Royal Wills in Britain from 1509 to 2008 by Michael L. Nash

Author:Michael L. Nash
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

Indeed, during the earlier part of their reign, Caroline had made some interesting comments on the various, and potentially vexatious, wills of her father-in-law, George I. “Whilst the Queen was talking one morning touching the will of George I, and other family matters, with Lord Hervey” Hervey made the following observations on their conversations. “His Majesty (George II) would have rejoiced if he could have divided (so) easily his double possessions of England and Hanover. He had long entertained a wish to give the Electorate to his second son, William of Cumberland, and entertained a very erroneous idea that the English Parliament could assist him in altering the law of succession in the electorate”. Caroline had, perhaps, a not much more correctly formed idea. She had a conviction, however, touching her son (the ill-fated Frederick) which was probably better founded. “I knew”, she said, “(that) he would sell not only his reversion in the electorate, but even in this kingdom if the Pretender would give him £5,000 or £6,000 in present; but thank God, he has neither right nor power to sell his family – though his folly and his knavery sometimes distress them”. 26 Caroline wanted the succession to fall to her second son William, but this sentiment must surely have been before Frederick married Augusta of Coburg and had children, who would have had a prior right. 27

After 10 years of high politics supporting Walpole, she died of complications of a dropped womb, in November 1737. In her last illness, the only person she mentioned, apart from the king, was Joseph Butler, the Clerk of the Closet. He became the Bishop of Bristol in 1738, the year after her death, and then in 1740 Dean of St Paul’s. He is said to have refused the see of Canterbury in 1747, and in 1750 he became the Bishop of Durham. It does pay, sometimes, to have close friends in high places. Interestingly, he was suspected of having become a Catholic.

Sir Lord Hervey, of the famous Memoirs, gave his version of what one might refer to as her will. As she lay dying, she then took a ruby ring off her finger, which the king had given her at her coronation, and putting it upon his, said: “This is the last thing I have to give you … naked I came to you, and naked I go from you. I had everything I ever possessed from you, and to you whatever I have I return. My will you will find a very short one; I give all I have to you”. She then asked for her keys, and gave them to him. 28

She told the king she had nothing to say to him. “For I have always”, said she, “told you my thoughts of things and people as fast as they arose, I have nothing left to communicate to you. The people I love, and those, do not, the people I like and dislike, and those I would wish to

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