THE RECONCILIATION.
In 1741 the antagonism between the Prince and his father had not
subsided and party spirit was strong, the followers of the King, such
as Hervey and others, did not scruple, as they had never scrupled, to
malign the Prince. There were, in theory, two Courts, the King’s and
the Prince’s, the followers of both using the term “going to Court” in
speaking of their visits to their respective masters. Walpole tells a
story which bears upon the point.
“Somebody who belonged to the Prince of Wales said he was going to
Court. It was objected, that he ought to say ‘going to Carlton House’:
that the only Court is where the King resides. Lady Pomfret, with her
paltry air of learning and absurdity, said: ‘Oh, Lord! is there no
Court in England but the King’s? sure there are many more! There is the
Court of Chancery, the Court of Exchequer, the Court of King’s Bench,
etc.’ ‘Don’t you love her? Lord Lincoln does her daughter.’”
He refers to Lord Lincoln, one of the King’s party, and a nephew of the
Duke of Newcastle, one of the Ministers.
“Not only his uncle-duke,” continues Horace Walpole, speaking of Lord
Lincoln, “but even his Majesty is fallen in love with him. He talked
to the King at his _levée_ without being spoken to. That was always
thought high treason, but I don’t know how the gruff gentleman liked
it.”
The “gruff” gentleman was of course the King.
The faction fever between the King’s party and that of his son reached
its height, however, in the year 1742, when the Prince’s party combined
with other opponents of the Government and overthrew the great Sir
Robert Walpole after his many years of office. So Queen Caroline’s
trusted minister and adviser fell at last.
He was succeeded by Lord Wilmington, who practically carried on the
same policy as his predecessor.
In this year died Lady Sundon, who had been Mistress of the Robes to
Queen Caroline and one of her confidantes.
“Lord Sundon is in great grief,” writes Horace Walpole. “I am
surprised, for she has had fits of madness ever since her ambition met
such a check by the death of the Queen. She had great power with her,
though the Queen affected to despise her, but had unluckily told her,
or fallen into her power, by some secret. I was saying to Lady Pomfret
‘to be sure she is dead very rich,’ she replied with some warmth, ‘She
never took money.’ When I came home I mentioned this to Sir Robert.
‘No,’ said he, ‘but she took jewels. Lord Pomfret’s place of Master
of the Horse to the Queen was bought of her for a pair of diamond
earrings, of fourteen hundred pounds value.’
“One day she wore them at a visit at old Marlboro’s; as soon as she was
gone, the duchess said to Lady Mary Wortley, ‘How can that woman have
the impudence to go about in that bribe?’
“‘Madam,’ said Lady Mary, ‘how would you have people know where wine is
to be sold unless there is a sign hung out?’
“Sir Robert told me that in the enthusiasm of her vanity, Lady Sundon
had proposed to him to unite with her and govern the kingdom together;
he bowed, begged her patronage, but, he said, he thought nobody fit to
govern the kingdom but the King and Queen.”
About the period of 1742 rumours of a fresh Stuart rebellion began to
permeate the country, and it was probably this fact, together with
the Prince of Wales’s popularity with the public, which decided the
King to come to a reconciliation with him. There was, however, now no
Sir Robert to apply his wonderful statesmanship in bringing about the
matter with the finesse and forethought he always displayed in cases
of this sort, though it must be admitted that his arts had always been
directed against the Prince.
However, the matter was done, though clumsily. It was commenced by a
gentle hint given to the Prince that a letter from him to his father
would be acceptable.
This proposition does not appear to have met at first with the Prince’s
favour, he, possibly, thinking that the King owed him some reparation,
and that the first step should come from him. But he eventually put his
feelings in his pocket and wrote his father the desired letter.
This letter reached the King late at night, and he lost no time in
responding to it; he expressed his wish to receive the Prince on the
following day.
Frederick repaired to St. James’s as desired, attended by five of his
suite. He was received by his father in one of the drawing-rooms, and
the interview must have been an exceedingly interesting one for the
onlookers from its importance, but its duration was bound within the
limits of the strictest formality.
“How does the Princess do? I hope she is well,” was the sole scrap of
conversation which passed King George’s lips, if chroniclers of the
time can be credited. The Prince kissed his father’s hand, answered the
question concerning his wife’s health, and--withdrew.
There appears, however, to have been a little burying of the hatchet on
both sides. The King spoke to one or two of the Prince’s followers. The
Prince unbent, and addressed a few courtesies to his father’s attending
Ministers, and the thing was over.
The reconciliation, however, appears to have been universally regarded
as an accomplished fact, and the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, in its next
issue, thus records it:--
Wednesday, February 17th, 1742.
“Several messages having passed yesterday between his Majesty and
the Prince of Wales, his Royal Highness waited on his Majesty at St.
James’s about one o’clock this day, and met with a most gracious
reception. Great joy was shown in all parts of the kingdom upon this
happy reconciliation.”
This reconciliation is said to have been worth an additional fifty
thousand pounds a year to the Prince, and Horace Walpole remarks on it.
“He will have money now to tune Glover and Thompson and Dodsley again,
_et spes et ratio studiorum in Cæsare tantum_.”
The whole of the Royal Family went after this together to the Duchess
of Norfolk’s--the old house by the river, no doubt--the streets
being “illuminated and bonfired.” There were pageants and reviews to
celebrate the reconciliation, and the Prince and Princess made a sort
of triumphal progress through the city to show themselves to their
good friends the Corporation; then entering their barges at the Tower
steps they finished up the day in a very sensible manner by dining at
Greenwich, where they no doubt partook of whitebait and turtle.
Those processions of gilded barges on the Thames, accompanied as
they generally were by music, must have been stately sights for the
citizens to view, and much missed when the river became too crowded and
dirty to be used as a royal highway.
In 1743 died Schulemberg, the mistress of George the First, whom he
created Duchess of Kendal. The Emperor of Germany had also for some
unstated reason conferred on her the dignity of Princess of Eberstein.
She died at the age of eighty-five, possessed of great wealth, which
she bequeathed to Lady Walsingham, generally supposed to be her
daughter by George the First.
Lady Walsingham had previously married Lord Chesterfield.
“But, I believe,” remarks Horace Walpole, “that he will get nothing
by the Duchess’s death but his wife. She lived in the house with the
Duchess”--next door in Grosvenor Square, “where he had played away all
his credit.”
But at this time war clouds were hanging over Europe, and King George
had espoused the cause of Queen Maria Theresa of Hungary. Very soon his
attention was drawn from his eldest son to be centred in this cause, in
which his favourite son William took a part.