Yet, memorable as the reforms which it witnessed were destined to make it, no reign ever commenced with more sinister omens than that at which we have now arrived.  The new King had not been on the throne a month, when a conspiracy was discovered, surpassing in its treasonable atrocity any that had been heard of in the kingdom since the days of the Gunpowder Plot; and, even before those concerned in that foul crime had been brought to punishment, the public mind was yet more generally and profoundly agitated by a scandal which, in one point of view, was still more painful, as in some degree involving the whole kingdom in its disgrace.

The marriage of the present sovereign to Mrs. Fitzherbert has already been mentioned.  A few years afterward, in the year 1795, regarding that marriage as illegal, he had contracted a second with his cousin, the Princess Caroline of Brunswick.  But, even in royal families, a more unfortunate alliance had never taken place.  They had never met till she arrived in England for the wedding; and, as he had never professed any other motive for consenting to the match than a desire to obtain the payment of his debts, he did not think it necessary to disguise his feelings, or to change his habits, or even to treat her with decency for a single day.  On his very first introduction to her he behaved to her with marked discourtesy.[183] Shortly after the marriage he formally separated himself from her, and, both before and after the separation, lived in undisguised licentiousness.  She, on her part, indignant at his neglect and infidelity, and exasperated at the restrictions which he presently placed on her intercourse with their only child, made no secret of her feelings, and on many occasions displayed such disregard of the ordinary rules of prudence and propriety, that he had some color for charges of infidelity to her marriage vows which, after a few years, he brought against her.  The King, her uncle, could not refuse to appoint a commission to investigate the truth of the accusation; but the commissioners unanimously acquitted her of any graver fault than imprudence.  She was again received at court, from which she had been excluded while the inquiry was pending; but her husband’s animosity toward her was not appeased.  As time wore on, and as the King’s derangement deprived her of her only protector, it even seemed as if he desired to give it all the notoriety possible, till at last, wearied out by his implacable persecution, she sought and obtained his permission to quit the country and take up her abode abroad.  It was a most unfortunate resolution on her part.  She fixed her residence in Italy, where she gradually learned to neglect the caution which she had observed in England, till, after a year or two, reports arose of her intimacy with a servant whom she had raised from a menial situation to that of the chief officer of her household, and whom she admitted to a familiarity of intercourse which others besides her husband thought quite incompatible