Parliamentary interference between father and son
would be highly indecorous. In the end the Prince's
claims were rejected by a majority of thirty. This
small majority would really have been reduced to a
minority if forty-five Tories with Jacobite leanings
had not left the House in a body, unwilling to give
any vote in favour of the heir of Hanover, even
though by doing so they would defeat the Govern-
ment.

The King and the Queen were overjoyed at the
Prince's defeat, and, in the first flush of victory, the
King was inclined to follow up his advantage by
turning his son immediately out of St. James's
Palace in the same way as (he might have remem-
bered, but did not) his father had turned him out.
Walpole dissuaded the King from taking so extreme
a step, and then proceeded to urge him to make
good his promise to settle a jointure on the Princess,
and make over ^50,000 a year to his son absolutely.
To this the King now demurred, though Walpole
pointed out to him that the victory in the House of
Commons had only been gained on the understand-
ing that the King would carry out his pledges. The
difficulty was complicated by the Prince continuing



THE PRINCE AND THE PATRIOTS 329

impenitent. So far from being downcast by his
defeat in the House of Commons, he called a
council of all his friends, and it was resolved to
raise the question anew in the House of Lords,
Lord Carteret undertaking to bring forward the
motion, and Chesterfield to support it. Here, too,
he lost, but public sympathy was undoubtedly with
him, and to prevent the scandal from growing, Wal-
pole, Newcastle, and indeed all the King's Ministers,
urged the necessity of a settlement. One was
eventually made, though not until much later, by
the King settling ^50,000 a year on the Prince
absolutely, together with ;^i 0,000 a year from the
Duchy of Cornwall, and Parliament making up the
rest by giving an unusually large jointure to the
Princess of Wales.

The Kingr and Oueen were much disgusted at
what they considered the Government's half-hearted-
ness, and included in their displeasure the Whigs
generally, who had certainly wavered in their devo-
tion to the court when they heard that the King's
health was so bad. "If the Whigs can be so little
depended upon in the King's interest," said the
Queen, "we might as well send for the Tories, who
are only too willing to come ; the King has only to
beckon to them." She did not mean what she said,
but Walpole became alarmed. His majority was not
so large that he could pose any longer as a dictator,
or afford to dispense with the Queen's favour and
support. He knew that Lady Sundon was in-
triguing against him, and that she had had several



330 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

interviews with Lord Carteret. Carteret now ex-
pressed his great regret at having championed the
Prince's cause ; he said he was driven into it against
his better judgment ; he was full of the Queen's
praises, and vowed that he would do anything to
serve her. He declared that he had great influence
over the Opposition leaders, especially Pulteney and
Wyndham, and could bring them to the Queen's side
if she would only make the sign. All this was duly
repeated by Lady Sundon to the Queen, who listened
but did nothing. She never intended to do any-
thing, but she thought it well to bring Walpole to
his bearings, and in this she quickly succeeded.
Walpole came to her, and told her that he had
heard of Carteret's overtures, and warned her not
to trust him. The Whigs he urged were the
natural support of the Hanoverian family, which
was certainly true, since they had brought them over
to England, and the Tories were but a broken reed.
Caroline agreed with all he said, but fell back upon
the lukewarm support which the Whigs had given
the King. Even Walpole, she said, had regarded
the Prince's conduct in too favourable a light.
Walpole told her that he had only striven to bring
the Prince to reason, but he now owned that he had
made a mistake. The Queen, he said, should never
again have cause to complain of him on that score,
he saw that the Prince must be overcome. The
Queen said she only wanted him to assure her on
that point, and she dismissed him with many assur-
ances that she would never cease to support him.



THE PRINCE AND THE PATRIOTS 331

The immediate result of this reconciliation was to
strengthen the alliance between the Prince and the
Patriots, who now saw in Frederick their only hope
of ever gaining office.

