Not only were all foreign Ambassadors notified that it would be agreeable to the King if they kept away from the Prince’s house, but a written message was sent round to all peers, peeresses and privy councillors, stating that whoever waited on the Prince by way of attending his levées should not be received at Court.
The Guard was taken away from the Prince’s house, and, meanest of all, when Sir Robert Walpole, prompted by the Dukes of Newcastle and Grafton, tried to persuade the King and Queen to give the Prince and his wife the furniture of their apartments, the very reasonable request was refused.
The excuse the King made was that he had given the Prince Five thousand pounds out of his own pocket when he married to “set out” with, and, in addition, he had his wife’s fortune, another Five thousand pounds. (It does not seem clear, however, what this had to do with the King.)
“The wedding of the Prince of Wales,” the King added, “had cost him, one way and another, Fifty thousand pounds, and therefore he positively declined to let his son and his wife take any of their furniture away from their apartments, and he instructed the Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Grafton, to see that none was removed.”
Lord Hervey, who was standing by at the time these orders were given, appears to have remonstrated and to have pointed out that chests and things of that nature could not be regarded as furniture, but were conveniences in which to pack the Prince and Princess’s clothes, otherwise they would have to carry them away in baskets like dirty linen.
“Why not?” broke in the large-minded little King, “a basket is good enough for them.”
Which was a piece of meanness, which would have disgraced a cobbler. The Queen seems to have aided and abetted the King in this mean conduct.
But the Prince and Princess with their Household and the baby, went their way, and in the first place took up their quarters at Kew, the Prince had despatched messengers to the heads of his party, the “Patriots.” Lord Chesterfield was ill of a fever at the time, and Pulteney was shooting in Norfolk; but there appears to have been a meeting of these two eventually with Carteret at Kew, and all three plainly told the Prince that they considered he had made a false step, and that his best course would be to endeavour to patch up a peace with his father and mother, and this he appears to have earnestly tried to do as the two following letters will show.
Copy of a letter from Lord Baltimore to Lord Grantham.
“London, September 13th, 1737.