ought not to say, or in a manner I ought not to say it, I am heartily sorry, and ask your pardon, and appeal now to your justice to tell me whether I ever did or said anything in my life that was not consistent with what I owed to you, though I am very ready to own I have for your sake done things. very inconsistent with what I owed to myself.

"That I received such a message by Lord Baltimore is certain; whether he was authorized to deliver it I know not; it is certain, too, that all the messages I ever sent by him were answers to others, and not any that came originally from me. It is hard your Royal Highness will not allow me an opportunity to clear myself; but, deal with me as you please, I shall ever pray for your happiness and prosperity, even whilst I reflect it is at least to your love, if not to your hate that I owe the loss of my own. I am, with the greatest respect and truth," &c.

In consequence of all these transactions, it was at last settled that she should have her house in Grosvenor Street for ever, 1600l. a-year for life, and that her son should not be taken from her, and that she should be at her liberty to live where she pleased.

But soon after this, her colics, loss of appetite, and general decay growing fast upon her, she was advised to go to Bath, where, in about two months, she finished a life* that at her going to Bath, she said was, from the circumstances she was now in, likely to prove the happiest she had ever had.

Her son, who was left with her brother, when she went to Bath, died about a week before her of convulsion fits. The Queen and the Princess Caroline told Lord Hervey they thought the Prince more afflicted for the loss of this child than they had ever seen him on any occasion, or thought him capable of being.

CHAPTER XXI.

BUT to go back to the King. The time being now come that his Majesty was obliged to undergo the mortification of * March 11, 1736.

returning to his British dominions, in order to keep his birthday there, he at last sent the long-expected orders for the yachts; and hearing they were at Helvoetsluys, he set out from Hanover on Wednesday morning, the 22d of October, and arrived at Kensington the Sunday following, before dinner, just as the Queen returned from chapel. Her Majesty, attended by all the Court, met him at the great gate as he alighted from his coach. She kissed his hand before she presumed to touch his lips, mutual embraces followed, and this kissing ceremony at the door of the coach ended as it began, by her Majesty again gluing her mouth to the King's hand, which he was graciously pleased to offer afterwards to lead her up stairs. This was a sort of triennial honour bestowed upon the Queen by his Majesty, for I never knew him confer it on any other occasion than a return from Hanover.* As soon as they were got up stairs, they went directly into the Queen's gallery, where the King ordered all the company, both men and women, to be let in and presented to him.

He stayed there near half an hour, talked to most people but the Queen, and it was by her order, not his, that the company was at last dismissed.

But by unreasonably hurrying himself to arrive in England, though he was as unreasonably sorry to return thither at all, he had made himself extremely ill; for whilst he travelled in this violent manner, day and night, and almost without any rest, only for the pleasure of bragging how quick he moved, he had so heated his blood that he was feverish for several days after he returned; and by sitting so long in his coach had brought upon himself such a severe fit of the piles, to which he was extremely subject, that he was in great pain, lost a great quantity of blood, and had so violent an inflammation and swelling attending this complaint, that for a fortnight together his surgeon was forced to attend him with alternate applications of lancets and fomentations.

This disorder was kept a great secret to all the Court, but the consequences of it were no secret. Everybody shared the warm and frequent sallies of his abominable temper, and everybody imputed them to what was the joint though not the sole cause of these eruptions, which was the affliction he felt for the change of a German life to an English one, with the society of a stale wife instead of a new mistress; and, * May it not have been in consideration of her Majesty's dignity of Regent ?

what grated more than all the rest, the transition to limited from unlimited power.

Whilst the late King lived, everybody imagined this Prince loved England and hated Germany; but from the time of his first journey, after he was King, to Hanover, people began to find, if they had not been deceived in their former opinion, at least they would be so in their expectations; and that his thoughts, whatever they might have been, were no longer turned either with contempt or dislike to his Electoral dominions. But after this last journey Hanover had so completed the conquest of his affections, that there was nothing English ever commended in his presence that he did not always show, or pretend to show, was surpassed by something of the same kind in Germany. No English or even French cook could dress a dinner; no English confectioner set out a dessert; no English player could act; no English coachman could drive, or English jockey ride; nor were any English horses fit to be drove or fit to be ridden; no Englishman knew how to come into a room, nor any Englishwoman how to dress herself; nor were there any diversions in England, public or private; nor any man or woman in England whose conversation was to be borne-the one, as he said, talking of nothing but their dull politics, and the others of nothing but their ugly clothes. Whereas at Hanover all these things were in the utmost perfection: the men were patterns of politeness, bravery, and gallantry; the women of beauty, wit, and entertainment; his troops there were the bravest in the world, his counsellors the wisest, his manufacturers the most ingenious, his subjects the happiest; and at Hanover, in short, plenty reigned, magnificence resided, arts flourished, diversions abounded, riches flowed, and everything was in the utmost perfection that contributes to make a prince great or a people blessed.

