Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/53

 John's dignified eloquence melted them to tears. The Duke of Cumberland, seeing which way his cat had jumped, hastened to assure the Home Secretary that the dissolution of the societies of which he was Grand Master had his entire approval and acquiescence, and the whole of the foolish business appeared at an end.

But this was not so. The elements of disturbance were quite genuine, and had not been removed even by a resolution of the House of Commons: these were the Duke of Cumberland's treachery and his No-popery nightmare. The original scheme had been to depose William IV. on the pretext that his giving the Royal Assent to the Reform Bill of 1832 was a symptom of insanity; the next step, the setting aside of the claims of Princess Victoria, was rendered attractive to the Duke of Cumberland by the fact that she was a girl, and young; when, therefore, in 1837, William IV. was removed by death, another futile attempt was made to raise the No-popery cry against the accession of the Queen. Her uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians, had recently married Louise, daughter of Louis Philippe, a Roman Catholic Princess. Another member of the Coburg family, Prince Ferdinand, cousin of Prince Albert, had also, quite recently, made a Roman Catholic marriage with Maria, Queen of Portugal. This at any rate showed that the Coburg family, who were known to have great influence with Princess Victoria, were not so exclusively Protestant as the Royal Family of England. But high as party feeling ran at the time, the bare suspicion that any treachery was intended to the young Queen caused a popular outburst of passionate loyalty such as had not been seen since the House of Brunswick had reigned in England. The warmth of this feeling in the curious warp and woof of human affairs was increased by the fact that to be ardently devoted