4 8o ENGLISH POLITICAL HISTORY 



of the King's marriage to Princess Mary of Teck, as she then was, in 1893, and had then 

 been contradicted at Queen Victoria's desire, by Canon Dalton, in private letters to 

 various people of influence; but gossip continued to make free with the story, 

 ^* y * and it was revived, to the King's natural annoyance, and with the danger 

 of public misconception and ill-feeling if it were not finally disproved, in 

 1910. Nothing however is more difficult to deal with than private scandal for which 

 nobody in particular can be made responsible. It was hoped that the further public 

 contradictions authoritatively given by the Dean of Norwich in his speech in July, by 

 Mr. Stead in the Review of Reviews for that month, and by Sir Arthur Bigge in Rey- 

 nolds' Newspaper (October 30, 1910), would put an end to it; but it was repeated in a 

 definite way by a certain Edward Mylius in November and December 1910, in a " repub- 

 lican " paper called the Liberator, published in Paris and circulated in England under 

 the auspices of the Indian revolutionary Krishna varma. In this the writer declared 

 that the King, when a midshipman, had in 1890 married at Malta a daughter of Admiral 

 Sir Michael Culme-Seymour; his subsequent marriage in 1893 was therefore bigamous 

 and shameful, and the Church, by conniving at it, had been guilty of subordinating its 

 own principles to reasons of State. Copies of the Liberator were seized by the police, 

 and Mylius was arrested and on February i, 1911, tried for criminal libel before the 

 Lord Chief Justice and a special jury. Evidence was given by Sir M. Culme-Seymour 

 and others absolutely contradicting the whole fabrication. The Admiral had no 

 daughter whom the King could have married in 1890; one of his daughters died unmarried 

 in 1895 without ever knowing him, the other (Mrs. Napier) had not met him between 

 1879 and 1898; the King was not at Malta between 1888 and 1901; the Maltese registers 

 were produced and contained no record of any such marriage. Mylius refused to give 

 evidence, his claim that the King ought to appear as a witness to be cross-examined by 

 him being overruled; and the jury promptly found him guilty. He was sentenced to 

 the maximum penalty of a year's imprisonment; and the Attorney-General then read a 

 statement signed by the King that he had never been married to anyone but the Queen 

 and that he would have attended in person to give evidence if the law officers of the 

 Crown had not insisted that it would be unconstitutional for him to do so. 



The whole affair caused naturally a great sensation, but again the effect was excel- 

 lent, and the straightforward action taken by the King for it was known that. the 

 its effect. Government doubted the expediency of bringing the matter into Court- 

 confirmed public opinion as to the character of the new occupant of the 

 Throne. He had insisted on having the truth told, and was not prepared to forgo his 

 rights as a man simply because, as a King, he was above the law. That 'wag not his 

 idea of kingship. Good thus came of evil, and enhanced confidence in the Throne, 

 which was strengthened, in all but one rather doubtful respect to be mentioned later, 

 by the public work of King George and Queen Mary in 1911 and 1912. They were not 

 content with the scenic side of Royalty; they were anxious to show their interest in all 

 national activities and to enter sympathetically into the lives of the working-classes. 

 While they mingled graciously with society at Court and at country house-parties, 

 Queen Mary made herself equally at home in taking tea with a Welsh miner's wife (June 

 27, 1912) after the Royal visit to the Dowlais steel-works at Merthyr, and during a 

 tour through the industrial districts of Yorkshire King George went down the Elsecar 

 Colliery (July 9) and showed himself no less handy in wielding a pick than at bringing 

 down the grouse on a Scotch moor. Moreover Royal visits were made to Harrow School 

 on Speech Day in July, 1912, and to Winchester just afterwards to celebrate the restora- 

 tion of the cathedral; the King took an active part in various public functions, notably 

 in 1 ying the foundation of the new London County Council offices on the Embankment 

 (March Q, 1912), and opening the Immingham Dock near Grimsby (July 22, 1912); and 

 in the first two years of his reign he had made the Royal presence felt far and wide. 



The doubtful exception already alluded to was in respect of the use of the Royal 

 prerogative in passing the Parliament Act in 1911. The parliamentary aspects of this 

 revolution in English constitutional procedure will be considered later, but the public 