These events took place quite early in the
Session, but when Parliament rose the King said
nothing about going to Hanover as Ministers had
feared. In truth he was afraid to go, for he knew
that Frederick would seize upon it as a pretext for
some fresh intrigue, and the country was hardly in
a humour to brook another prolonged absence. So
he rarely mentioned the name of Hanover and never
that of Walmoden. Most people about the court
thought that the King had forgotten her for Lady
Deloraine, to whom he showed great attention,
paying her visits in her apartments for a long time
together, as he had done to Lady Suffolk in the old
days. He also insisted on her sitting next him at
the commerce table, and often walked with her
tete-a-tete in the gardens. Lady Deloraine, who had
great beauty but little discretion, was inclined to
boast of her triumphs, for she said to Lord Hervey :
" Do you know the King has been in love with me
these two years ? " Lord Hervey, who was afraid
to invite dangerous confidences, merely smiled and
said : " Who is not in love with you ? " Walpole
came across her one day, standing in the hall at
Richmond with a baby in her arms, and said to her :
" That is a very pretty boy, Lady Deloraine ; whose
is it?" She replied: "Mr. Windham's (her hus-
band's) upon my honour. But," she added with a



^^2 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

significant laugh, " I will not promise whose the
next shall be." She moreover told several people
that the King had been importunate a long time,
but that she had held out from motives of virtue,
which were not at all appreciated, as her husband,
she was sure, did not care.

Whether there was anything between Lady
Deloraine and the Kino- or not, the Oueen followed
her usual policy of ignoring the intrigue. She
knew what her husband was, and made allowances.
Perhaps, too, she was glad that he should seek
distraction from Madame Walmoden, though she
knew that he had not forgotten her. Walpole had
told her of an incident which showed how the King
still esteemed his Hanoverian mistress above Lady
Deloraine. He ordered Walpole one day to buy a
hundred lottery tickets, and to charge the amount,
^i,ooo, to the secret service fund instead of his
civil list. Walpole did as he was bid and told
Hervey of this iniquitous transaction, which he said
was for the benefit of the King's favourite. Hervey
thought he meant Lady Deloraine and expressed
his surprise at the largeness of the sum, saying he
"did not think his Majesty went so deep there".
Walpole replied : " No, I mean the Hanover
woman. You are right to imagine he does not go
so deep to his lying fool here. He will give her a
couple of the tickets and think her generously used."

The relations between the Prince of Wales and
his parents went from bad to worse as the months
wore on, but they were not even yet strained to



THE PRINCE AND THE PATRIOTS 333

breaking point. Acting on the advice of his sup-
porters the Prince still occasionally attended levees
and drawing-rooms. The King treated him as
though he were not in the room ; the Queen, though
she recognised his presence, did not speak to him
more than was absolutely necessary, and in private
she declared that she was afraid to do so lest he
should distort her words. The Prince still resided
in his father's house, making his headquarters at
St. James's Palace. But when the King and Queen
moved to Hampton Court for the summer he had
perforce to go there too, but much against his will.
Though he and the Princess lived under the same
roof as the King and Queen they saw little of them,
and only met them in public.

In July the Prince wrote a letter to the Queen
announcing that the Princess was with child. The
Queen congratulated him and the Princess on the
auspicious event, and asked the latter some maternal
questions about her condition. To all these the
Princess made the same answer — " I do not know ".
The Queen had doubts, which were shared by her
daughters, as to whether the Princess was really
pregnant. Both she and the King considered the
Prince quite capable of palming off a spurious child
on them, and their prejudices against him were so
strong that they half believed he was plotting to do
so. They had no wish that the Princess of Wales
should bear children ; it was generally thought that
she would not. If she did it would destroy the
remaining chance that their beloved younger son.



334 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

William, might one day succeed to the crown. The
Prince, who resented these suspicions, wished that
his wife should be confined at St. James's, but the
King determined that the event should take place at
Hampton Court. The Queen declared that "at
her labour I positively will be, let her lie in where
she will," but again expressed herself sceptical about
the Princess being confined at all, as she could see
no signs of it. The Prince, on the other hand, who
knew and resented these suspicions, vowed that his
mother should not be present at the birth, and that
the child should be born at St. James's. He kept
his word.

