claim her position as such. Under the circumstances of the case there could be little popular sympathy with the King. Sympathy, in fact, went the other way; and on the Queen's arrival at Dover, on the 5th June, she was received with great enthusiasm; her journey to London was a sort of triumphal progress, and vast crowds assembled in London to receive her. The public considered that she was being ill-treated and persecuted, and loudly expressed their feelings in her behalf. How great the interest was may be inferred from the leading article in The Times of 7th June, which began: "The Queen of England now so occupies all thoughts that it would be difficult to us, and offensive to the nation, to affect to speak on any other subject. The Queen of England is at present everything with everybody." As usual now in times of popular movement, the Platform was enlisted to express the popular voice, nor were the provisions of the Seditious Meetings Prevention Act sufficient to prevent its use. The Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Livery of London lost no time in setting the example, and assembled in Common Hall, and adopted an Address to her of welcome and sympathy.1 On the 30th June a meeting was held of the inhabitants of the borough of Southwark, and an Address to the Queen was adopted. The proceedings at it showed how stringently the provisions of the Seditious Meetings Act were enforced. The High Bailiff convened the meeting; he was very strict in preventing speakers wandering from the exact subject which had been stated in the requisition for convening the meeting. He said, "He conceived that the requisition bound the meeting to the precise address, and that extraneous matter could not be introduced." He produced the Seditious Meetings Act, and observed that a clause in it "warranted him in stating what he had, and provided many severe restrictions against digressing from the particular subject of a requisition." This speech was received with "loud hissing."2 On the 4th July a numerous meeting of the inhabitants of Westminster was held, and an Address to the Queen adopted, and speeches were made by Sir F. Burdett and Mr. Hobhouse and Thelwall." 1 The Times, 7th June. 2 Ibid. 1st July 1820. 8 Ibid. 5th July. On 17th July there was a meeting of the Court of Common Council, and Petitions to the House of Lords and House of Commons were adopted in favour of the Queen.1 A large meeting of the inhabitants of Middlesex was held. Resolutions of sympathy with the Queen were passed, and an Address adopted. Many speeches were made. The report of the proceedings occupied four and a half columns of The Times.2 On the 19th a county meeting for Norfolk was held at Norfolk, largely attended by many gentlemen of the first respectability. A Petition to the House of Commons was adopted against the Bill against the Queen. But it was not without opposition that meetings were held. Every difficulty was thrown in the way-Mayors, Magistrates, and High Sheriffs refusing to comply with the requisitions to convene meetings, no matter how respectably signed. At Rochester the Mayor refused to convene a meeting; in Suffolk the application to convene a county meeting was unsuccessful. The people followed with the keenest interest the progress of the proceedings in Parliament against the Queen-the trial in the House of Lords-the Bill of degradation and divorce. The agitation was crowned with success so far that the Divorce Bill was abandoned by the Government, Lord Liverpool acknowledging that their action was partly due to the state of public feeling. This success did not check the tide of public sympathy with the Queen. Illuminations and rejoicings were held all over the country, and innumerable Addresses poured in on her, presented sometimes by deputations and large crowds. In London three large "Ward" meetings were held to express sympathy with her; and the ladies of London, Westminster, and Southwark, held a large meeting at Freemason's Hall for the purpose of congratulating her upon the close of her prosecution. As the summer and autumn went on a large number of public meetings were held-held sometimes in spite of objecting High Sheriffs, being convened instead by the requisite number of magistrates.* In Berkshire the Sheriff refused to convene a county meet 1 The Times, 18th July. 3 Ibid. 21st August. 2 Ibid. 9th August. ing. It was forthwith called by eleven magistrates, with Lord Folkestone at their head.1 In Durham the same thing happened, and here Lord Grey and several other magistrates convened the meeting. It was held on the 13th December. "The crowds that attended this meeting were distinguished by rank, influence, and property in the county; by talent, acquirements, and respectability," -a proof that the natural leaders of the people were returning to their allegiance to the public. An Address to the King was adopted, praying him to restore the Queen's name to the Liturgy, etc.; and Lord Grey made a long speech. He said, referring to the conduct of the assembly he was addressing, "Let all England follow the example they were setting. Let them approach the throne like men who know their rights, and knowing dare maintain,' against the threats of power and the blandishments of corruption, sober but enthusiastic, firm but prudent, moderate but resolute and fearless, and England may yet be saved." 