The first half of 1820 was an eventful time for both Caroline, Princess of Wales, or Queen Caroline as she had become, and James Hall. It was also the period when their paths crossed, though neither of them probably knew that they had.
QUEEN CAROLINE
Let us first have a look at Queen Caroline's activities. We last heard about her in August 1814 when she left Jason at Cuxhaven to visit her brother at Brunswick. She had not returned to England since that visit and had spent the last 5½ years on the Continent, most of the time in Italy. Her behaviour during this period had been the subject of much adverse comment and, in 1817, after the death of their daughter, the Prince of Wales began steps to obtain a divorce.
On 29th January 1820 King George III died. Despite earlier plans to agree some form of separation, she now decided to return to England and claim her rights as Queen of England. Queen Caroline left Rome in early April and after several stops arrived at St Omer on the 3rd June. While passing through Burgundy she was joined by Alderman Wood, an important radical supporter and by Lady Anne Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton, who had been her Lady in Waiting before 1814. We will hear more about her later.
Her decision to return to England made her husband even more determined to obtain a divorce and this time the Tory Government were prepared to support him. Previously they had feared that the opposition to divorce proceedings amongst her many supporters within the Whigs, Radicals and the 'lower orders' might create public order problems.
On the 5th June, having rejected a compromise solution offered to her by the Government at St Omer, Caroline said farewell to her Italian lover, whom she never saw again, and crossed the Channel. After a triumphant progress through Kent she arrived in London the next day.
JAMES HALL
We must now have a look at what James Hall had been doing in the early months of 1820.
Having returned to Portsmouth from South America the previous November, James had left Favorite in January. As there are no diaries covering this period we have no detailed records of his movements, however we can be certain that he would have visited his wife and family, where he would have met for the first time his daughter Mary Ann, born in March 1818 and now nearly two years old. We also have a clue as to where his family was living. We know that on the 9th April his son William, born in 1816, and his daughter Mary Ann were christened at St Mary's Church, Newington, Surrey and the records show that the family were living at Cottage of Content Lock Fields. Today there is a Content Street only half a mile from the church. [Ed note. The boundaries of Surrey have changed since the 1820s. St Mary's, Newington is situated about half a mile south of London Bridge.]. The other person he would have visited would have been his Naval Agent. These functionaries were an essential part of a 19th Century naval officer's life. They looked after his financial and legal affairs and as we will see later in William's diaries, could have an important influence on their client's private lives.
O'MEARA and THE AFFIDAVIT
We must now turn to what must have been the most important event that occurred during James Hall's four month stay in England. We learn about this event from the following extract from THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE COURT OF ENGLAND. From the Accession of George the Third to the Death of George the Fourth. Attributed to Lady Anne Hamilton.(from p. 348 of Vol I of 1832 edition. This extract read as follows:
'About this period [1820] her majesty received numerous communications tending to prove the infamous proceedings against her to have been adopted without reference to honour and principle and to warn her from falling into snares of her mercenary and vindictive enemies. We lay before the reader the following, as sufficient to establish this fact.
An officer of the frigate HMS Jason [PAGE1600] which took her majesty (when Princess of Wales) to the continent averred in the presence of three unimpeachable witnesses that a very few days before her majesty's embarkation, Captain KING, while sitting at breakfast in his cabin with the surgeon of the frigate, received a letter from a brother of the Prince Regent which read aloud in the presence of the said surgeon, as follows.'
"Dear King
You are going to be ordered to take the Princess of Wales to the Continent. If you DON'T COMMIT ADULTERY WITH HER, YOU ARE A DAMNED FOOL!
You have my consent for it and I can assure you that you have that of MY BROTHER THE REGENT.
Yours
(Duke of Clarence)"
The officer who made the above statement and declaration is a most CREDITABLE PERSON and the witnesses are all in this country.
London May 7th 1820 Furnished to supply the Queen with proof that the royal duke in question is leagued against her in accordance with the WISHES OF THE KING.'
'PRIVATE DOCUMENT Captain King's agent is Mr STILLWELL, 22 Arundel Street, Strand, London and the surgeon, who was present during the period the royal duke's letter was read is JAMES HALL.
The witnesses were.
