Come to see the primrose blow;
Nature doth her lap prepare,
Nature thinks thy coming slow.
Glad the people, quickly smile
Darling native of our isle.
The gentle Princess Mary (subsequently the unhappy Princess of Hesse) cannot be said to have kept the linnets or the primroses waiting, the birth of this fourth daughter of the Prince and Princess of Wales having taken place on the 22nd of February 1723.
During a large portion of the married life of George Augustus and Caroline, each was supposed to be under the influence of a woman, whose real influence was, however, overrated, and whose importance, if great, was solely so because of the undue value attached to her imaginary influence. Both those persons were of the ‘young court,’ at Leicester House and Richmond Lodge.
The women in question were Mrs. Howard, the prince’s ‘favourite,’ and Mrs. Clayton, bedchamber-woman, like Mrs. Howard, to Caroline. The first lady was the daughter of a Knight of the Bath, Sir Henry Hobart. Early in life she married Mr. Howard, ‘the younger brother of more than one Earl of Suffolk, to which title he at last succeeded himself, and left a son by her, who was the last earl of that branch.’ The young couple were but slenderly dowered; the lady had little, and her husband less. The court of Queen Anne did not hold out to them any promise of improving their fortune, and accordingly they looked around for a locality where they might not only discern the promise, but hope for its realisation. Their views rested upon Hanover and ‘the rising sun’ there; and thither, accordingly, they took their way; and there they found a welcome at the hands of the old Electress Sophia, with scanty civility at those of her grandson, the Electoral Prince.
At this time, the fortunes of the young adventurers were so low, and their aspirations so high, that they were unable to give a dinner to the Hanoverian minister, till Mrs. Howard found the means by cutting off a very beautiful head of hair and selling it. If she did this in order that she might not incur a debt, she deserves some degree of praise, for a habit of prompt payment was not a fashion of the time. The sacrifice probably sufficed; for it was the era of full-bottomed wigs, which cost twenty or thirty guineas, and Mrs. Howard’s hair, to be applied to the purpose named, may have brought her a dozen pounds, with which a very recherché dinner might have been given, at the period, to even the most gastronomic of Hanoverian ministers, and half-a-dozen secretaries of legation to boot.
The fortune sought for was seized, although it came but in a questionable shape. After the lapse of some little time, the lady had made sufficient impression on the hitherto cold Prince George Augustus to induce him, on the accession of his father to the crown of England, to appoint her one of the bedchamber-women to his wife, Caroline, Princess of Wales.