King George the Second and his Queen Caroline, who had kept their eldest son away from England for fourteen years, and had resisted every persuasion of their Ministers to bring him over, hesitated no longer; a Colonel Lorne was despatched at once to Herrenhausen to bring the Prince to London. He lost no time on the journey, and appeared at Herrenhausen while a ball given by Prince Frederick was in progress. This function, however, interfered in no way with Colonel Lorne’s commands; he induced the Prince to leave Herrenhausen that very night with but one attendant, and Frederick turned his back upon a home which had sheltered him for many years, although it was in a sense no home at all, and in this life saw it no more.
But when the news of the King of England’s coup and the departure of the Prince reached Berlin, the Royal Palace became no fit place for Christians to live in.
The Queen took to her bed, and the Princess Wilhelmina, like other young ladies when they lose their lovers, fainted away, only to come to, apparently and write in her diary “the whole thing was a plot of George the Second,” which sounds very much like the remark of an angry and disappointed young lady, instead of one who wished us to believe that she was inspired with repugnance for Prince Frederick.
Her father, the King, however, who was in a towering rage at the course events had taken, was evidently not in the habit of wasting a good fit of temper on mere fuming. He appeared on the scene and soundly thrashed both Wilhelmina and her brother Frederick, Mr. Wilkins says, “in a shocking manner.”
And the double marriage scheme ended thus ignominiously!
CHAPTER VI.
The Prince and the London of 1728.
Prince Frederick, accompanied by Colonel Lorne and a single servant, traversed Germany and Holland as a private gentleman, and embarked at Helvetsluis for England in the first days of December, 1728.
Never has a tamer arrival of an Heir-apparent been chronicled in history than this coming of the Prince to London. Here is the brief notice of it in the Daily Post of the 8th December, 1728:
“Yesterday His Royal Highness Prince Frederick came to Whitechapel about seven in the evening, and proceeded thence privately in a hackney coach to St. James’s. His Royal Highness alighted at the Friary, and walked down to the Queen’s backstairs, and was there conducted to Her Majesty’s apartment.”
There! no reception of any sort, no guards turning out, no escort, no tap of drum! It was more like the coming of the Court hairdresser to curl Her Majesty’s wig!