I was speaking, and swear to follow my directions; and would laugh at me the moment he was out of the room, and do just the contrary of all I bid him, the moment I was dead. And, therefore, if I should grow worse, and be weak enough to talk of seeing him, I beg you, Sir, to conclude that I doat or rave.-" * * * * * The whole of Friday the Queen grew worse every hour. Next morning, 12th November, when the King came into the room he whispered to her that he was afraid her illness proceeded from a thing he had promised never to speak of again; but that now his duty to her called upon him to tell the physician all he knew and all he apprehended. She begged and entreated him, with great earnestness, that he would not; and spoke with more warmth and peevishness than she showed at any other minute during her whole illness. However, he sent for Ranby the surgeon, and told him he apprehended the Queen had an umbilical rupture, and bid him examine her. The Queen carried her desire to conceal this complaint so far, that when Ranby came to feel her she laid his hand on the pit of her stomach, and said all her pain was there; but Ranby, slipping his hand lower, kept it there in spite of her, some little time; and then, without saying one word to the Queen, went and spoke softly to the King at the chimney, upon which the Queen started up, and sitting in her bed, said to Ranby, with great eagerness," I am sure now, you blockhead, you are telling the King I have a rupture." "I am so," said Ranby," and there is no more time to be lost; your Majesty has concealed it too long already; and I beg another surgeon may be called in immediately." The Queen made no answer, but lay down again, turned her head to the other side, and as the King told me, he thinks it was the only tear he saw her shed whilst she was ill. The King bid Ranby send immediately for old Busiert the surgeon, whom, though fourscore years old, the King and Queen had a great * Here a chasm of a page or two. + Paul Bussière, F.R.S., a French refugee, and the first who ever gave surgical lectures in England. He was the surgeon who attended Harley when wounded by Guiscard. It seems extraordinary that the celebrated Cheselden, at the time Surgeon to the Queen, and in special favour with her, should not have been consulted. He had been recently appointed chief surgeon to Chelsea Hospital, and, having given up general practice, may have been absent. Ranby was Surgeon to the Household. opinion of, and preferred to every other man of his profession. Busier not being immediately to be found, and the King very impatient, he bid Ranby go and bring the first surgeon of any note and credit he could find; and whilst Ranby was absent on this errand, the King told Lord Hervey the whole history of this rupture. "The first symptoms I ever perceived of it," said he, "were fourteen years ago,* just after the Queen lay in of Louisa; and she then told me, when I spoke to her of it, that it was nothing more than what was common for almost every woman to have after a hard labour, or after having many children. This made me easy, and it grew better, and continued better afterwards for several years. When it grew worse again, I persuaded her to consult some surgeon, which she declined, and was so uneasy whenever I spoke to her on this subject that I knew not how to press her; but when I came from Hanover the last time but one, I found it so much worse than ever that I again spoke to her, told her it was certainly a rupture, and that she ran great risks in taking no care of it. She was so very uneasy upon my saying this-telling me it was no such thing, and that I fancied she had a nasty distemper which she was sure she had not, and spoke so much more peevishly to me on this occasion than she had ever done in her life upon any other that upon my renewing my solicitations to her to let somebody see it, and her growing every time I mentioned it more and more hurt and angry, I at last told her I wished she might not repent her obstinacy, but promised her I never would mention this subject to her again as long as 1 lived." The King, in as plain insinuations as he could without saying it in direct terms, did intimate to Lord Hervey that the Queen had received what he had said to her on this subject, upon his return from Hanover, as if she had reproached * Princess Louisa was born on the 7th of December, 1724, and therefore not quite 13 years ago. This settles what I have always suspected, that Mrs. Clayton's influence did not arise, as Horace Walpole understood Sir Robert to have said, from having "wormed herself into the secret" of the Queen's rupture, for her favour was eminent many years before the rupture. The favour probably produced the confidence, but certainly not the confidence the favour.-Ante, vol. i. him with being grown weary of her person, and endeavouring to find blemishes in it that did not belong to her. I do firmly believe she carried her abhorrence to being known to have a rupture so far that she would have died without declaring it, or letting it be known, had not the King told it in spite of her; and though people may think this weakness little of a piece with the greatness of the rest of her character, yet they will judge partially who interpret this delicacy to be merely an ill-timed coquetry at fifty-four that would hardly have been excusable at twenty-five. She knew better than anybody else that her power over the King was not preserved independent, as most people thought, of the charms of her person; and as her power over him was the principal object of her pursuit, she feared, very reasonably, the loss or the weakening of any tie by which she held him. Several things she afterwards said to the King in her illness, which both the King and the Princess Caroline