250 CHAPTER XI. 1839. DECLARATION OF THE MARRIAGE TO THE PRIVY COUNCIL THE public declaration of the intended marriage had been necessarily delayed till it should have been officially communicated to the Privy Council; but on the 15th, the day after the departure of the Princes, the Queen mentions in the memorandum from which the account of her betrothal has been chiefly taken, that she wrote letters to the Queen Dowager and to the other members of the English Royal Family, announcing her intended marriage, and received kind answers from all. On the 20th November the Queen, accompanied by the Duchess of Kent, came up from Windsor to Buckingham Palace, and on the same day Lord Melbourne brought, for her approval, a copy of the declaration which it was proposed to make to the Privy Council. The Queen relates that she had much conversation with him at the same time on the various arrangements to be made, and the steps to be taken with regard to the marriage. £50,000 was the amount of annuity which it had been proposed to settle on the Prince; and in this Lord Melbourne said that the Cabinet (most erroneously as it turned out) anticipated no difficulty whatever, except perhaps in case of survivorship. The Queen records in her journal that she observed, "she thought this would be very "unfair," and that Lord Melbourne expressed his entire concurrence with her, hoping, however, that the difficulty might not arise. On the same occasion, Lord Melbourne told the Queen of a "stupid attempt to make it out "that the Prince was a Roman Catholic!" Absurd as such a report was, the Prince, as the Queen remarks in her journal, "being par ticularly Protestant in his opinions," Lord Melbourne told the Queen that he was afraid to say anything about the Prince's religion, and that the subject would not therefore be alluded 1 declaration. It will be to in the proposed declaration. 1 seen that this omission was afterwards severely commented upon in the House of Lords. The Privy Council met on the 23rd, when upwards of eighty members assembled in the bow room on the ground-floor in Buckingham Palace. "Precisely at two" (the Queen records in her journal) "I went in. The room was full, "but I hardly knew who was there. Lord "Melbourne I saw looking kindly at me with tears in his eyes, but he was not near me. "I then read my short declaration. I felt "my hands shook, but I did not make one "mistake. I felt most happy and thankful "when it was over. Lord Lansdowne then "rose, and, in the name of the Privy Council, "asked that this most gracious and most "welcome communication might be printed.' "I then left the room-the whole thing not "lasting above two or three minutes. The Duke "of Cambridge came into the small library "where I was standing and wished me joy."2 The Queen always wore a bracelet with the Prince's picture, and "it seemed," she adds in 1 Mem. by the Queen. 2 The Queen's Journal, November 23, 1839. her journal," to give me courage at the Council." She returned the same evening, with the Duchess of Kent, to Windsor. The declaration made by the Queen is thus recorded in the Gazette, Nov. 23rd, 1839: 66 "I have caused you to be summoned at the present time in order that I may acquaint "you with my resolution in a matter which deeply concerns the welfare of my people, and "the happiness of my future life. "It is my intention to ally myself in mar'riage with the Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg "and Gotha. Deeply impressed with the so"lemnity of the engagement which I am about "to contract, I have not come to this decision without mature consideration, nor without 'feeling a strong assurance that, with the "blessing of Almighty God, it will at once "secure my domestic felicity, and serve the "interests of my country. "I have thought fit to make this resolution "known to you at the earliest period, in order "that you may be apprised of a matter so "highly important to me and to my kingdom, "and which, I persuade myself, will be most acceptable to all my loving subjects." "Whereupon," it is stated in the Minutes of Council," all the Privy Councillors present made "it their humble request to Her Majesty that "Her Majesty's most gracious declaration to "them might be made public; which Her Majesty was pleased to order accordingly. "C. C. GREVILLE." Of the eighty-three members of the Privy Council present on the occasion, including the illustrious names of the Duke of Wellington, Lord Lansdowne, Sir Robert Peel, &c. &c., upwards of sixty are now dead. But they are gone, for the most part, full of years and honours their mission on earth fulfilled. Alas! that he, to hear the announcement of whose selection as her husband by their Queen they were now met, should also have gone from usgone in the full vigour of his age, ere more than half his race was run-the goal scarce yet in sight-His work of good-thus far how nobly performed-still incomplete! The settlement of this marriage was not a source of joy to the members of the Queen's family alone, and especially to her mother the Duchess of Kent, who was much attached to her 3 See Appendix D. p. 429, for the list of Members of Privy Council present at the Declaration. Those marked with an asterisk are since dead. |