Pains and Penalties Bill 1820

To bypass the church and the monarchic prerogatives that required an ecclesiastical dissolution, he opted for a legislative solution within Parliament itself.

In eighteen twenty, the government drafted the Pains and Penalties Bill as a tool to strip Caroline of her title and dissolve their marriage in the eyes of law.

The wording of the bill was brutal.

It declared that Caroline had been guilty of adultery with a servant and would therefore lose her rights, privileges, and all claims associated with being queen.

Simultaneously, a new wave of petitions gathered signatures from thousands of Londoners who saw Caroline as a sympathetic figure victimized by an autocratic king.

These petitions called upon Parliament to reject any bill that would punish a woman without sufficient evidence and urged for the protection of royal dignity.

The sheer volume of support made it clear to government officials that pushing forward with the Pains and Penalties Bill could be politically disastrous.

The king's ministers, led by Lord Liverpool, initially resisted these objections, believing in a monarchical authority that had not been previously challenged at such a scale.

The next day the House adjourned till the 3rd October and the divorce clause was dropped.

Creevy remarks that now the bill of pains and penalties was really directed against the King, its object being to declare the Queen an abandoned woman and the King a fit associate for her.

When the House sat on October 3rd Mr. Broom made his great speech for the defence.

On the 6th it came out that the husband of the Queen's friend, Lady Charlotte Lindsay, had sold his wife's letters to the Treasury.

Whereupon a wag wrote, Most gracious Queen, we thee implore To go away and sin no more.

But if that effort be too great, To go away at any rate.

Then followed the debate, and on the 6th of November, even with the aid of eleven of the bishops, there was a majority of only twenty-eight in favor of the Bill of Pains and Penalties.

The feeling of the peers was in accordance with Denman's peroration.