R. H. Gretton

Source.—The Greville Memoirs: 1837-1852, vol. i., p. 266.

The wedding on Monday went off tolerably well. The week before was fine, and Albert drove about the town with a mob shouting at his heels. Tuesday, Wednesday, and to-day were all beautiful days, but Monday, as if by a malignant influence, was a dreadful day—torrents of rain and violent gusts of wind. Nevertheless a countless multitude thronged the park, and was scattered all over the town. I never beheld such a congregation as there was, in spite of the weather. The Queen proceeded in state from Buckingham Palace to St. James’s without any cheering, but then it was raining enough to damp warmer loyalty than that of a London mob. The procession in the Palace was pretty enough by all accounts. Upon leaving the Palace for Windsor she and her young husband were pretty well received; but they went off in very poor and shabby style. Instead of the new chariot in which most married people are accustomed to dash along, they were in one of the old travelling coaches, the postillions in undress liveries, and with a small escort, three other coaches with post-horses following. The crowds on the road were so great that they did not reach the Castle till eight o’clock.

II. The Prince Consort’s Position.

Source.—Sir Theodore Martin’s The Life of the Prince Consort, vol. i., p. 69. (London: 1875.)

Amid the general enthusiasm with which Prince Albert was welcomed in England, murmurs of jealousy and distrust were certain to be heard. There were some who, on purely selfish grounds, deprecated the marriage of the Queen with any but an English Prince; others who then, and for many years afterwards, were eager to surmise danger in the influence of a foreign prince upon the councils of the Crown. But the real difficulty of his task, being what he was by nature, and by the deliberate purpose which he had set before himself, lay elsewhere....

Although the husband of the Queen, the law—to use Her Majesty’s words—took cognisance of him as “merely the younger son of the Duke of Coburg.” Thus, while ostensibly occupying the most brilliant position in the kingdom, his right of precedence was to be disputed, and was disputed by a few members of the Royal Family, who made no secret of their disappointment that Her Majesty’s choice had not fallen upon some scion of the reigning House in whom they had a nearer interest. A more pressing source of disquietude, however, existed in the fact that the Prince possessed no independent authority by right of his position, and could exercise none, even within his own household, without trenching upon the privileges of others, who were not always disposed to admit of interference....

Not less delicate was the Prince’s task in fixing the line to be taken by him with regard to public affairs.... From the first, however, the Prince appreciated the extreme delicacy of his position, and laid down for himself the rule that no act of his should by possibility expose him to the imputation of interference with the machinery of the State, or of encroachment on the functions and privileges of the Sovereign.... The principle upon which he acted, as expressed by himself ten years later, in his letter to the Duke of Wellington, declining to entertain the offer of the command of the Army, cannot be too clearly kept in view in reading the story of his life. It was “to sink his own individual existence in that of his wife—to aim at no power by himself or for himself—to shun all ostentation—to assume no separate responsibility before the public—to make his position entirely a part of hers—to fill up every gap which, as a woman, she would naturally leave in the exercise of her regal functions—continually and anxiously to watch every part of the public business, in order to be able to advise and assist her at any moment in any of the multifarious and difficult questions brought before her—political, or social, or personal—to place all his powers at her command as the natural head of her family, superintendent of her household, manager of her private affairs, her sole confidential adviser in politics, and only assistant in her communications with the officers of the Government, her private secretary, and permanent minister.”