2 It was Even Edinburgh succeeded in holding a meeting, "agreeably to a public advertisement in the newspapers." called in order to petition the Crown to dismiss his Ministers, and it was held in "the Pantheon,"-some 4000 persons being in it. Lord Cockburn, in giving an account of it, says: "This meeting was distinguished from the one in 1814 on the Slave Trade, the one in 1816 on the Property Tax, and the one in 1817 on the North Bridge Buildings, by its being purely political, and in direct and avowed opposition to the hereditary Toryism of Government. It was the first modern occasion on which a great body of respectable persons had met, publicly and peaceably, in Edinburgh, to assail this fortress." 4 Jeffrey spoke, "and sealed the character of the meeting by an admirable address," and the proposed Petition was adopted. On 30th December (1820) a county meeting of Gloucester was held for the purpose of petitioning the King to dismiss 1 The Times, 19th December. 2 Ibid. 18th December 1820, wrote: "We most cordially join with this prayer." 3 See The Times, 22d December 1820. 4 Cockburn's Memorials, p. 376. See also his Life of Lord Jeffrey, p. 261. from his councils his present unworthy Ministers, and a vote of censure was passed on the Sheriff for refusing to convene the meeting.1 numerous At a meeting which was held at Derby "_"the most ever known"-for the purpose of adopting an Address to the King, the Duke of Devonshire attended, and proposed a rival Address, which was carried, praying the King to dismiss his Ministers. This lead given, other meetings quickly followed suit, and at several county meetings a totally different Address was adopted than that which the meetings had been convened to adopt. Here was another contingency not foreseen by Ministers in their Seditious Meetings Prevention Act; and it is clear from these proceedings that even those who attended county meetings were not disposed to submit to the restraints imposed on their rights by the Government. It was a great revival of the Platform, in spite of "The Six Acts"; and it was only possible from the fact that many of the principal Whigs of the country-men of position and property, who had shrunk from the popular cause in affright at the horrors of the French Revolution, and deserted Liberalism, had now become disgusted with the policy of the Government and the treatment of the Queen, and were beginning to return to the Liberal principles which they had for a time abandoned. There was, however, a deeper influence created in the public mind by this discreditable business. 3 Place has thus described it: "The absurd, and cruel, because absurd, persecution of his wife, and the excitation it caused all over the island, made the middle and working classes of the people much more familiar with royalty and the privileged aristocracy than they had ever before been. They were made to understand, and persuaded to believe, that they understood these matters much better than they had previously done, and this, in their own opinion, raised them nearer to a level with the privileged classes, and brought these classes down to a level nearer to their own. It was a step towards democracy which can never be retraced. 1 See The Examiner, 1821, p. 14. . 3 Place, MSS., 27,789, p. 123. 2 Ibid. p. 29. "The persecution of the Queen induced her to throw herself upon the people; . . . and they made such demonstration in her behalf as neither she, nor they themselves, nor indeed any one anticipated, or at all supposed would be made. Multitudes of all ranks below the peerage, even to the bare-legged sailors along shore below London Bridge, costermongers, and common porters, went in processions to Brandenburgh House, saw the Queen, and heard her converse. She was the very woman herself, beyond all other women, to satisfy the inquisitive people that the distinction claimed by high rank was merely fictitious. She was vulgarly familiar and commonplace in her language and deportment, much less genteel in all respects than many of the well-dressed women who went to her in the processions. . . . Those of the aristocracy who attended the Queen had little either in their manners or appearance to produce any favourable impression on the multitudes whom day after day they had to introduce to the presence of the Queen. Royalty was judged of by the Queen, and aristocracy by the noblemen and ladies in her suite, and both fell amazingly in the estimation of the people. "The conduct of the King, and of the aristocracy who took part with him, or refrained from taking part with the Queen, was considered as extremely depraved; and as nearly all the aristocracy were included in this definition, so all were repro bated and condemned, and the impression thus made to their disadvantage has been ever since increasing." It is unnecessary to pursue this topic further. The miserable strife ended with the death of the Queen in August 1821, leaving among numerous indirect results this most important one, that it brought the Platform to life and vigour just after the almost fatal wound received from the hands of the Government by "the Six Acts." Another influence which helped-though in a far milder degree-towards the revival of the Platform at this time must also be mentioned. This was the condition of the agricultural population, then miserable in the extreme. Numerous meetings were held in different parts of England during the winter of 1820-21, and resolutions passed and Petitions adopted setting forth the difficulties and distresses of the agriculturists. The House of Commons, sympathetic always with |