January 03, 2003

The Trial of Queen Caroline, Roger Fulford

I think it's been explained to me why the Anglican church finds it unacceptable for the King or Queen of England to be divorced, but the logic will not stick in my head. From outside that church and country, "divorced" seems perfectly traditional and much preferable to "beheaded, died". Many things look different from the inside.

Di-worshippers should consider the trial of Queen Caroline, wife of George IV, who was a total lout as a husband but took exception to Caroline's traveling Europe and the Holy Land with a bunch of third-rate nobility and one, mmm, probably negotiable young man. The case against Caroline is awfully familiar by modern Di (and Clinton) watcher standards; witnesses remember nothing, or more than is plausible; stains on the bedlinen, unlikely gifts, restroom arrangements, and "what anyone would assume" are dragged into the record; Caroline's infidelity would have counted as treason, except that her young man was neither an English subject nor on English soil. Popular opinion swung from one party to the other. In the end, the Bill of Pains and Penalties against her was neither rejected nor passed - it was shelved - leaving it as an embarrassment to everyone. So wrote clew in History (19th c.).

And thus wrote others:
TrackBacks turned off...