‘Lots of people in the streets,’ he said. ‘You’d think something was going on.’

‘Oh.’ Adelaide laid her hand to her heart.

‘Crowds shouting. Banners.’ He grinned at the Queen. ‘They don’t seem very fond of you.’

‘They blame me,’ said Adelaide. ‘As if I had anything to do with it!’

‘The people always have to have something to shout about,’ growled William.

‘By the way, Father,’ said Adolphus, ‘will you let me have a hundred pounds?’

‘What?’ cried the King, growing red in the face.

Adolphus laughed. ‘It’s to settle a debt. I bet you’d ride to the Lord Mayor’s banquet; and you see, Father, you let me down and didn’t go. So … I owe one hundred pounds.’

‘Gambling!’ said the King.

‘Now, Papa, you don’t expect a shilling at Pope Joan to suit us all.’

The King laughed. How he loved those children! thought Adelaide. They could behave as badly as possible and he would forgive them. Whenever she saw him with Dorothy Jordan’s brood she longed more than ever for a family of her very own; and now she tried not to think of that cold little stone figure carved on a couch – the effigy of her child who had once been warm flesh and blood in her arms and the delight of her life.

There was another arrival. This time it was Frederick FitzClarence bursting in just as his brother had.

‘The Government’s been defeated in the Commons,’ he said. ‘This means Wellington’s out. The Whigs will be in and that means … the Bill.’

‘Oh God help us,’ said the Queen. ‘It will be the end of everything.’

‘Stuff!’ said the King; but he too was uneasy.

The guests would be arriving at any moment. They must behave as though they were not in the least perturbed. William was not seriously so. His father had been shot at several times and so had his brother. He was not afraid of assassination; this indifference to danger was a family characteristic. They’d all had it, except perhaps George; and he used to say he was too civilised to be indifferent to violent and undignified death. Poor George! He had died in a far more sorry state than if he had been carried off by a bullet in his carriage or in the box at the opera.

No, William was not seriously perturbed. Wellington might have been defeated in the House but there would be a way out of it.

No one mentioned the Reform Bill at dinner; they knew it irritated the King. Instead he talked of the old days at sea and how he had been best man at Nelson’s wedding. Then he showed them how Nelson had won the Battle of Trafalgar and they were all very bored.

Dear William, thought Adelaide. I believe he is the most boring man at Court. How different from Earl Howe!

The dinner over they left the table and retired to the drawing-room where they sat and talked. The King dozed and snored faintly and everyone pretended not to notice.

He awoke with a start and looking at Lady Grey who was sitting next to him he said: ‘Exactly so, M’am! Exactly so!’ at which everyone was amazed for Lady Grey had not spoken for the last ten minutes.

The King then went to sleep again for a while, and when he awoke he said: ‘Well, well, I’ll not delay you from your beds. And I’ll go to mine. Come, my Queen.’

As everyone had to admit, it was scarcely royal behaviour.


* * *

The next day Wellington resigned and William had no recourse but to send for Earl Grey. There was great rejoicing throughout London. The Whigs would bring in the Reform Bill and the hope of every undernourished farm labourer, every worker in the towns was that the passing of the Reform Bill would bring justice to them and their kind.

Everyone was waiting now for the debate on the Bill. The King, never very stable, became ill suddenly and the Queen was terrified that his malady would be similar to his father’s. Cumberland was watchful. If William went mad, Victoria would be Queen. There were great possibilities. A country on the verge of revolution, a little girl Queen, a mother as Regent who had not exactly endeared herself to the people; and the next heir a strong man, who might have an evil reputation but who could be trusted to be a firm ruler.

Commentators were saying that this could be the end of the Monarchy in England. Riots were occurring every day. ‘Reform! Reform!’ shouted the City apprentices without knowing what the word meant.

Adelaide had never been so frightened; she discussed matters continuously with Earl Howe. Wellington must come back to power, she said. It was their only way of preventing this Bill’s becoming law and she was certain that if it did it would mean the end of the Monarchy.

Her support for Wellington became known and the people were enraged against her. Those chose her as the scapegoat. She was a dowdy old German hausfrau, they said. She was an extravagant woman who was spending the country’s money on adornments; she was arrogant; she was homely; and she was the mistress of Lord Howe.

