After ten days, made restless by the constant flow of rumours, and finding himself unable to settle down to anything, Roger decided to return to London. A talk with Droopy soon put him au courantwith the latest information.
On the 12th of November Pitt had proposed Jo the Prince that Parliament should be adjourned for a fortnight, and the Prince had agreed. On the 17th Pitt had asked leave to inform the Prince of the course he proposed to take on the re-assembling of Parliament, but an audience had been refused. On the 24th the Prince had at length inquired if Pitt had any proposals to make and the slighted Prime Minister had retaliated by sending a polite negative.
That same day Fox arrived back in London from Italy. The news of the King's affliction had reached him at Bologna and he had made the return trip in nine days, which was believed to be a record. To his fury he found that Sheridan was not only managing everything for the Prince but actually living in Mrs. Fitzherbert's house, as the bailiffs were in possession of his own. But, although ill from the strain of his journey, the corpulent and flamboyant statesman immediately threw himself into the battle to wrest power from the King's friends, with all his old genius for intrigue.
The struggle now centred round the question whether there were any hopes of the King's recovery or if he was permanently mad; as upon that hinged the form that the Regency should take. Dr. Warren, who was now the King's principal medical attendant, being a Whig and a strong supporter of the Prince, took the blackest view; and his bulletins were received with acclamation at Brook's, from which a virulent campaign of rumour was now launched to persuade the public that there was no chance of the King ever becoming sane again.
But Pitt was determined to protect the future rights of the helpless monarch by every means in his power, so he consulted his father's old friend Dr. Addington, and Addington advised the calling-in of the Reverend Dr. Willis, who, during twenty-eight years, had supervised some nine hundred cases of lunacy at a private asylum in Lincolnshire.
That the King still enjoyed periods of sanity was made clear when his new doctor was presented to him. On being informed that Willis was a clergyman he remarked that he could not approve a minister of the church taking to the practice of medicine. Willis replied that Christ went about healing the sick; to which the King promptly retorted: "Yes, but I never heard that he got seven hundred a year for doing so."
On the 29th the King was removed to Kew, and Willis reported that he did not consider the case by any means hopeless. But the King's recovery, all hope of which was still denied by his other doctors, could not be expected, even if it occurred at all, for some time to come; so the arrangements to introduce a Regency Bill had to go on.
On December the 5th Pitt moved for a Committee to examine the physicians, and twenty-one members of the House, selected from both parties, were appointed. As was to be expected, the evidence of Doctors Warren and Willis conflicted to such a degree that their statements had little influence on their hearers' previous beliefs and prejudices.
On the 10th the Prime Minister presented the medical evidence and moved for a Committee to investigate precedents. Immediately Fox was on his feet with vehement protest. He denounced the proposal as merely a pretext for delay. The heir-apparent was of mature age and capacity. He had as clear a right to exercise the sovereign power during the King's illness as he would have in case of death. Parliament's only business was to determine when he should assume the reins of government, and that should be settled with the least possible delay.
In his impatience to pull down the government Fox had overreached himself, and the cool, logical brain of Pitt instantly seized upon his enemy's error. Turning to his neighbour he whispered: "I'll un-Whigthe gentleman for the rest of his life." Then he rose to his feet and tore the demagogue to shreds; asserting that he advocated a breach of the constitution by implying that the House had not even the right to debate the question.
From this a most extraordinary situation arose. The Whigs, who for well over a century had claimed to be the defenders of the people's liberties, gave their full backing to Fox in his attempt to re-assert the Divine Right of Hereditary Royalty; while the Tories, who had always sought to protect the Royal prerogative, had, over-night, become the champions of the duly elected representatives of the people in their established right to place a check upon the arbitrary powers of the sovereign.
On the 12th, Sheridan's venomous hatred of Pitt led him openly to threaten the Prime Minister with the possibly dire consequences to himself, should he persist in opposing the Prince's claims further. Three days later the Duke of York attempted to offset the menace by a tactful speech in the House of Lords; but the damage was done. Pitt had the sympathy of every decent man and woman in the country. Yet there could be no altering the course that events must take, and arrangements were made for the introduction of the Regency Bill early in the New Year.
On the 19th of December Roger returned to Lyrninton to spend Christmas with his mother. He got in a few days shooting and attended a number of dances at the big houses round about—Pylewell, Priest-lands and Vicars Hill—and also in the town Assembly Rooms. It was now well over two months since he had left Natalia, and already he had come to regard her as an episode of his past; so he entered on an amusing flirtation with another Christmas visitor to the district, Amanda Godfrey, the Titian-haired niece of old Sir Harry Burrard of Walhampton.
She was a lively and audacious young woman, who did not take much persuading to slip out of her uncle's house after everyone else was in bed, to keep assignations with her beau. On several nights they went for stolen walks together round the star-lit lakes in the grounds and through the still, frosty woods; but it was no more than a holiday romance, and by the middle of the first weekvof"January Roger was back in London.
At the opening of the first session of Parliament for 1789, the most fateful year in modern history, the Regency Bill was the one question which occupied every member's mind; so the House sat impatiently through the preliminary business, the chief item of which was the election of a new Speaker, the holder of that office having died. Pitt's cousin, the heavy-featured but incorruptible William Grenville, was elected and, on January the 6th, the acrimonious discussions on the Bill were resumed.
Pitt's proposals were, in brief, that the Prince should be empowered to exercise the royal authority, but that the guardianship of the King and the regulation of the royal household should be committed to the Queen, with a Council to assist her. Further that the Prince-Regent should have no power to assign the King's property, grant any office beyond His Majesty's pleasure, or bestow any peerage, except on the King's children after they had attained their majority.
Thus, while bowing to the inevitable, the faithful Minister sought to ensure that the poor stricken monarch should remain in the care of those who loved him, that his property should be protected against the possibility of his recovery, and that his affliction should not provide an opportunity for his unprincipled son to swamp the House of Lords with the worthless and rapacious crew that formed his following.
For days on end the Whigs screamed their rage at the prospect of so considerable a portion of the vast treasure they had hoped to loot being secured against them; but in vain. The Ministerial proposals were carried in both Houses, the Prince had no option but to consent to act as Regent on the terms submitted to him, and towards the end of January, preparations were made for the actual introduction of the Bill which would enable the Regent to replace Pitt's administration by one composed of Fox and his friends.