a few discordant notes. The Venetian and Sicilian ambassadors quarrelled over the seats they had been allocated in the gallery set aside for foreign diplomats. Lady Cowper took her friend Lady Nottingham to task for shouting out the words of the Litany with rather too much gusto. And, when the King’s Champion rode into Westminster Hall to deliver his challenge, one lady was heard to declare that James III was the rightful king of England. But there was a feeling of relief in the air. The Whigs were in ecstasies, and even High Tories like Robert Harley and Bolingbroke appeared to condone the Hanoverian succession by their presence in the Abbey. The Treasurer of the Household scattered coronation medals with a liberal hand, eight new peers were created, the banquet in Westminster Hall was lavish, even the sun shone. Lady Wentworth’s comment was ill-spelled but convinced: ‘All hear are in great raptures of the King and say he is the Wysest and the Richis Princ in Yoarup. I hope he will prove soe.’

The Coronation of George III, a month short of forty-seven years later, was considerably less dignified and free of incident. As Jocelyn Perkins’s The Coronation Book puts it, ‘never was the English mind, with all its total incompetence to grasp details of ceremonial, displayed in such utter baldness and nakedness, as in the frantic efforts of the Deputy Earl-Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain’. First, there was a strike of workmen who were to erect the decorations. Then Lord Effingham, the Deputy Earl-Marshal, completely forgot about the Sword of State and the canopy; the Lord Mayor lent his own sword, but the loss of the canopy delayed the start of the procession until midday. In the Abbey, the Bishop of Salisbury droned on, becoming so muddled that he alluded to the extraordinary number of years the King had already sat on the throne, and the coronation service took six hours to complete.

Being the latter end of September, the Procession was compelled to make its return journey in a dusky twilight, which rendered all surrounding objects dim and indistinct. The Hall was enveloped in almost complete darkness; and, as it was not lit up until the arrival of the royal pair, the main body of the Procession entered in a manner by no means dignified, the nodding plumes of the Knights of the Bath conveying to many minds a very forcible suggestion of a funeral and hearse!

During the banquet, Lord Talbot, the Lord High Steward, came into his own. Already in a state of high nervous tension, he proceeded to argue furiously with the Barons of the Cinque Ports, the Knights of the Bath, and the Aldermen of the City of London:

These three sets of functionaries on entering the Hall, ready to do full justice to the good cheer awaiting them, found that they had been shamefully ousted from their places, in defiance of all ancient precedent. The aldermen indeed, with characteristic regard for the needs of the inner man, were fully equal to this emergency; and by dint of many hard words, and not a few bullying threats, they forced Lord Talbot to admit them a place far above their own proper rank.

The Knights of the Bath were less persistent and less fortunate. Their plumes nodding ever more funereally, they were banished to the Court of Requests and a lonely, and inferior, dinner. But it was the Barons of the Cinque Ports who suffered the most. Talbot lost his temper completely and raged at them: ‘If you come to me, as Lord Steward, I tell you it is impossible; if as Lord Talbot, I am a match for any of you!’

The unfortunate Barons were afforded some small consolation by Lord Talbot’s next manoeuvre. He was due to accompany the King’s Champion during the latter’s traditional arrival in Westminster Hall, and had spent many weary hours practising and training his horse to back out of the Hall once the challenge had been delivered. The horse was too literally minded, and proceeded to back into the Hall and to present its rump to the startled King. It was a theatrical coup of enormous popularity. Laughter was unrestrained, and several ladies succumbed to hysterics. It was all, as one observer put it sharply, ‘a terrible indecorum, such as one might expect at Bartholomew Fair’. Only the King seemed unmoved by the goings-on. Bishop Newton wrote approvingly,

The King’s whole behaviour at the coronation was justly admired and commended by every one, and, particularly, his manner of ascending and seating himself on the throne after his coronation. No actor in the character of Pyrrhus, in the ‘Distressed Mother’ [a contemporary tragedy by Ambrose Phillips] not even Booth himself, who was celebrated for it in the Spectator, ever ascended the throne with so much grace and dignity.

Finally, though, George complained to Lord Effingham, who did not ease the situation by his answer: ‘It is true, sir, that there has been some neglect; but I have taken care that the next coronation shall be regulated in the exactest manner possible.’

Thomas Gray was an eye-witness and left a vivid account of the scene in Westminster Hall:

The instant the Queen’s canopy entered, fire was given to all the lustres at once by trains of prepared flax that reached from one end to the other. To me it seemed an interval of not half a minute before the whole was in a blaze of splendour. It is true that for that half minute it rained fire upon the heads of all the spectators, the flax falling in large flakes; and the ladies, Queen and all, were in no small terror, but no mischief ensued. It was out as soon as it fell, and the most magnificent spectacle I ever beheld remained. The King bowing to the Lords as he passed, with the crown on his head, and the sceptre and orb in his hands, took his place with great majesty and grace. So did the Queen with her crown, sceptre and rod. Then supper was served in gold...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 14.2.2012
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Hilfswissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Schlagworte: Faber Finds • kings & queens • Monarchy • Royal Family
• ISBN-10: 0-571-28890-1 / 0571288901
• ISBN-13: 978-0-571-28890-8 / 9780571288908