About lawyers' cocked hats a capital volume might be written, that should contain no better story than the one which is told of Ned Thurlow's discomfiture in 1788, when he was playing a trickster's game with his friends and foes. Windsor Castle just then contained three distinct centres of public interest--the mad king in the hands of his keepers; on the one side of the impotent monarch the Prince of Wales waiting impatiently for the Regency; on the other side, the queen with equal impatience longing for her husband's recovery. The prince and his mother both had apartments in the castle, her majesty's quarters being the place of meeting for the Tory ministers, whilst the prince's apartments were thrown open to the select leaders of the Whig expectants. Of course the two coteries kept jealously apart; but Thurlow, who wished to be still Lord Chancellor, "whatever king might reign," was in private communication with the prince's friends. With furtive steps he passed from the queen's room (where he had a minute before been assuring the ministers that he would be faithful to the king's adherents), and made clandestine way to the apartment where Sheridan and Payne were meditating on the advantages of a regency without restriction. On leaving the prince, the wary lawyer used to steal into the king's chamber, and seek guidance or encouragement from the madman's restless eyes. Was the malady curable? If curable, how long a time would elapse before the return of reason? These were the questions which the Chancellor put to himself, as he debated whether he should break with the Tories and go over to the Whigs. Through the action of the patient's disease, the most delicate part of the lawyer's occupation was gone; and having no longer a king's conscience to keep, he did not care, by way of diversion--to keep his own.
For many days ere they received clear demonstration of the Chancellor's deceit, the other members of the cabinet suspected that he was acting disingenuously, and when his double-dealing was brought to their sure knowledge, their indignation was not even qualified with surprise. The story of his exposure is told in various ways; but all versions concur in attributing his detection to an accident. Like the gallant of the French court, whose clandestine intercourse with a great lady was discovered because, in his hurried preparations for flight from her chamber, he appropriated one of her stockings, Thurlow, according to one account, was convicted of perfidy by the prince's hat, which he bore under his arm on entering the closet where the ministers awaited his coming. Another version says that Thurlow had taken his seat at the council-table, when his hat was brought to him by a page, with an explanation that he had left it in the prince's private room. A third, and more probable representation of the affair, instead of laying the scene in the council-chamber, makes the exposure occur in a more public part of the castle. "When a council was to be held at Windsor," said the Right Honorable Thomas Grenville, in his old age recounting the particulars of the mishap, "to determine the course which ministers should pursue, Thurlow had been there some time before any of his colleagues arrived. He was to be brought back to London by one of them, and the moment of departure being come, the Chancellor's hat was nowhere to be found. After a fruitless search in the apartment where the council had been held, a page came with the hat in his hand, saying aloud, and with great _naïveté_, 'My lord, I found it in the closet of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.' The other Ministers were still in the Hall, and Thurlow's confusion corroborated the inference which they drew." Cannot an artist be found to place upon canvas this scene, which furnishes the student of human nature with an instructive instance of