So that there was no small share of irony as to his own origin in the act of the Dutch monarch who got the British Parliament to pass a measure forbidding such unions as that which procured for the British people the blessings of a line so gifted with harmless mediocrity as the Guelphs. However striking the irony in the case may be, there is no getting over the fact that the law thus enacted effectually barred out the claims of any possible candidates for the honors of British royalty who could not show such credentials as that law insisted on. Hence it is not easy to understand the grounds upon which those who appealed, and successfully appealed, to the slumbering bigotry of the English populace, at this particular epoch, based their incitement to alarm.

The immediate cause why the Royal Marriage Act was introduced and passed was the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland with Mrs. Horton and of the Duke of Gloucester with the Countess Waldegrave. Both these matches the plebeian-blooded monarch, George II., regarded as beneath the dignity of the House of Brunswick. The effects of the Royal Marriage Act have been tragical on many occasions. It prevented the course of natural affection, and substituted state policy for the highest and purest emotion of human nature-the love that makes marriage the grand sacrament of humanity and consecrates it as a pledge of perpetuity while the world lasts. It gave rise to a hideous crop of immorality, sullying the noblest English houses, by restricting the choice of the royal princes and princesses to the narrow circle of petty German royalties. Writers of the day denounced the Act as an odious one, contrary to the laws of God and nature, and fraught with actual peril to the British Empire, by exposing it to the danger of having the crown, at some critical period, left without a legitimate successor.

One of the most flagrant examples of the iniquity of the Act was its operation in regard to the marriage of the Duke of Sussex to Lady Augusta Murray. They were first wedded in Rome, according, doubtless, to the Catholic rite, and when they returned to England in 1793 they were again married, according to the forms of the Established Church, in St. George's, Hanover Square, London-the most fashionable church in the metropolis. But old George III. set his face against the union and was determined to dissolve it, at whatever cost-on the empty plea of preserving unimpaired the succession to the crown. He got a suit instituted in the Court of Arches, wherein all ecclesiastical causes were tried; and the complaisant Judges acceded to his wishes by finding that not only was the Roman ceremony invalid, but even that conducted according to the English law in the English church! The result of that monstrous finding was that the King's own grandchild, the

offspring of the union, was rendered illegitimate. Could human injustice any further go?

George III. himself, it is interesting to note, had in his early life resolved to break through the brazen fetters of this atrocious. Marriage Act. He had fallen in love with Lady Sarah Lenox, and would have married her if his father the King had not barred the project. The result was, according to the gossip of the day, that insanity that for several years made George's reign a period of serious danger to the country.

It was under such conditions that the Prince of Wales, who afterwards became King George IV., met the fascinating Mrs. Fitzherbert. If she was beautiful, he was handsome. He was just come of age, one of the most accomplished and magnetic of men. He was witty, learned, a master of languages, of elegant manners and fine speech. These dangerous accomplishments-to the hollow-hearted, such as he had already worked havoc with the virtue of several susceptible beauties and brought dishonor to the domestic hearths of decent people.

Mrs. Fitzherbert, though twice a widow, was only twenty-five years old when the Prince of Wales first met her. It was at the opera house in London. She was in the box belonging to her relative, Lady Sefton. The moment the Prince laid eyes on her he was incurably smitten. He had no difficulty in obtaining an introduction, and he immediately proceeded to bring into play those batteries which he had found effective in overcoming the resistance of matron and maid. But he soon discovered that the open sesame of royalty which had proved fatal to poor "Perdita" (Mrs. Robinson) and a score of other victims was ineffectual in this case. The lady was a Catholic-and that made a world of difference. She belonged to an old English family-the Smythes, of Bambridge, Hampshire. She had been married, at the age of nineteen, to Mr. Edward Weld, of Lulworth Castle, Dorsetshire-another of the old English stock. He died within a year; and after a period of mourning she was wooed and won by Mr. Thomas Fitzherbert, of Swinnerton, Staffordshire. He died within three years of the marriage, and the event left her a second time a widow, at an age when most English girls deem it best to begin married life. She was the inheritor of a fortune sufficient to maintain her in elegance-a couple of thousand pounds a year. When she discovered the meaning of the Prince's attentions to her she immediately rejected them. He persisted in his importunities; wrote ballads, like "Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill," on her beauty, and sent them to her by some of his usual go-betweens. But, determined not to be annoyed by attentions she knew to be dishonorable, the lady packed up her

trunks and hied her off to France, where she had friends. Gossip at that particular time was by no means mealy-mouthed or chary of its pleasures. Though there was a stringent press law, there was a boldness in defying its provisions that denoted an impatience of restraint and a high public spirit. These were the days of "Junius" and the "Drapier Letters," or not far removed from that celebrated period, and John Wilkes and Horne Tooke were striking sounding blows on the shield of tyranny and clearing the way for the coming emancipation of the press. If the political writing of such a time demands our admiration because of its ability as well as its courage, it must also elicit our reprobation at times because of its license and the scandalous way in which it dealt with private character. Anonymous writers were allowed to pursue a course of open defamation toward the highest personages such as would not be tolerated now. Mrs. Fitzherbert was made the subject of such a villainous method of journalism. A pamphlet signed "Nemesis" gave currency to a slander affecting her reputation. The writer pretended to be familiar with her private life in France, and asserted that she had formed a friendship there with the Marquis de Bellois, which, it was hinted, was of too warm a character. It would seem that the motive of this vile attack was to turn the Prince of Wales against the lady. He had indeed manifested his regard for her so unmistakably that some desperate measures must be resorted to, in the belief of those to whom this attachment gave concern, to change his sentiments. Religious animus, it would seem, was the prime factor in the system of intrigue and calumny upon which they determined. The Prince was unremitting in his endeavors to discover her retreat, they knew; and so the story was started that she had retired from Plombiers, where she had been staying, and hidden herself in Paris under some assumed name, as a result of her acquaintance with the Marquis de Bellois. There was no mincing of words by the concocter of this vile attack; and so, in order to disprove its gravamen and give the scandal its quietus, we are at liberty to conclude, Mrs. Fitzherbert's kinsman, Mr. Errington, and her friend, Mr. Bouverie, advised her to return immediately to England.

