The Two Roberts

Or those slightly defective gentlemen from the regency era.

Lord Castlereagh, Robert Stewart 2nd Marquess of Londonderry if Brougham was my ideal then Castlereagh would have built in me the sort of anxiety that only has precedence in the weary heroines in the earliest gothic romance novels. He was a misguided, narrow-minded, inflexible and hard-working fellow who devoted himself entirely to the wrong side of every major issue in his age. Castlereagh was also Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House. This was written of him by Lord Bryon and accepted by all but his party as truth.

‘Oh Castlereagh! Thou art a patriot now;

Cato died for his country, so didst thou;

He perished rather than see Rome enslaved,

Thou cutt’st thy throat that Britain may be saved.’

Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool a kindred of sorts to the unfortunate Castlereagh, he was named Prime Minister by the incompetent Prince Regent. Liverpool was a dutiful, pious High Tory and something of a halfwit who at the high of his ineptness in loyalty to the Prinny by then King George IV drew up ‘The Bill of Pains and Penalties,’ against Queen Caroline. The bill was meant to deprive her Majesty of the title, prerogatives, rights, privileges and pretensions of queen consort of the realm and to dissolve the marriage between her and her philandering husband our fat regent-turned-king. The bill failed because Caroline had, as her advocate, my ideal Lord Henry Brougham.

I hope you are all having a lovely week,

☻Simone