To a girl of her keen perception, for it was shown by her conduct on her arrival that she was exceedingly intelligent, it cannot be for a moment doubted that as those anxious moments of imminent motherhood drew near she painfully realized too, that her baby was not wanted either, to be another stumbling block in the way of the favourite son.
It is not at all an uncommon thing for young married people to have this overstrung sense of anxiety for their coming little one, and to conjure up in their minds fears for which, perhaps, there is no reason. It cannot be said for a moment that the King and Queen had any designs on the life of the coming grandchild, although it was a barbarous age, when life was held much cheaper than it is now, and the life of a little baby—especially a “little rat”—did not count for much. Even King George himself used to say there were not half enough hangings, and that if they came into his hands he would not spare them, although God knows at that time men and women were strung up in rows outside the gaols in numbers sufficient to satisfy the most bloodthirsty advocate of capital punishment.
No, there cannot be a reasonable doubt that this night journey of the Prince and Princess was undertaken in an unreasoning panic maybe, but in an honest fear that the life of their coming little one was not safe at Hampton Court Palace, and that at any risk to themselves they would have the birth of the child take place in surroundings over which they had entire control, even though, as it happened, the royal child should be born between two tablecloths instead of sheets.
FOOTNOTES:
[44] Demolished in 1772.
[45] Footnote to page 216. Hervey’s Memoirs. Cunningham Edition.
CHAPTER XIX.
Which Contains a Great Deal of Fussing and Fuming and a Little Poetry.
This act of the Prince and Princess of Wales was construed into such a flagrant violation of the Royal Will, that the enraged little King at once took steps to assert his authority. Fortunately in these days Princesses of Wales are not peremptorily ordered to arrange their accouchements in places agreeable to the Royal Will.
They arrange them just wherever they like.
A brisk interchange of letters took place between the King and his eldest son, which ended in a somewhat abrupt command from the King to the Prince to remove himself and his family out of St. James’s Palace, which possibly was an order which the Prince and his wife were not at all sorry to obey; it gave them the opportunity of setting up their own home.