According to "Nemesis," the Marquis de Bellois followed her to England and blackmailed her, on the threat of publishing certain letters of the Prince of Wales to Mrs. Fitzherbert, to the extent of a couple of hundred pounds. The fraudulent character of such a statement is shown by the fact that one of the details given in support of it was that Mrs. Fitzherbert's brother, Mr. Walter Smythe, was one of those who had given stories disgraceful to the Prince of Wales, in connection with the lady, and that he, too, had to be

bought off by large sums of money and valuable presents, and that much more was expended in the bribing of newspapers to suppress scandal and publish matter complimentary to Mrs. Fitzherbert. What was the meaning of this premeditated and methodical course of scandalum magnatum? The onslaught of the anonymous libeller who described himself or herself as "Nemesis" will supply the clue. It said: Mrs. Fitzherbert was at this time said to be in correspondence in France with the gros Abbé, the bastard brother of the Duke of Orleans, the Abbé Taylor and some Irish friars in many parts of Italy. The aim of this correspondence was said to be to harass the existing Administration, and to pave the way for the introduction of Catholics into Ireland."

"Said to be!" This is ever the elusive weapon of the slanderer and the poisoner of the mind. It is an old resort and as much in vogue to-day as ever. It was lately used in this country, more than once, by traffickers in this sort of merchandise, for a purpose as foul as in the days of George III. But let us consider the situation, the victim and the objects:

The period was toward the close of the eighteenth century-a time when nearly every penal statute ever passed against professors of the Catholic faith was in full operation. It was only a little time before that England had shown that the silent statute-books only expressed the living, active and destructive hatred of the Catholic system and Catholic people that burned in the hearts of the majority of Englishmen. The terrible riots associated with the name of Lord George Gordon testified to the depth and power of that fierce fanaticism; and that spirit was quite likely to assert itself once more in case it could be proved that the heir to the throne had entered into an alliance, regular or irregular, with one of the detested Papists. Lord George Gordon himself was actively at work stirring anew the smoldering fires that had already laid a large portion of London in ashes. He was under prosecution before the King's Bench for a libel on the Queen of France and the French Ambassador at the English Court, the Count d'Adhemar. During the trial Lord George commented with very great freedom on the connection said to exist between the Prince of Wales and Mrs. Fitzherbert-so busy had the tongue of scandal been in transforming a royal repulse into a royal victory over honor. He had stated that while in Paris he had held a conversation with Mrs. Fitzherbert, and he desired to have her testimony as to this, in order to prove an intrigue between the French and British Courts-the subject, he asserted, of that conversation. This, of course, was a renewal of the No Popery tactics, but it failed. Lord George actually attempted to serve a subpoena on the lady himself. He called at

her house for that purpose, but was turned out by the servants. Mrs. Fitzherbert's brother, Mr. Walter Smythe, accompanied by a friend, Mr. Orton, went to Lord George's residence next day and threatened him with serious consequences if he attempted to molest the lady again or take any liberties with her name-a fact that shows that the spirit of the Catholic gentry was in nowise cowed by the truculence of Lord George and his murderous henchmen in that time of brutal terrorizing and persecution. The fanatic lord wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, Mr. Pitt, describing the incident and closing with a minatory sort of demand that the matter be brought to the attention of the House of Commons in order to show "the overbearing disposition of the Papists." This was the old story of the wolf and the lamb with a vengeance, all the circumstances taken into account.

Lord George's action in the matter attracted to the case of the Prince and Mrs. Fitzherbert an instant and widespread interest. It immediately began to be discussed in the newspapers, in the coffee houses, in the drawing rooms. Everybody was asking his or her neighbor had there been really a marriage. Then appeared on the stage a firebrand of a worse type than Gordon because more able and logical. This was the celebrated, or, more properly speaking, notorious person known as Horne Tooke-a poulterer's son whose real name was John Horne, but who had Tooke added to it in order to qualify for a legacy left him on that condition. He put forth a pamphlet, in which he addressed Mrs. Fitzherbert repeatedly as the Princes of Wales, asserted that a marriage had taken place, that it was celebrated by a priest whose name he knew, and pronounced it to be a nullity because of the law forbidding unions between people of royal blood and subjects. This pamphlet created a tremendous sensation—not so much because it related to a fact forbidden by statute, but because of the religion of one of the parties. The excitement over the publication was not confined to England; it spread over Europe in the courts and fashionable circles. It created something like a frenzy among the English masses. Some mysterious pressure appeared to have been exerted over Tooke and unknown agents seemed to have bought up the pamphlet, for no copy of it could be had a few days after it was suddenly sprung on the public. Tooke was pressed to repeat or confirm what he had previously stated, but he preserved a rigid silence. It was a most serious thing to allege that the heir to the crown had married a Papist; it almost amounted to treason against the Constitution, under the Act of Settlement. The matter did find its way into Parliament when the discussion of the debts of the Prince of Wales came on in the course of the estimates. Mr.