Volume I Part 13 (1/2)
[Footnote 29: The Princess was to attain her legal majority on 24th May.]
[Footnote 30: George Davys, the Princess Victoria's instructor, Dean of Chester, and afterwards Bishop of Peterborough.]
[Footnote 31: Thomas Vowler Short, Rector of St George's, Bloomsbury, appointed in 1841 Bishop of Sodor and Man.]
[Footnote 32: Lady Catherine Jenkinson, daughter of the Earl of Liverpool, soon after the Queen's accession married Colonel Francis Vernon Harcourt.]
_The Princess Victoria to the King of the Belgians._
_12th April 1837._
... What you say about the newspapers is very true and very flattering. They are indeed a curious compound of truth and untruth. I am so used to newspaper nonsense and attacks that I do not mind it in the least....
How happy I am that that beloved Aunt is going on so well and does not suffer from the cold, as also the _jeune Philippe_. Leopold must be great fun with his Aunt Marie;[33] does he still say ”_pas beau frere!_” or is he more reconciled to his brother? It is very n.o.ble in the Duc de Nemours to have thus given up his _apanage_;[34] I am sorry there were such difficulties about it. There is no Ministry formed yet, I see by the papers.
[Footnote 33: Princess Marie of Orleans, born 1813, daughter of King Louis Philippe, and thus sister to the Queen of the Belgians.]
[Footnote 34: This grant was surrendered in order that due provision might be made by the Legislature for the elder brother, the Duke of Orleans, on the occasion of his marriage with the Princess Helene of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.]
[Pageheading: THE IRISH MUNIc.i.p.aL BILL]
_The Princess Victoria to the King of the Belgians._
_28th April 1837._
MY MOST BELOVED UNCLE,--.... Sir Henry Hardinge's[35] motion was quite lost, I am happy to say, and don't you think, dearest Uncle, that it has almost done good, as it proves that the Tories have lost all chance of getting in? It was a trial of strength, and the Ministry have triumphed. I have been reading in the papers, what I suppose you already know, that it is believed that the Lords _will_ pa.s.s the Irish Corporation Bill;[36] and also that Ministers mean to drop for the present the question about Church Rates,[37] as the Radicals, being angry with Ministers relative to the Canada business, would not support them well.
[Footnote 35: On a motion for going into supply, Sir H.
Hardinge proposed an amendment censuring the Government for the authorisation of the raising of a force of Volunteers to a.s.sist the Spanish Government, and for the method in which that force had been organised. The amendment was lost by a majority of 36, on 19th April.]
[Footnote 36: The Irish Munic.i.p.al Bill, to convert Corporations of Munic.i.p.alities into Electoral Councils, was introduced in the House of Commons on the 15th of February.
The Bill was opposed by the Conservatives, but pa.s.sed the House of Commons. In the Lords an amendment of Lyndhurst's struck out the constructive clauses, and the Act became, on the 18th of May, an Act for the Abolition of Munic.i.p.alities in Ireland. Lord John Russell brought forward a motion to reconstruct the Bill. But the Peers declined to pa.s.s it, and it was postponed.]
[Footnote 37: As Ministers only obtained a majority of 5 in a house of 569, the measure was dropped.]
_The King of the Belgians to the Princess Victoria._
LAEKEN, _28th April 1837._