CHAPTER XI. 1839. Declaration of the Marriage to the Privy Council.-List of Privy Councilors present.-The Queen's Journal.-Proceedings at Coburg and Gotha.-Letter from Prince Ernest to the Queen.-Preliminary Arrangements. 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 of 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 |