Notwithstanding the talent of the great actor, King George’s fancy was captured by the man who played the part of Lord Mayor.
During the remainder of the performance the little monarch continually worried his attendants with the following questions: “Will not that lor-mayor come again? I like dat lor-mayor. When will he come again?”
But the resentment engendered by the slights and ill-treatment the Prince had received from his family—what a family to live in the same house with!—which resentment was shared and fostered by his party, especially Bolingbroke, the moving spirit of it, began to assume a definite form about this time, till at last the Prince, no doubt inspired by Bolingbroke, determined to address his father personally on the subject of his wrongs. He took a step against which Bubb Doddington in his diary says he did his best to dissuade him.
One morning in the early summer of 1734, the Prince of Wales presented himself without previous notice at the King’s ante-chamber and requested an immediate audience. The King, upon whom this presumptuous request no doubt produced an instant fit of fuming, delayed admitting him until he had sent for Sir Robert Walpole, a very wise proceeding as it turned out. The King no doubt scented danger in the air.
On the arrival of Sir Robert, the King boiling with rage, expressed his indignation at the Prince’s audacity, but the Minister counselled moderation and at last persuaded the King to receive his son reasonably.
On his admittance the Prince made three requests:
The first to serve a campaign on the Rhine in the Imperial army; the second related to an augmentation of his revenue, with a broad hint that he was in debt; and the third, a very reasonable suggestion, that he should be settled by a suitable marriage. He was then twenty-seven.
To the first and last of these three propositions the King made no answer, to the second he seemed inclined to agree. Here the interview appears to have ended.
But although under the cool advice of his Minister Walpole the King had controlled himself, his anger broke out with redoubled fury when he heard for the first time, and it must have been a blow, that the Prince of Wales intended bringing the matter of his income before Parliament. This was particularly inopportune to the King, as it was a well-known fact that out of his immense income of £900,000 per annum, £100,000 was intended by Parliament for the Prince of Wales, though the King’s discretion in dealing with his children was not hampered in any way. But here the Queen stepped in; despite Lord Hervey’s weak but spiteful satire, the Queen and her son were still on the terms of mother and child; she used her best endeavours to make peace between the father and son, and had her ears not been systematically poisoned against Frederick by Hervey and others, and had not the Prince on the other hand been controlled by the strong hand of Bolingbroke, she might have continued her natural office of peacemaker between these two.
On the present occasion, however, she succeeded in at least patching up a truce; her influence over the weaker nature of the King was at this time, as it always had been and in fact continued to the day of her death, boundless. She could mould him in those soft white hands of hers, of which she was no doubt naturally proud, into any form she chose, and with the Prince she took the business line of telling him he would gain nothing by trying to force the King’s hand through Parliament.