ob Sicard, appeared
before her, accompanied by two noblemen, and in a voice full of emotion
announced, 'You are Queen.'"

The fateful hour had at last arrived when Caroline must either renounce
her new Queendom or present a bold front to her enemies and claim the
crown that was hers. After a few indecisive days, spent in Rome, where
news reached her that the King had given orders that her name should be
excluded from the Prayer Book, her wavering resolution took a definite
and determined shape. She would go to London and face the storm which
she knew her coming would bring on her head.

At Paris she was met by Lord Hutchinson with a promise of an increase of
her yearly allowance to fifty thousand pounds, on condition that she
renounced her claim to the title of Queen, and consented never to put
foot again in England--an offer to which she gave a prompt and scornful
refusal; and on the afternoon of 5th June she reached Dover, greeted by
enthusiastic cheers and shouts of "God save Queen Caroline!" by the
fluttering of flags, and the jubilant clanging of church-bells. The
wanderer had come back to the land of her sorrow, to find herself
welcomed with open arms by the subjects of the King whose brutality had
driven her to exile and to shame.

The story of the trial which so soon followed her arrival has too
enduring a place in our history to call for a detailed description--the
trial in which all the weight of the Crown and the testimony of a small
army of suborned witnesses--"a troupe of comedians in the pay of
malevolence," to quote Brougham--were arrayed against her; and in which
she had so doughty a champion in Brougham, and such solace and support
in the sympathy of all England. We know the fate of that Bill of Pains
and Penalties, which charged her with having permitted a shameful
intimacy with one Bartolomeo Pergami, and provided as penalty that she
should be deprived of the title and privilege of Queen, and that her
marriage to King George IV. should be for ever dissolved and
annulled--how it was forced through the House of Lords with a
diminishing majority, and finally withdrawn. And we know, too, the
outburst of almost delirious delight that swept from end to end of
England at the virtual acquittal of the persecuted Caroline. "The
generous exultation of the people was," to quote a contemporary, "beyond
all description. It was a conflagration of hearts."

We also recall that pathetic scene when Caroline present