Above: the Trial of Queen Caroline, by Sir George Hayter (1820-3), currently in the National Portrait Gallery, London. A depiction of the “trial” of Queen Caroline, George IV’s wife, in the House of Lords (and incidentally this is a very nice depiction of the old House of Lords as it was prior to its destruction in 1834). The “trial” was in fact a lengthy discussion of the Pains and Penalties Bill, introduced to allow George IV to divorce his wife.

Above: detail from the Hayter painting of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham.  He would have been about 65 at the time this was painted. You can kind of tell from this what Sir Nathaniel Wraxall was talking about in his “Posthumous Memoirs” when he said Chatham “so strongly resembles his father in face and person, that if he were to enter the house of peers, dressed after the mode of George the Second’s reign, and his head enveloped in a full-bottomed tie wig … the spectators might fancy that the great statesman was returned once more upon earth” (I won’t go on to say what Wraxall writes next as it’s not nice).

Must say I love the nose. 😉