Forced from that magnificent delightful dwelling to return again to this mean dull island, it was no wonder, since these were his notions of them, that he felt as great a change in his humour as in his enjoyments; and that frowns should take the place of smiles upon his countenance, when regret had taken that of pleasure in his heart. But as everybody who came near him, in any calling (except just that of a common courtier in his public circle at the levee or the drawing-room), had some share of his bilious temper at this

time, so what everybody knew and everybody felt, everybody talked of and everybody confessed; for, by a practice very uncommon in courts, people, instead of hiding with shame the snubs they received from their master, bragged of them in mirth; and, by finding these distinctions so general, revealed in sport those affronts which, had they been more particular, the objects of them would have concealed in sorrow.*

In truth he hated the English, looked upon them all as king-killers and republicans, grudged them their riches as well as their liberty, thought them all overpaid, and said to Lady Sundont one day as she was waiting at dinner, just after he returned from Germany, that he was forced to distribute his favours here very differently from the manner in which he bestowed them at Hanover; that there he rewarded people for doing their duty and serving him well, but that here he was obliged to enrich people for being rascals, and buy them not to cut his throat.

The Queen did not always think in a different style of the English, though she kept her thoughts more to herself than the King, as being more prudent, more sensible, and more mistress of her passions; yet even she could not entirely disguise these sentiments to the observation of those who were perpetually about her, and put her upon subjects that betrayed her into revealing them.

I have heard her at different times speak with great indignation against assertors of the people's rights; have heard her call the King, not without some despite, the humble servant of the Parliament-the pensioner of his people—a

* There is a discrepancy between this account of the King's temper and that given in Lord Hervey's letter to Mr. Walpole, then in Holland, a few days after the King's arrival:-"I know not in what temper you found his Majesty at the other side of the water, but since he came hither we think he seems as well pleased as if he had left nothing that pleased him elsewhere."Coxe, iii. 298. There seems no sufficient reason why Lord Hervey should have endeavoured, in a mere private letter, to mystify Walpole; unless it was by the Queen's commands, who was very anxious to conceal the King's illhumour and its cause.

+ It is said in the magazines of the day that Lady Sundon succeeded Lady Suffolk as Mistress of the Robes in May, 1735, and it seems probable that the Irish peerage was conferred on her husband about that time in contemplation of that appointment; but I doubt whether it was ever actually conferred on her, as I find her in the " Present State" for 1736, as well as in the " Drama,” post, as still Bedchamber-woman, and in that rank she was pensioned after the Queen's death.

puppet of sovereignty, that was forced to go to them for every shilling he wanted, that was obliged to court those who were always abusing him, and could do nothing of himself. And once added, that a good deal of that liberty that made them so insolent, if she could do it, should be much abridged; nor was it possible for the best prince in the world to be very solicitous to procure benefits for subjects that never cared to trust him. At other times she was more upon her guard: I have heard her say she wondered how the English could imagine that any sensible prince would take away their liberty if he could. "Mon Dieu!"

she cried, "what a figure would this poor island make in Europe if it were not for its government! It is its excellent free government that makes all its inhabitants industrious, as they know that what they get nobody can take from them; it is its free government, too, that makes foreigners send their money hither, because they know it is secure, and that the prince cannot touch it and since it is its freedom to which this kingdom owes everything that makes it great, what prince, who had his senses, and knew that his own greatness depended on the greatness of the country over which he reigned, would wish to take away what made both him and them considerable? I had as lief," added she, "be Elector of Hanover as King of England, if the government was the same. Qui diable that had anything else, would take you all, or think you worth having, if you had not your liberties? Your island might be a very pretty thing in that case for Bridgeman and Kent* to cut out into gardens; but for the figure it would make in Europe, it would be of no more consequence here in the West than Madagascar is in the East: and for this reason-as impupent and as insolent as you all are with your troublesome liberty-your princes, if they are sensible, will rather bear with your impertinences than cure them-a way that would lessen their influence in Europe full as much as it would increase their power at home."

But, at the very moment her Majesty was uttering these truths, the love of rule, the thirst of dominion, and the jealousy of prerogative were so strongly implanted in herthe German and the Queen so rooted in her mind—that the

* Kent and Bridgeman were the first inventors and practitioners of land. scape-gardening. See Walpole's "Essay on Modern Gardening."