ad been tendered to her before, on the old conditions
that she would behave quietly and keep herself out of sight. Again she
insisted that her name must be included in the Royal Liturgy, and again
the King announced his resolve to make no such concession. Then the
Queen once more made it known that her resolve was final, and that she
would present herself at Westminster Abbey on the Coronation Day.
George had been advised {9} that all historical precedents warranted
him in maintaining that the King had an absolute right to direct the
forms of the ceremonial to be used on such an occasion, and he declared
that he would not allow the Queen to take any part in the solemnity or
even to be present during its performance. The Queen wrote letters to
the King which she sent to him through his Prime Minister, Lord
Liverpool. George sent back the letters unopened to Lord Liverpool,
with the announcement that the King would read no letter addressed to
him by the Queen, and would only communicate with her through the
ordinary official medium of one of his ministers.

The letters thus written on both sides have long since been published,
and the perusal of them will probably impress most readers with the
idea of a certain sincerity on the part of both the principal writers,
the King and Queen. Let us speak as harshly and as justly as we may of
the King's general conduct, of his mode of living, and of the manner in
which he had always treated the Queen, we shall find it hard not to
believe that there was in the depth of George's mind a fixed conviction
that he had real cause of complaint against his unhappy wife. Let us,
on the other hand, give the fullest recognition to the fact that
although the scandalous levities in the conduct of the Queen abroad
told heavily against her, we are none the less compelled to admit that
her letters to the King, and her demand to be included in the
Coronation ceremonies, seemed to be part of the conduct of a woman who
will not and cannot admit that she has done anything to forfeit her
place at her husband's side.

The whole story seems now so preposterously out of keeping with all the
associations of a modern Court that it startles our sense of historical
credibility when we find by the actual dates that men and women are
still living who might have been carried by their nurses to see the
crowds round Westminster Abbey on the Coronation Day of King George the
Fourth. The Coronation took place