The King sent orders to the Duke of Cumberland not to appear at Court. While he stayed at Calais, he gave balls under a feigned name, and with his Duchess made a tour to some towns in French Flanders.
Finding at last that no violence would be attempted against his person, he returned to England on the 30th of November, and retired with his Duchess to his lodge in the great park at Windsor, which the King did not take from him. Even his gentlemen equerries were permitted to remain about his person, having been chosen by the King, and having had no knowledge of the Duke’s wedding. But the Guards were withdrawn, and the Lord Chamberlain was ordered to whisper, though not in form, that whoever went to the Duke or Duchess of Cumberland must not appear at Court. The same information was given privately to the Foreign Ministers; and the effect was so universal, or the contempt for the Duke and hatred of his new connection so general, that not a man even of the Opposition made him a visit. Sir John Delaval[211] and his wife, the Duke’s intimates, were the sole persons of a rank above the vulgar that went near them, except the Lutterells. Temple Lutterell, one of the brothers, a very sensible lawyer, was supposed to be author of many libels published in the papers against the King’s cruelty to his brother; yet it ought to be acknowledged, that the King could not well express less resentment.
In the meantime came more favourable accounts of the Duke of Gloucester. He recovered, though the hiccup and symptoms of death had appeared on him; and as soon as his strength was a little recruited, he sailed to Naples, the voyage whither again brought on a return of his flux; but he once more mastered it; and the English physicians were of opinion that the discharge might for some time relieve the virulence of his complaint, though no man flattered himself with a long duration of the Duke’s life. On his return he visited Rome, and the Stuarts had once more the mortification of seeing a Prince of the rival Blood, and a Protestant, distinguished with peculiar honours by a Pope, who even conversed with him.
This was the last gleam of comfort to the dying Princess: but this reprieve of her son was bitterly dashed by the shame and misery that fell on her daughter, the Queen of Denmark, of which, as she languished till the beginning of the next year,[212] she lived long enough to hear, and but just long enough to die with the anxiety of dreading a fatal conclusion to that daughter.
She now beheld the wretched consequences of the wretched education she had given her children. The Queen of Denmark had been kept in her nursery till sent to Copenhagen; had had no company but servants, and could have seen nothing but an intimacy with Lord Bute, which all the Princess’s children spoke of with disgust; and could have heard nothing but passionate lamentations from the Princess on the impotence of power possessed by English Sovereigns,—lessons that seem to have made but too deep impression on the inexperienced young Queen of Denmark, when she came to have a lover, and be mistress of absolute power. The Duke of Gloucester, the Princess of Wales had always loved the least, though the most meritorious of her children. She thought him insuperably dull,—nor was he bright: one day in his childhood she ridiculed him before his brothers and sisters, and bade them laugh at the fool. He sat silent and thoughtful. She said, “What! now you are sullen.” He replied, “No, he was thinking.”—“Thinking!” replied his mother, with scorn; “and pray, what was you thinking of?” He answered, “I was thinking what I should feel if I had a son as unhappy as you make me!”
This unfortunate mother’s fate is a speaking lesson to princes. Had the credit and happiness of her children been her object, her own life might, except in those she lost, have been prosperous and renowned. Her own ambition, and the desire of making her son more powerful than the laws allowed, led her and him into disgraces, mortifications, humiliations. Reviled, traduced, hated, she scarce dared to appear out of her palace; her Favourite she saw driven from his country, and his life frequently endangered. Her younger children disgraced her; and the eldest, as well as herself, missed the despotism she sought for both, and obtained only that triste pre-eminence of Turkish sultans, being shut up with mutes in their own seraglio.
APPENDIX.
I.
CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF LORD BUTE.
([Vol. i.] p. 10.)