The court was then at Hampton Court for the
summer, and the Prince and Princess of Wales were
there occupying their own suite of apartments. On
Sunday, July 31st, the Princess dined in public
with the King and Queen, but on retiring to her
apartments she was seized with pain, and symptoms
of premature confinement became manifest. Not-
withstanding the danger, which perhaps the Prince
did not realise, as the Princess's confinement was
not expected for two months, he determined that she
should at once be secretly removed to St. James's.
He ordered his coach to be brought round quickly.
It was nearly dark, and the Prince's apartments were
in another wing of the palace to those of the King
and Queen, so they were able to make their exit
without being seen. The poor Princess was carried
downstairs, though she begged her husband to let
her remain where she was, and Lady Archibald



THE PRINCE AND THE PATRIOTS 335

Hamilton added her entreaties, but to no effect.
The Prince obstinately insisted on his wife getting
into the coach with Lady Archibald and one of
her women. The Prince got in after them, and
gave the order to drive with all speed to St. James's,
and once outside the gates of Hampton Court they
went at full gallop towards London. The Princess
moaned in agony, but the Prince kept saying :
" Courage, courage," telling her by way of consola-
tion that it would all be over in a minute. They
arrived at St. James's Palace about ten o'clock :
there was nothing ready for them, as they were
not expected. The Princess, shrieking with pain,
was carried upstairs and put to bed, and, there being
no sheets in the palace, a pair of table-cloths had to
make shift instead. Within half-an-hour she was
prematurely delivered of a girl child. ^

Meanwhile at Hampton Court, the King and
Queen, all unsuspecting, passed their evening as
usual : the King played commerce below stairs with
Lady Deloraine and the maids of honour ; the
Queen and the Princess Amelia played quadrille
above ; the Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey had
their nightly game of cribbage. The party broke
up, and all retired at eleven, without having heard
a whisper of what had been going on in the Prince
of Wales's apartments. The King and Queen had
gone to bed and to sleep, when about half-past one
they were aroused by the arrival of a courier from

^The Princess thus born was afterwards Duchess of Brunswick,
and died in London, March, 1813.



336 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

St. James's Palace with a message that brooked no
delay. The Queen, startled at being aroused at so
unusual an hour, asked whether the palace was on
fire, but Mrs. Tichburne, her dresser, in fear and
trembling explained that the Prince of Wales had
sent to let their Majesties know that the Princess
was in labour. The Queen jumped up immediately
and cried out : " My God ! My night-gown, I'll go
to her this moment." "Your night-gown, madam,"
said the worthy Tichburne, " aye, and your coaches
too; the Princess is at St. James's." ''Are you
mad?" exclaimed the Queen, "or are you asleep,
my good Tichburne? you dream." Then Mrs.
Tichburne told the whole tale of the Princess's flight,
so far as she understood it. The King raged and
swore, and began to abuse the Queen, saying :
" You see, now, with all your wisdom, how they
have outwitted you. This is all your fault. There
will be a false child put upon you, and how will
you answer for it to all your children ? This has
been fine care and fine management for your son,
William ; he is mightily obliged to you ; and as
for Anne, I hope she will come over and scold you
herself; I am sure you deserve anything she can
say to you."

The Queen made no answer, but dressed quickly,
ordered her coach, and set out for London at once,
accompanied by the Princesses Amelia and Caroline,
and attended by some of the lords in waiting. She
arrived at St. James's Palace about four o'clock,
left her coach, and those who came with her, at the



THE PRINCE AND THE PATRIOTS 337

outer gate, walked alone across the courtyard and
made her way upstairs as fast as she could. At the
top of the stairs she met the Prince in his night-
gown. He dutifully kissed her hand and cheek,
and then with scarcely concealed malice told her
that she was too late, the Princess had given birth
to a daughter. The Queen expressed neither sur-
prise nor annoyance, but asked why the news of
the child's birth had not been sent to her before
she started from Hampton Court. The Prince said
that he had written letters to the King and Queen
directly he could ; the messenger was already on
the road and she would doubtless find them on her
return. The Queen made no further remark, but
asked to see the mother and child. The Prince
then conducted her into the Princess's chamber.
The Queen kissed the Princess and wished her joy,
but expressed her fear that she had suffered greatly.
The Princess dutifully replied : " Not at all ; it is
nothing". Lady Archibald Hamilton brought the
child, which was wrapped up in an old red mantle
and some napkins, no proper clothes having yet been
found for it, nor any nurse. The Queen kissed the
babe and said : " The good God bless you, poor
little creature ; you have come into a troublesome
world ".

