In the first place there was Albert’s position at Court to be considered, which was an affair of precedence of course; and then there was the question of his allowance. He would have to be naturalised too, for it was unthinkable that a foreigner should be the Queen’s husband.
Lord Melbourne worked with all his might to meet the Queen’s wishes but the Tories always opposed him and his tottering Whigs and as the Prime Minister had often explained to the Queen, it was often very difficult to get Bills passed because of this.
Uncle Ernest declared that he would not give precedence to a little Coburg Prince even if he was the Queen’s husband. The Tories supported him and the other Royal Dukes who had followed him in protest, and the Queen was furious.
She raged against the Tories. ‘I always hated them,’ she declared. ‘As for Sir Robert Peel I have always known that he was a low hyprocrite. But I expected better of the Duke of Wellington. I shall certainly not ask him to my wedding.’
Lord Melbourne begged her to be calm.
‘Calm!’ she cried. ‘When they behave so to my dearest Albert. That angel to be treated so by monsters.’
The Queen saw things in distinct shades of black and white, pointed out Lord Melbourne patiently. In Her Majesty’s opinion people were either angels or devils, which was not true in this case. It was all a little more subtle than that.
‘I should like to punish those Tory monsters,’ she insisted.
‘It is fortunate for them that we have a Constitutional Monarchy,’ said Lord Melbourne wryly.
‘Everything is too slow,’ said the Queen. ‘You politicians don’t work hard enough.’
Then Charles Greville, her Clerk of the Council, discovered that she could settle Albert’s status by Royal Prerogative. This delighted her. Albert should take precedence over all Royal Dukes so that little matter was settled.
He was to be called the Prince Consort.
‘The Prince Consort,’ she cried. ‘Surely the husband of a queen should be a king!’
‘Not if he is a prince,’ explained Lord Melbourne patiently.
‘But his marriage will make him a king.’
‘No, that is not so,’ was the Prime Minister’s reply. ‘We should need a special Act of Parliament to turn a Prince Consort into a King Consort.’
‘Then let us bring in this special Act.’
Lord Melbourne shook his head. ‘It would be most unwise to give a Parliament the power to make a king; it would be a precedent. If it was as easy to make a king or queen, it would be as easy to unmake one.’
Victoria was thoughtful. Anything that was a threat to her Crown could not be ignored.
Albert should remain the Prince Consort.
It was necessary, Lord Melbourne told her, to make a formal announcement of her decision to accept Prince Albert as her husband and for this she returned to London and summoned her Privy Council to the Palace.
The Duke of Wellington, who had shortly before suffered from a stroke, was just well enough to be present. Her anger against him melted when she saw how ill he looked. The right side of his mouth was twisted a little and he could not use his arm. Poor old man, thought the Queen. How sad to be old and almost finished with life.
She had dressed herself in a plain gown and wore a bracelet to which had been attached a portrait of Albert.
She bowed to the councillors and begged them to be seated and then she read the speech which Lord Melbourne had written for her.‘It is my intention to ally myself in marriage with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Deeply impressed with the solemnity of the engagement which I am about to contract, I have not come to this decision without mature consideration, nor without a feeling of strong assurance that, with the blessing of Almighty God, it will at once secure my domestic felicity and serve the interests of my country.’
When she had finished reading she noticed that Lord Melbourne was looking at her with tears in his eyes.
Dear, dear Lord Melbourne. How often had she seen those eyes fill with tears for her!
That day she left the Palace for Windsor. Crowds collected to see her as she left. Now she could not complain of a lack of loyal cheers.
Lady Flora was forgotten. So was the Bedchamber Affair. Their young Queen was going to be a bride and her people were once more delighted with her.
But if the people were pleased at the prospect of a royal wedding the Tories had not forgotten the Queen’s insult to Sir Robert Peel and her unconcealed animosity towards them which had been so obvious during the time of the Bedchamber Crisis. They seemed determined to make everything as uncomfortable for her as possible, and as it was difficult to attack the Crown the best way to annoy the Queen was to cast slurs on Albert.
There had been too many Germans in the royal family, was their opinion, since the accession of George I when the royal family had branched from the Stuarts to the Guelphs. The country was heartily sick of Germans. And now the Queen was proposing to bring this young one over and marry him and had even tried to make him a King Consort. That had been satisfactorily stopped, but it did not take the Prince’s detractors long to find a stick with which to beat him. In the Queen’s announcement of her betrothal to her Privy Councillors, the text of which had been published, there had been no mention of the Prince’s religion. This could mean one thing. The Prince was not a Protestant. Was the Queen trying to bring a Catholic to share her throne?
The King of Hanover, Victoria’s Uncle Ernest, who had always coveted the throne and had in fact been suspected of sinister actions towards the young Princess Victoria, was believed to be behind the plots to disqualify the Prince and prevent the marriage. But for Victoria, Ernest would have been King of England; it had always been a sore point with him that he had been younger than Victoria’s father and so cheated of the throne by a mere girl. He had never ceased to hope that Victoria would die and he be called over to take the Crown. That she had been so healthy had infuriated him; and now the thought of her marrying and having children who would come before him in the line of succession and so put the throne out of his reach for ever was more than he could bear.
And so his spies were ordered to put rumours in motion and the aggrieved Tories were not slow to make use of them.
The Queen was furious, far more angry than she would have been at an attack on herself. Her Uncle Ernest was an old wretch and the Tories were odious. How dared they attack her beloved! One day they should all be punished.
Lord Brougham, that old enemy in the Lords, made a pronouncement which was widely quoted.
‘There is no prohibition to marriage with a Catholic. It is only attended with a penalty, and that penalty is merely the forfeiture of the crown.’
‘Oh, how dare he!’ cried the Queen. ‘That man is a traitor!’
She was amazed that the Duke of Wellington did not hesitate to side with his Tory friends, and he actually led the attack on Albert in the Lords.
The Queen raged with Lord Melbourne. Why was nothing done? What were her ministers doing if they could allow the Queen to be so maligned? Were the Tories so foolish that they thought she did not know her own Constitution? Did they think she would ever marry anyone who was a Catholic?
‘The noble Duke knows that the Prince is not a Catholic,’ declared Lord Melbourne in the House of Commons. ‘He knows he is a Protestant. The whole world knows he is a Protestant.’
Finally Baron Stockmar who had arrived back in England made a public statement that the Prince was a Protestant who could take communion in the English church, and that the only difference was that he was a Lutheran.