The Creevey Papers
Thomas Creevey to Elizabeth Ord, 26 August 1820
“Brooks’s, 2 o’clock, 26th August.
“I am just returned from the Lords, and their
lordships have hampered themselves as with one of their own absurdities, that
they have adjourned till Monday to consider how they are to get out of it. . .
. I am at this moment the centre of at least a dozen lords. You may suppose it
is a scrape when Wickedshifts Grey is at
this moment grinning from ear to ear, and telling me he sees no way out of it
but by the Lords adjourning the second reading of the bill for six months.
Old Fitzwilliam tells me he thinks
little of the chambermaid’s evidence; and, as to that, both
Grey and King,
think much less of it than I do. Certain it is that Mr. Attorney’s perfect incompetence to manage a case like
this, added to the villainy of the Court, gives considerable—indeed a
very great—advantage to the case of this, eternal fool, to call her [the
Queen] by no worse a name. . .
.”
Queen Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1768-1821)
Married the Prince of Wales in 1795 and separated in 1796; her husband instituted
unsuccessful divorce proceedings in 1820 when she refused to surrender her rights as
queen.
William Wentworth Fitzwilliam, second earl Fitzwilliam (1748-1833)
The nephew of the Marquis of Rockingham and lifelong friend of Charles James Fox and Lord
Carlisle; he was president of the Council (1806-07) and lieutenant of the West Riding from
1798 to 1819 when he was dismissed for his censure of the Peterloo massacre.
Robert Gifford, first Baron Gifford (1779-1826)
Barrister, educated at the Middle Temple, he practiced on the western circuit and was
Tory MP for Eye (1817-24), attorney general (1819-24), and lord chief justice of the common
pleas (1824).
Charles Grey, second earl Grey (1764-1845)
Whig statesman and lover of the Duchess of Devonshire; the second son of the first earl
(d. 1807), he was prime minister (1831-34).
Peter King, seventh baron King (1775-1833)
Whig politician, son of the sixth baron; he was educated at Harrow and Trinity College,
Cambridge before succeeding to the title in 1793. His son William married Ada Byron.