The Prince then began a long account of what
had happened. The Queen listened to him without
interruption, but when he had quite finished, she
said that it was a miracle the Princess and the child

had not been killed. She added that he and his
VOL. II. 22



338 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

wife were a couple of young fools who could not
have been aware of the danger they ran, and then
she turned to Lady Archibald and said : " But for
you, my Lady Archibald, who have had ten children,
that with your experience, and at your age, you
should suffer these people to act with such a mad-
ness, I am astonished ; and wonder how you could,
for your own sake as well as theirs, venture to be
concerned in such an expedition ". To this Lady
Archibald made no reply, except to turn to the
Prince and say: "You see, sir". The Queen then
embraced the Princess, wished her good-bye, and
told her that if there was anything she wanted she
had only to name it and it would be done. The
Princess, who had evidently been coached in her
part, from between her table-cloths thanked her
Majesty, but said she wanted nothing. The Prince
waited on his mother down the stairs, still in his
night-gown, and would have escorted her to her
coach, had she not insisted that he should not
accompany her out of doors in such a plight. The
Queen walked across the courts by herself to where
the coaches were waitino^. She told the Princesses

o

that she had no doubt the child was genuine, but
she added : "If instead of this poor, little, ugly she-
mouse there had been a brave, large, fat, jolly boy,
I should not have been cured of my suspicions ".

As soon as the Queen had set out from Hampton
Court the King sent express messengers to Walpole
and Lord Harrington, requesting them to hasten to
St. James's to be present at the birth of the Prince's



THE PRINCE AND THE PATRIOTS 339

child. They went thither with all speed, but like
the Queen arrived too late. Walpole returned to
Hampton Court in the course of the morning, and
had a conference with the King and Queen. He
agreed that the insult was intolerable, and must be
punished. Walpole had learnt his lesson, and was
now wholly against the Prince. So far from
attempting to moderate the King's ire he rather
sought to inflame it, and declared that if the King
and Queen did not conquer him he would conquer
them. After much discussion and much strong
language, the King sent the Prince a written mes-
sage, complaining of the " deliberate indignity "
offered to him and the Queen, which he " resented
in the highest degree". The King was for taking
more drastic measures at once, but Walpole per-
suaded him to defer them until the Princess was out
of danger, and then strike. The King would gain
by waiting a little he said, for as soon as it was
known that the Prince had been guilty of this
grievous act of folly his popularity would wane. In
this he was right, for no sooner did the news get
abroad than the public, to a man, condemned the
Prince's conduct in risking- his wife's life and that of
his unborn child, in order to insult his father and
mother. His friends who had supported him
through thick and thin in his endeavour to get a
separate grant from Parliament were unable to find
an excuse for this rash and inconsiderate step, though
they urged in palliation the Prince's natural pique
at the surveillance to which he had been sub-



340 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

jected, and his ignorance of the danger the Princess
had run.

The Prince, who soon became aware that he had
made a false step, called a council of his chief sup-
porters, including Carteret, Chesterfield and Pulteney,
who frankly told him that he had put himself in the
wrong, and the best thing he could do would be to
patch up a reconciliation with the King and Queen.
In view of this the Prince, a few days later, thought
he would go to Hampton Court to pay his respects
to the King and Queen, but the King, having got
ear that he was coming, sent him a message saying
he would not see him. Thereupon ensued a lengthy
correspondence, in which the Prince would not own
himself in the wrong. He expressed himself deeply
grieved at having aroused the King's anger, but in-
sinuated that the Queen was really responsible for
the strained relations between himself and his father.
He thus struck a note which was taken up by the
Prince's court, and afterwards by the great body of
his supporters. Afraid to strike at the King directly,
they threw all the blame upon the Queen, who they
declared had first artfully inflamed the King's anger
against his son, and now tried to keep him inflexible.
It was a cowardly thing to do, as well as unjust, for
the Queen had always been on the side of peace ;
but the Prince hated his mother because the King
had appointed her Regent instead of him, and the
Opposition hated the Queen because she had shown
herself, through storm and shine, the firm supporter
of Walpole. In pursuance of this policy, when the