told me again, plainly demonstrated how strongly these apprehensions of making her person distasteful to the King worked upon her. When Ranby returned he brought one Shipton with him, a City surgeon, and one of the most eminent and most able of the whole profession. By this time, too, Busier arrived, and these three attended her constantly. After they had examined the Queen, they all told the King she was in the utmost danger. Busier proposed making [an operation with the knife, to enable them to replace the protrusion,] which Ranby opposed [as full of immediate danger, and thinking that the tumour might be reduced by less violent means]. Shipton inclining to Ranby's opinion, this method was pursued. In the mean time, Lord Hervey telling the King that he had heard it said among lawyers, that if the Queen died Richmond Gardens* would come to the Prince, the King ordered Lord Hervey to go immediately to my Lord Chancellor, and ask his opinion upon it. Lord Hervey accordingly went to Westminster Hall, where my Lord Chancellor * The Queen had purchased the ground on which Richmond Lodge and Gardens were made out of her own allowance, and by a privilege of Queenconsort they were her separate property and would go to her heir-at-law if there was no testamentary disposal of them; but in any case her husband would, by courtesy of England, have them for life. She had, however, made a will leaving everything to the King. then was trying a cause in the Court of Chancery. Lord Hervey sent for him off the bench, and Lord Chancellor stopping the proceedings, retired into a private room with Lord Hervey, and told Lord Hervey he would look into the deeds and Act of Parliament by which Richmond was settled on the Queen, and should then be able to give his opinion more particularly; but in the mean time bid Lord Hervey tell the King, whatever the settlement was, it could not be altered by any will the Queen should make; and that whatever she died possessed of, that was unsettled, would go to the King if she died without a will, or even with one, if that will was not made in consequence of powers given her by his Majesty.* This answer made the King easy as to everything belonging to the Queen except Richmond; and when my Lord Chancellor had examined all the settlements relating to that, it came out that Richmond would belong to the King for his life, but that after his death nothing could prevent its going to the Prince. The King told the Queen of this transaction, to set her mind at ease from doubts she had conceived, and fears she had formed, of the Prince being any way pecuniarily the better for her death. About six o'clock this Saturday evening the surgeons [performed a very painful operation, but without any material effect, or giving] them any great hope of her recovery. The Princess Caroline's nose bled so violently and almost constantly this whole day that she was but little in the Queen's bedchamber, but stayed in the outward room of her Majesty's apartment, and was again blooded with much difficulty, for Ranby was forced to prick her in both arms, and even at both the blood was so thick he could get but little. However, her mother being so ill, no persuasions could prevail with her to go to her own side to bed: she lay all night on a couch in the outward room. Princess Emily *I do not quite understand the latter part of this opinion. All the books say that the Queen-consort can make a will independently of the King. It seems, however, the contrary notion had got abroad; for the Duchess of Marlborough says that, " during her last illness, the Queen asked and received the King's permission to make a will;" and from this anxiety about the will, her Grace tries to accredit the vulgar calumny against the Queen, of having hoarded enormously. (Opinions.) In fact she died in debt, sat up with the Queen, the King went to bed, and Lord Hervey lay on a mattress on the floor, at the foot of Princess Caroline's couch. CHAPTER XXXIX. ABOUT four o'clock on Sunday morning the 13th, the Queen complaining that her wound was extremely painful, and desiring to have it dressed, Ranby and Shipton were called in to her, and upon opening the wound declared it had already begun to mortify. Hulst, whose turn it was that night to sit up, was sent for into the Queen's bedchamber, and acquainted by the surgeons with the situation she was in. Hulst came to the Princess Caroline, and told her this terrible and dreaded news, upon which she bid him and Ranby go immediately and inform the King. All this passed in the room without Lord Hervey's waking, who was fallen asleep quite exhausted by concern and watching. Princess Caroline, as soon as the surgeons and Hulst were gone to the King, waked Lord Hervey, and told him, if ever he saw the Queen again, it must be immediately, for that the physicians and surgeons had declared the mortification already begun, and were gone to tell the King that it was impossible for her to live many hours. When Hulst and Ranby came back to Princess Caroline (the King being already up, and gone to the Queen), Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey asked Hulst if there was no possibility left of her recovery, and he answered, "None." Lord Hervey then asked Ranby if they were never deceived in the signs of a mortification, to which Ranby, shaking his head, replied, "We know them but too well." The Queen finding the wound still so uneasy, sent again to have them open and dress it; but Hulst said it was to no purpose to do anything more, and Ranby assured the Princess. Caroline he could do nothing that would not give the Queen more pain without a possibility of doing her Majesty any good. However, the Queen insisting on having the wound cleaned at least, the King, who had told the Queen all that |