kissed his feet." Strong protests were left on
record; one, from the pen of Burke, bears,
together with ducal signatures, the name of
Charles Wentworth Marquis of Rockingham,
twice prime minister. In the House of Commons
the measure was discussed with closed
doors, the public being excluded from the
galleries and the entrances being locked, as if the
members were ashamed of the deed they were
doing. The constitutional lore and splendid
declamation of Burke, the manly eloquence of
Fox, were unavailing. We quote again from
Walpole: "Zeal, and money, and all influence
went to work; the ears were closed in which
golden infusion had been poured." Henry
Lawes Luttrell affected to be indignant at the
dishonour aimed at his sister, and even
threatened to turn patriot. Gibbon, in a letter to
Lord Sheffield, says: "The noise of Luttrell is
subsided, but there was some foundation for it.
The colonel's expenses in his bold enterprise,
the Middlesex election, were yet unpaid by
government. The hero threatened, assumed the
patriot, received a sop, and again sunk into a
courtier." In the language of Walpole, "Never
was an act passed against which so much, and
for which so little, was said." To its other
claims upon the country was added this—it
owed its existence to corruption.

The measure was hateful to the public; it
rendered the title even of Cumberland, when its
duke became the victim of court persecution,
popular. Goldsmith thus alludes to it in his
comedy of She Stoops to Conquer, which was
first produced on the 13th of March, 1773.
When her lover urges Miss Neville to elope, he
exclaims, "If my dearest girl will trust in her
faithful Hastings, we shall be soon landed in
France, where even among slaves the laws of
marriage are respected." The Duke of
Gloucester was present on the night of the first
performance, and such was the public sympathy
excited, that the audience at once applied the
allusion to his brother, and testified their feeling
in a burst of applause. The Duke of Cumberland
and his bride had proceeded to Italy,
and were received by the Papal courts at Rome
with royal honours; the dome of St. Peter's was
illuminated with peculiar splendour to greet
their arrival. This reception was designed to
mark reprobation of a measure which was
supposed to annul a religious rite. The honours so
paid deeply mortified the surviving Stuarts,
Charles Edward and Henry Benedict, Cardinal
of York, then resident, as pensioners of the
Pope, at Rome.

Horace Walpole, in a letter to Sir Horace
Mann, of the 29th of May, 1773, thus alludes
to the birth of the first child of the Duke and
Duchess of Gloucester, the Princess Sophia
Matilda: "The Duchess of Gloucester was
delivered of a princess this day; so even their
holidays are taken from the Stuarts." It would
seem from the same communication that the
king had on that occasion relented: "The
marriages of the two royal dukes, at the request of
his Highness of Gloucester, have been authenticated
this week. The king sent the archbishop,
the chancellor, and Bishop of London, this day
se'nnight, to examine the proofs and report
them, with their opinions. They declared
themselves fully satisfied with the validity of both
marriages, made their report in full council
before the king last Wednesday, and the
depositions were entered in the council books.
You will be surprised after this account that
the good-natured part of the duchess's sex has
opened its triple mouths to question the legality
of the Duke of Gloucester's marriage, because
there were no witnesses. The law of England
requires none. The declaration of the parties is
sufficient. . . . The duke was advised to be
married again with the king's consent, but he
had too much sense to take such silly counsel,
though the king would have allowed it. The
duke, however, submitted to the king's pleasure
if it should be thought necessary, though fully
satisfied himself of its validity. The king sent
him word by the archbishop, that as his royal
highness was satisfied, and as his majesty had
heard no objection to the validity, he did not
think any further steps necessary. In fact, the
noise of those who repine at the duchess's
exaltation is a proof that they are convinced her
marriage is indissoluble." The Duke and
Duchess of Gloucester subsequently visited the
Continent, and their eldest son, William
Frederick, the future Duke of Gloucester, was
born on the 15th of January, 1776, at Rome.
So marked was the attention which this royal
couple also received there during their residence,
that in the same year Calleteti, a bookseller,
who had inscribed some dramatic works to the
duke, was banished by the Papal court for the
offence of having omitted "royal" in the dedication.
They subsequently appeared at several
foreign courts, and Horace Walpole, writing on
the 14th of May, 1777, again to Sir Horace
Maun, who was British envoy at the court of
Tuscany, assures him, "She has not at all
forgotten that she was not royally born. I am
sure you found her as easy and natural as if she
had not married even Lord Waldegrave. When
she left England her beauty had lost no more
than her good qualities. I am glad your court
lias behaved to her as they ought. I am glad
the English see there is no nation so contemptibly
servile as our own." The excellent but unpresuming
qualities of the Duchess of Gloucester,
although not a high born subject, won the
affections and admiration of all the royal family to
which she had become allied.

We learn from the court gossip of Cornelia
Knight, that George the Fourth, when Prince
Regent, was not free from apprehensions that
his daughter the Princess Charlotte of Wales,
would have selected her cousin of Gloucester as
her future consort. Royal pride even afterwards
descended to bestow the hand of his cousin the
Princess Mary, fourth daughter of George the
Third, with the required consent of the crown,
on the son of Maria Walpole, and the grandson
of Dorothy Clement, the milliner's apprentice
from Durham, William Frederick, Duke of