Upon this communication being repeated to the Queen, she flew into a violent rage, and called the Prince a liar!
To this she added, according to Lord Hervey’s account—which looks very much like his own cooking—a great deal of special pleading to endeavour to show that there were no witnesses to prove the Prince’s assertion. But the plain answer to this is that it was hardly the sort of communication, especially passing between mother and son, at which the Prince would have been likely to have provided himself with witnesses. Against the Queen’s denial, we have the record of such a communication having taken place in the papers of Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, who gives circumstances and the nature of the interview, and we have also the same fact mentioned in Doddington’s Diary (Appendix). In the celebrated interview which took place between Doddington and the Prince there recorded, it is clearly shown that the Prince made this statement concerning the communication to his mother, to Doddington on February 8th, 1737, long before the deputation of his father’s noblemen waited on him, and that to Doddington he stated that the interview with the Queen had taken place during the previous summer. This seems to be a very strong piece of evidence that the Prince was speaking the truth and his mother the reverse. In fact from this time forth her hatred of him seemed to grow stronger day by day.
But to return to the deputation to the Prince with the King’s terms of settlement.
If these had not been communicated privately to him before, Frederick must have known that the King’s offer really meant very little, and he seemed quite prepared with his reply. It was at once taken down as he spoke it, and was as follows:—“That His Royal Highness desired the Lords to lay him with all humility at his Majesty’s feet, and to assure his Majesty that he had, and ever should retain, the utmost duty for his Royal person; that His Royal Highness was very thankful for any instance of his Majesty’s goodness to him or the Princess, and particularly for his Majesty’s intention of settling a jointure upon Her Royal Highness; but that as to the message, the affair was now out of his hands, and therefore he could give no answer to it.” After which His Royal Highness used many dutiful expressions towards his Majesty; and then added: “Indeed, my Lords, it is in other hands—I am sorry for it,” or to that effect. His Royal Highness concluded with earnestly desiring the Lords to represent his answer to His Majesty in the most respectful and dutiful manner.
There does not seem much in this answer to find fault with in the direction of respect at any rate, under the circumstances. The interview, however, ended there, and the Lords withdrew to convey the Prince’s answer back to his Royal Father in another part of the same Palace of St. James’s.
Both the King and Queen were enraged at the reply, and the former commenced at once to abuse rather roughly Sir Robert Walpole for persuading him to send it, but the minister sagely answered that he expected the good result of it not that day but on the morrow—the day of the Motion in the House of Commons. He was not wrong for he made the utmost use of it himself on that occasion in his speech.
So the agreement between father and son having fallen through, and everybody being worked up to the required pitch of excitement, the matter went forward, and on the next day, February 22nd, Pulteney made his motion before the House of Commons, for an address to be presented to the King, humbly asking for a settlement of £100,000 a year on the Prince of Wales and the same jointure on the Princess, as the Queen had when she was Princess of Wales, giving the King the assurance that the House would support him in this measure.
The strong points of Pulteney’s speech were, the claim the Prince had to the increase of income, which he said was founded on equity and good policy, and a legal right founded on law and precedent.
He contended that the revenue of the Civil List had been granted to George the First, and afterwards added to in the case of George the Second, on the express—or at any rate implied condition—that out of the revenue a sum of £100,000 a year should be set aside for the Prince of Wales. Pulteney is said to have spoken on the subject with great ability for an hour and a half, Lord Hervey adding in his account that in the speech there was “a great deal of matter and a great deal of knowledge, as well as art and wit, and yet I cannot but say I have often heard him speak infinitely better than he did that day. There was a languor in it, that one almost always perceives in the speeches that have been so long preparing and compiling.”
Sir Robert Walpole at once answered and, as might have been expected almost at the commencement of his speech, conveyed to the House the orders he had received from His Majesty to communicate to them the message he had sent his son on the previous day. This of course was the reason of his advising the King to send the message at all.