But while the King was wasting his time in Hanover, the Prince and Princess of Wales were growing in popular favour at home, and it must be said that the young couple did their best to further this feeling of the people.
There was slowly and surely growing among the public a feeling of disgust at the King, and it was said by some that it would be better if he remained away in Hanover with his German mistress altogether. Another matter which brought George the Second into disrepute was that it was said he kept several important commissions in the Army vacant, and pocketed the pay attached to them.[37] This was the kind of thing very popular with his late father’s mistresses, Schulemburg and others.
The Queen was greatly commiserated, and indeed was to be pitied under the circumstances, although she had to a great extent brought the trouble on herself by her abominable pandering to her husband’s vices.
Insulting pasquinades now began to make their appearance directed against the King. A lame, blind and aged horse with a saddle and a pillion behind it was sent to wander loose through the streets—in which, of course, there were no police—with a placard tied to its head asking that no one should stop him as he was “the King’s Hanoverian equipage going to fetch His Majesty and his w—— to England.”
But the most insulting of these public notices was that affixed to St. James’s Palace itself and which read as follows:
“Lost or strayed out of this house a man who has left a wife and six children on the Parish. Whoever will give any tidings of him to the Churchwardens of St. James’s Parish so as he may be got again, shall receive four shillings and sixpence reward. N.B.—This reward will not be increased, nobody judging him to deserve a crown.”
Strangely enough the little King was not exasperated with these public satires on his immorality and neglect of his wife. He liked to be considered a Don Juan and a bit of a rake; the only jokes which angered him were those in which he was referred to as a senile libertine, past the age for gallantry.
Meanwhile the friction between Frederick and his mother increased, and was much added to by the conduct of the Princess in arriving late for church on several Sundays, and causing Her Majesty to cease her devotions, rise from her knees, and permit the Princess to squeeze by her—the Queen was very stout and the pew small—to her seat.
This conduct was attributed by those about the Queen to the Prince of Wales, who had designed a studied insult by it, to make his mother look ridiculous, but it is much more likely to have been the thoughtless act of a young girl. However, after two or three Sundays of it, the Queen made arrangements for the Princess to come in at another door. Lord Hervey appears to have been very active in fomenting the disagreement between Queen Caroline and the Prince and Princess of Wales at this time, particularly during a squabble which occurred concerning the removal of Frederick and his wife from Kensington to St. James’s, when they found the dulness of the former place intolerable. The Queen was greatly upset by this, as it is pretty certain that she had received definite orders from her husband not to let the Prince of Wales live in any other palace but that which she inhabited, for the very good reason that he did not want him to set up a separate Court, which would have been in opposition to his own, and in addition, an exceedingly popular one.
The Prince’s letter in reply—written in French—seems to have been a very dutiful one, but was thought to have been written for him by Lord Chesterfield. Lord Hervey unintentionally paid a great compliment to Lord Chesterfield’s accomplishments by saying that the letter might have been written by “Young Pitt,” but was certainly not sufficiently elegant for Lord Chesterfield. It was about this time that the Prince began to sink deeper and deeper into debt, a consequence no doubt of his marriage, and very foolishly began to raise money at enormous interest to be repaid on the death of his father.