Mr FRESHFIELD 3 Tokenhouse yard; Mr HOLMES 3 Lyonn inn and Mr STOKOE, 2 Lancaster court; as also before Barry O'MEARA.
Signed Barry E O'MEARA'
The reader may recognise several of the names in the Affidavit. O'Meara, the apparent instigator of the affidavit, Stokoe and Holmes were all connected with St Helena [PAGE1810] , where James Hall first met O'Meara. They also had something else in common. They had all been badly treated by the Governor, Sir Hudson Lowe and the Colonial Secretary, Lord Bathurst.
The new names are Mr Stillwell and Mr Freshfield. In the affidavit Mr Stillwell is referred to as Captain King's agent, which no doubt he was. However we also know that in 1823 he was also James Hall's agent, and indeed may well have been in 1820. We don't know much about Mr Freshfield except that he was a stockbroker in 1821. He was probably a friend and colleague of Mr Holmes.
On his return to England in 1818 O'Meara was at first well received by Their Lordships, but after preferring numerous charges against Sir Hudson Lowe, he incurred their displeasure and was removed from the list of Naval Surgeons. This treatment, and perhaps his political inclinations, led him to move into radical circles and from there to being a sympathiser with the cause of the Princess of Wales. By the beginning of 1820 he had become an active supporter and at one time was in Paris collecting evidence to support her case in her forthcoming contest with her husband.
With this background it appears quite possible that the Affidavit was an attempt by O'Meara to discredit members of the Royal Family and gain sympathy for Queen Caroline. To some this may seem a rather far fetched theory and indeed it does seem to be a rather clumsy way of going about things, however evidence exists to show that it almost certainly is what O'Meara had in mind. Faced with the arrival of the Queen, the Government now had to fulfil the promise it had made to the King. The Cabinet met on the evening of the 5th and decided as a first step to submit existing evidence to a Select Committee of the House of Lords. This evidence was collected up and copied by a solicitor involved in earlier and more importantly to our story, by Henry Hobhouse, an official of the Home Office. The depositions and the documents were placed in the famous two green bags, and were sent, one to each House of Parliament.
The next few weeks were tense and full of activity. Against a background of riots in the streets and the doubtful loyalty of some of the Guards regiments in London both Houses of Parliament approved the appointment of a Secret Committee to make recommendations on what steps should be taken. The Secret Committee sat for the first time on 27th June but before members could open the Green Bags and enjoy the shocking details of the Queen's behaviour over the past six years, there was to be one further short delay. This is described in the Annual Register 1820.
June 28th
The Secret Committee met on the following day at twelve o'clock. Lord Erskine and Marquess of Lansdowne had, at their own request, been removed from it, their places were supplied by the Earl of Hardwicke and Lord Ellenborough. Mr Brougham and Mr Denman [The queen's legal advisers] were in attendance at the time the committee began its sitting and sent in a paper sealed. What the contents of it were is not accurately known.
Fortunately later generations are better informed than the editor of the Annual Register. We do know what was in the envelope. The reason that we are so well informed is that Henry Hobhouse, the permanent under-secretary of state for the Home Department who was mentioned earlier, kept a diary between 1820 and 1827. His entry for Wednesday 28th June 1820 read as follows:
At the first sitting of the Secret Committee a letter from Mr Brougham and Mr Denman is delivered to the Chairman, containing their request that before the Committee proceeds to business, it will send for the Duke of Clarence, and ask him with respect to a letter, written by him to Capt Yorke [A mistake by Hobhouse] (who commanded the ship in which. the Queen sailed from Engl'd. in 1814) suggesting to him that his gallantries with the Queen wo'd. not be unacceptable, and would be forgiven by her husband. He added that if the existence of this letter was denied, they were in a condition to prove the fact. The Committee, who had neither authority nor inclination to enter upon such an enquiry, directed their clerk to return the letter to its authors'.
As far as James Hall is concerned we have now reached the end of our story. The Affidavit was signed on 7th May. On the 3rd May James had sailed from Portsmouth for Australia as Surgeon Superintendent of the Convict Ship Agamemnon. He did not return to England until early 1821 by which time the Queen had won her case and been acquitted.