THE PRINCE AND THE PATRIOTS 341

Queen, nine days after her daughter-in-law's con-
finement, paid her another visit at St. James's, the
Prince treated his mother with marked discourtesy ;
he avoided meeting her at the main entrance, and
only received her at the door of the Princess's bed-
chamber ; he refused to speak a word to her during
the whole visit, though the Queen was in the room
with him and her daughter-in-law more than an
hour. He could not help escorting her to her coach
when she left, but did it all in dumb show ; yet when
they reached the coach door, and he saw that a con-
siderable crowd had assembled, he knelt down in
the muddy street and kissed her hand with every
demonstration of respect. At this hyprocrisy, as
Horace Walpole says, " her indignation must have
shrunk into contempt."^ The Queen was deeply
wounded by her son's treatment, and after that she
paid no more visits to St. James's.

These acts irritated the King beyond endurance,
and even the Queen was stung out of her usual calm
by the attacks made upon her. But anger and
strong language availed nothing. The Prince was
heir to the throne, and an heir to a throne is never
without friends. In Frederick's case his friends
were all the Patriots ; even Carteret, finding his over-
tures to the Queen led to nothing, had gone back
to him. The triumph of the Prince would mean the



^ Walpole's Reminiscences, vol. iv. He repeats the same story in
his Memoirs, vol. i. Horace Walpole confuses the Queen's second
visit with her first, otherwise his account tallies with that of Lord
Hervey — Memoirs, vol. ii.



342 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

triumph of the Opposition too, the defeat of the
King and Queen, the defeat of the Government.
Walpole knew this, and realised that if any recon-
ciliation were brought about he would probably have
to go. It was obviously to the advantage of the
Royal Family that these quarrels should end, and
Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, earnestly
strove to bring about a reconciliation. But Walpole
advised the King against it, an easy task, for the
King's inclination was all for revenge. Another
message, an ultimatum, was therefore composed and
sent by the King, denouncing the Prince's conduct in
the strongest terms, and ending, " It is my pleasure
that you leave St. James's with all your family ".^
This was equivalent to a total separation.

The Prince received the King's message without
comment, and, as the orders were peremptory, two
days later he and the Princess removed from St.
James's Palace to Kew. All communications between
the two courts were now broken off, and shortly after-
wards the Prince took up his residence at Norfolk
House, St. James's Square, which immediately be-
came a rival court and the centre of the Opposition,
much as Leicester House had been in the reign of
George the First.- The court of Norfolk House,
though small in numbers, was not without brilliancy.
The Prince had wit and pleasing manners and was



1 Message of the King to the Prince of Wales, loth September,

1737-

^ The parallel became closer when Frederick Prince of Wales
removed to Leicester House.



THE PRINCE AND THE PATRIOTS 343

ably seconded by his young and beautiful consort.
His love of letters attracted many of the ablest writers,
and his political views drew around him the rising
men among the Tories. The Prince of Wales's
court became a focus of all the talents and a
rallying place of the younger Tories, and as time
went on, it influenced considerably the course of
English politics. A generation was growing up in
the Tory party which knew not the Stuarts, and
saw a way of overthrowing the Whig ascendency,
not by the forcible restoration of James, but in
the peaceable accession of Frederick. They were
doomed to wander many years in the wilderness of
opposition before their dreams came true ; and the
Whig domination was at last beaten down, not by
Frederick, but by his son. But at this time Frederick's
accession to the throne seemed comparatively near
at hand. It was in view of his future reign, and as a
satire on his father's, that Bolingbroke composed his
magnificent essay, The Ideal of a Patriot King,
a sublime conception of government, but impossible
to be acted upon, because it presupposed the exist-
ence of a monarch of almost superhuman wisdom
and virtues. Such an ideal could not be realised
in Frederick, nor was it realised in his son, George
the Third.



344



CHAPTER XV.

THE QUEEN'S ILLNESS AND DEATH.
1737.

The Queen's health had been breaking for some
time past, and nothing but her strength of will and
determination not to yield kept her up. She had
never really enjoyed good health since she became
Queen. The last ten years had been a continual
struggle against physical weakness ; in the news-