She should take care.

‘A foreigner is not a very competent judge of English liberties, and politics are not the proper field for female enterprise and exertion,’ said an observer in The Times.

She was constantly compared with Marie Antoinette.‘I bid the Queen of England remember that in consequence of the opposition of the ill-fated woman to the wishes of France, a fairer head than ever graced the shoulders of Adelaide, Queen of England, rolled on the scaffold.’

‘They hate me,’ she cried. ‘They hate me because I am a foreigner.’

The King recovered. She felt happier when he was well. He made less of these matters than she did.

‘Lot of stuff,’ he said. ‘It’ll pass.’

When they went to the play they were received in the theatre by silence but when they drove home mud was thrown at their carriage and a stone broke the window.

Adelaide was trembling and William was red with fury.

‘This is an inconvenience,’ he shouted. ‘If people are going to throw stones through the windows of my coach it will constantly have to be repaired and I’m always going somewhere.’

The uneasy weeks went on. There was undoubtedly revolution in the air. And in due course the Reform Bill was passed through the Commons and was rejected by the Lords.


* * *

The Duchess of Kent and her Comptroller were watching events with great attention.

The Duchess’s great fear was Adelaide’s friendship with Earl Howe.

‘For,’ as she whispered to Sir John, ‘what if she should have a child by that man? What fearful complications! What a terrible thing!’

‘I’m sure she will never do that. She is far too prim.’

‘Of course if she did become pregnant I should want to be very sure who was the father.’

Lights of cupidity were in the Duchess’s eyes. Suppose the dreaded event should come to pass. Suppose Adelaide was with child. She would swear that it was Earl Howe’s. There would be a revolution. There would have to be. It would be the only way to get Victoria where she belonged … on the throne.

Sir John smiled at her indulgently. ‘Don’t let us face this terrible fact until it has happened,’ he said. ‘I am convinced that it never will.’

‘Dear Sir John, such a comfort. But I do declare I shall have to make the King see reason. I believe he thinks of nothing but how to mortify me.’

‘He may well be equally concerned with the trouble over the Reform Bill,’ suggested Sir John with that irony that always passed over the Duchess’s ornate head.

‘And serve him right. I hear they threw mud at his carriage. He is really most unpopular. And can you wonder at it. A foolish old man. And they hate Adelaide. She becomes more and more unpopular.’

Sir John said that the people did not like German ladies and the Duchess agreed, seeming to forget that she was one.

‘And now that Buggin person. Because she changes her name to Underwood does that alter the fact that she is a Buggin?’

‘She was an Underwood before her marriage.’

‘But she is a Buggin now; and even though the Duke of Sussex has gone through a ceremony of marriage with her that does not make her his wife. She will never be accepted. Victoria will never receive her. I shall see to that. And I am expected to live at Kensington Palace under the same roof with a Buggin!’

‘The Duke I have heard dotes on her and likes to smother her with jewels.’

‘Then she must look like a decorated barrel. She is so short and fat. I wonder what he sees in her?’

‘I was going to suggest,’ said Sir John, tactfully changing the subject, ‘that since the Princess is so refreshed by sea breezes we take a little trip to the sea.’

‘What an excellent idea. I should enjoy to get away from Kensington for a while. People talk of nothing here but reform. And the people in the streets are getting so disgusting. So many dirty people standing about and they come too close to the Palace to please me.’

‘Then let us take a little trip. It is as well for the Princess to be seen about the country. She should travel like the heiress to the throne. And whatever objections there are the royal standard should fly over her residence and the guns give the royal salute.’

The Duchess nodded.

Trust Sir John to soothe her.


* * *

As the Reform Bill had been passed through the Commons – though it still had to go through the Lords – William decided that his coronation should take place.

The people were always beguiled by ceremonies; and it would be a change to have a bit of pageantry in the streets. They might well find it much more to their taste than a lot of sordid riots. Earl Grey applauded this decision; he felt it would do a great deal of good in conjunction with the fact that the Bill’s passing through the Commons had put the people in a good mood.