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The Creevey Papers
Thomas Creevey to Elizabeth Ord, 25 August 1820
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Introduction
Vol. I. Contents
Ch. I: 1793-1804
Ch. II: 1805
Ch. III: 1805
Ch. IV: 1806-08
Ch. V: 1809
Ch. VI: 1810
Ch. VII: 1811
Ch. VIII: 1812
Ch. IX: 1813-14
Ch X: 1814-15
Ch XI: 1815-16
Ch XII: 1817-18
Ch XIII: 1819-20
Vol. II. Contents
Ch I: 1821
Ch. II: 1822
Ch. III: 1823-24
Ch. IV: 1825-26
Ch. V: 1827
Ch. VI: 1827-28
Ch. VII: 1828
Ch. VIII: 1829
Ch. IX: 1830-31
Ch. X: 1832-33
Ch. XI: 1833
Ch. XII: 1834
Ch XIII: 1835-36
Ch XIV: 1837-38
Index
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“House of Lords, 25th Aug., 1 o’clock.

“Our matters, so far in the day, stand much better than they did at the close of yesterday. The two captains, Pechell and Briggs, have been called, and so far from proving anything against the Queen, they have distinctly sworn there was not the slightest impropriety in the conduct of the Queen during the period she was on board their ships. The fact of Bergami having come the first time as servant, and afterwards sitting at table on board one of these ships, was of course proved; but everybody knew it before, and it does not signify a damn. . . .

“The discovery of this day, viz. that Capts. Briggs and Pechell were to be the only English witnesses produced against the Queen, was most agreeable and unexpected to me, because of a conversation which had passed between the Duke of Wellington and myself on the subject. The night after I made my speech in the House of Commons in support of Genl. Ferguson’s motion for the production of the Milan commission, I saw the Duke at the Argyle Rooms, who, with his usual frankness, came up to me and said:—‘Well, Creevey; so you gave us a blast last night. Have you seen Leach since?’ Then we talked about the approaching trial with the most perfect freedom, and upon my saying their foreign evidence would find very few believers in this country, he said:—‘Ho! but we have a great many English witnesses—officers;’ and this, I confess, was the thing that always frightened me the most. . . . I sat between Grey and Sir Robert Wilson* at Sefton’s

* General Sir Robert Thomas Wilson [1777-1849], commonly known as “Jaffa Wilson,” owing to the charges made against Napoleon of cruelty to his prisoners at Jaffa in Wilson’s History of the British Expedition to Egypt. Having warmly espoused the cause of Queen Caroline, he was present at the riot in Hyde Park on the occasion of Her Majesty’s funeral. Although he was endeavouring to prevent a

1819-20.]UNFAVOURABLE EVIDENCE.313
yesterday, and two greater fools I never saw in all my life. The former, in consequence of the day’s evidence being unfavourable to the Queen, was a rigid lover of justice: he did not care a damn about the cause: he was come up to do his duty, and should act accordingly. Wilson, on the other hand, was perfectly certain the Bill would never pass the House of Lords, and that, if it did, it must take at least two years in the Commons. Tierney was more guarded in his opinion. He said he had got something in his head somehow or other that the Bill would never come to us in the House of Commons. So much for the chiefs in the Whig camp.* Thanet and I agreed afterwards as to their insanity. I dine with him and Cowper at Brooks’s to-day, and tomorrow at the house of the latter to meet the Derbys, &c. Western is gone to Fornham [the Duke of Norfolk’s] to-day. The Duke asked me to come with him.”