while the ministers who acted under his direction incurred all the
blame, the prime instigator of all these exposures was enabled to
shelter himself behind the backs of his "advisers." The ministers were
unpopular,--they deserved to be so, for, whatever might have been the
consequences to themselves so far as loss of office was concerned, they
should have refused from the first to lend themselves to the publication
of a scandal so utterly grievous. The king himself at this time was far
from unpopular; the odium he had incurred the previous year by the
thanks he had caused to be conveyed to Major Trafford, "and the
officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates" of the yeomanry who
had signalized themselves in the massacre at Manchester (an outrage
which, by the way, led to a number of pictorial satires), seemed to have
wholly passed away. He was at Ascot only two days before the queen's
arrival, and "was always cheered by the mob as he went away. One day
only a man in the crowd called out "Where's the Queen?"[47] Again, we
find on the same authority, that on the night of the 6th of February,
1821: "The king went to the play (Drury Lane) for the first time, the
Dukes of York and Clarence and a great suite with him. He was received
with immense acclamations, the whole pit standing up, hurrahing and
waving their hats. The boxes were very empty at first, for the mob
occupied the avenues to the theatre, and those who had engaged boxes
could not get to them. The crowd on the outside was very great.... A few
people called 'The Queen!' but very few. A man in the gallery called
out, 'Where's your wife, Georgy?'[48] His reception at Covent Garden the
following night appears to have been equally loyal and gratifying.

The truth was, that the numerous and truly honest people who sympathized
with Queen Caroline, did so from little admiration for herself, but
because she had been the victim of twenty-five years' persecution;
because, however great her follies, they had been grievously provoked;
and above all, because they felt that the man who was her most powerful
and relentless persecutor, was the very last who was justified in
casting a stone against her. The ministerialists and their supporters,
however, attributed the sympathy which was shown by her professed
admirers exclusively to a political origin, and thus stigmatized the
motives of their opponents (with more justice than poetry) in one of the
jingling rhymes of the day:-