deeply involved in debt, so deeply that, in 1787, a member of Fox’s party gave notice of his intention to move that the Parliament should pay his debts and increase his income.  Pitt, without specifying his reasons, avowed that he should feel it his duty to oppose any grant of such a character; but another member of Parliament, Mr. Rolle, one of the members for Devonshire, being trammelled by no such feeling of responsibility, expressed a similar resolution in language which contained an allusion perfectly understood on both sides of the House.  He said that “the question thus proposed to be brought forward went immediately to affect our constitution in Church and State.”  And every one knew that he was referring to a report which had recently become general, that the Prince was married to a Roman Catholic lady of the name of Fitzherbert.  No direct notice was taken of this allusion at the moment, Fox himself, who had the chief share of the Prince’s confidence, being accidentally absent; but a day or two afterward he referred to Rolle’s speech with great indignation, declaring that it referred to a “low, malicious calumny” which had no foundation whatever, and “was only fit to impose on the lowest order of persons.”  Being pressed as to the precise force of his assertion, and being asked whether it meant more than that under the existing laws, such as the Royal Marriage Act, there had been no marriage, because there could have been no legal marriage, he declared that he meant no such evasion, but that no marriage ceremony, legal or illegal, had ever taken place; and farther, that in saying this he was speaking on the direct authority of the Prince himself.  No more degrading act stains the annals of British royalty.  For the fact was true—­the very next evening Fox learned the deceit which the Prince had practised on him from a gentleman who had been one of the witnesses to the marriage, which had been solemnized by a Protestant clergyman fifteen months before.[114] And his indignation was such that for some time afterward he abstained from all interference in the Prince’s affairs; while the language held by the Prince’s other confidant, Mr. Sheridan, was so evasive as to betray a consciousness that whatever had occurred would not bear the light of day; so that there were very few to whom the truth or falsehood of the report was a subject of interest who felt any uncertainty on the subject.

It may, probably, be regarded as fortunate for the peace of the kingdom that the Prince, who eventually became King George IV., left behind him no issue from his marriage with the Princess, the failure of heirs of his body thus removing any temptation to raise the question whether he had not himself forfeited all right to succeed to the throne by his previous marriage to a Roman Catholic.  A clause of the Bill of Rights provides that any member of the royal family who should marry a Roman Catholic (with the exception of the issue of princesses who may be the