Free Charlotte & Leopold by James Chambers

case before the people and asked the Morning Chronicle to publish it.
    But, as she admitted herself in the opening paragraph, her letter concerned matters that were more personal than public. Even the Prince Regent was taken aback when her next step was to publish without warning.
    He went round to Warwick House accompanied by the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool. While Miss Knight waited with an embarrassed Lord Liverpool in the dingy Library, the Prince Regent went upstairs to the drawing-room with Charlotte. ‘The scene’, she wrote afterwards, was ‘most painful’. Her father spoke of her mother in ‘constant strong language’. As a result of the letter, her mother’s conduct would have to be investigated again. For the time being, therefore, Charlotte was forbidden to see her at all, and for the sake of appearances she must spend more time with her father. But apart from that, he told her callously, her life would not be affected in any way. There was no need to worry. She could go to as many balls as she wanted.
    When he had finished, the Prince summoned Lord Liverpool and Miss Knight and, on the grounds that he regarded them as ‘his confidential servant’ and ‘Princess Charlotte’s friend’, tactlessly repeated everything that he had just said to his daughter.
    Afterwards, when the Prince and Miss Knight were alone in the library, he asked her why Charlotte had seemed so upset by this. She had taken it all ‘perfectly well’ when they were alone together. ‘The Chevalier’ turned on her Prince. What Her Royal Highness was prepared to hear from him alone, she told him, was not necessarily something she was prepared to hear in front of ‘persons unconnected with the family’.
    Charlotte was mortified. But she was not deceived. As she toldMercer Elphinstone, the Prince and his Tory friends were wrong if they thought they had ‘gained me over to their side by promising me gaities’.
    As for her mother’s letter, she saw it for what it was. It was not the plea of a neglected parent. Nor was it another protest of innocence from a woman who had been wronged. It was simply a piece of political vengeance. Although the Chronicle claimed that the letter was written in her mother’s hand, it was clear from the pomposity of the language that the real author was Henry Brougham.
    Charlotte’s father had risen to the bait, and as always he was handling the crisis badly. But she could find no fault with her muddleheaded mother. This time at least the blame lay with the man who was manipulating her. Despite her respect for Brougham as ‘a very able man’, Charlotte was scathing in her contempt for what he had done. To have published the letter in his own interest ‘to be bought for 6 pence in every shop’ was in her view ‘stooping very low’.

    Over the next three weeks, while the press and the gossips speculated again, the conclusions of the ‘Delicate Investigation’ were circulated and discussed among all the members of the Privy Council.
    Throughout it all Charlotte lived very quietly. For the first ten days she never ventured beyond the garden of Warwick House. The promised balls never materialised, and she would not have gone to them if they had. She did not believe that it would be appropriate to be seen in pubic while her mother was ‘under a cloud’. She declined politely when Lady Liverpool suggested that she should go to the theatre or the opera. She even refused when the royal doctor, Sir Henry Halford, told her that it would be better for her health if she took the air in her carriage occasionally.
    But then, on the morning of 22 February, she received a visit from the Hervey sisters, who warned her about the latest gossip. Itwas being said that the Princess was not showing herself in public because she was pregnant, and that the father was Captain Fitz-Clarence. After that Charlotte and