DEATH OF CAROLINE, QUEEN CONSORT.

In England the attention of the public was attracted by an open breach in the royal family. The princess of Wales had advanced to the very last month of her pregnancy before the king and queen were informed of her being with child. She was twice conveyed from Hampton-Court to the palace of St. James’, when her labour-pains were supposed to be approaching; and at length was delivered of a princess in about two hours after her arrival. The king being apprised of this event, sent a message by the earl of Essex to the prince, expressing his displeasure at the conduct of his royal highness, as an indignity offered to himself and the queen. The prince deprecated his majesty’s anger in several submissive letters, and implored the queen’s mediation. The princess joined her entreaties to those of his royal highness; but all their humility and supplication proved ineffectual. The king, in another message sent by the duke of Grafton, observed, that the prince had removed the princess twice in the week immediately preceding the day of her delivery, from the place of his majesty’s residence, in expectation of her labour; and both times, on his return, industriously concealed from the knowledge of the king and queen every circumstance relating to this important affair; that at last, without giving any notice to their majesties, he had precipitately hurried the princess from Hampton-Court in a condition not to be named; that the whole tenor of his conduct, for a considerable time, had been so entirely void of all real duty to the king, that his majesty had reason to be highly offended with him. He gave him to understand, that until he should withdraw his regard and confidence from those by whose instigation and advice he was directed and encouraged in his unwarrantable behaviour to his majesty and the queen, and return to his duty, he should not reside in the palace; he therefore signified his pleasure that he should leave St. James’, with all his family, when it could be done without prejudice or inconvenience to the princess. In obedience to this order the prince retired to Kew, and made other efforts to be readmitted into his majesty’s favour, which, however, he could not retrieve. Whatever might have been his design in concealing so long from the king and queen the pregnancy of the princess, and afterwards hurrying her from place to place in such a condition, to the manifest hazard of her life, his majesty had certainly cause to be offended at this part of his conduct; though the punishment seems to have been severe, if not rigorous; for he was not even admitted into the presence of the queen his mother, to express his duty to her in her last moments, to implore her forgiveness, and receive her last blessing. She died of a mortification in her bowels, on the twentieth day of November, in the fifty-fifth year of her age, regretted as a princess of uncommon sagacity, and as a pattern of conjugal virtue.