'They may burn and be damn'd, but they never shall marry:
George the Third as despotic, shall be, as Eighth Harry:
He shall cut off the heads of his sons and his spouses,
For we'll have no more war between red and white roses.'
* * * * *
The Duke was ultimately reconciled to the King, but, during the time of his displeasure, the former was a very bad Mentor to the young Prince of Wales, with whom he was most intimate to the day of his death. We learn a great deal about them from Walpole. The following occurred in 1780, when the Prince was eighteen years old:[20] 'Two days afterwards the Duke told me the Prince of Wales had said to him: "I cannot come to see you now without the King's leave, but in three years I shall be of age, and then I may act for myself. I will declare I will visit you."'
Again[21] (1781): 'But an event soon happened that changed that aspect, and made Cumberland House naturally the headquarters of at least part of the Opposition. The Duchess of Cumberland and the Luttrells openly countenanced the amour of the Prince of Wales, and Mrs. Armstead ... joined that faction, and set themselves in open defiance of the King.
'The first project was to make a ball for the Prince at Cumberland House; but the King forbad his servants going thither. The Duke then made a great dinner for the Prince's servants, to which, as I have said, the King would not permit them to go. The Duke was so enraged, that he wrote a most insolent letter to the King, in which he told him he would go abroad, for this country was not fit for a gentleman to live in. The Duke, however, went to the Drawing-room again, and continued to go, the Duchess having certainly told him that if he absented himself he would lose his influence over the Prince of Wales.
'To the Queen's ball, as I have said, the Duke was not invited, yet went to Court the next day. At that ball the Prince got drunk, which threw him into a dangerous fever, but such a general irruption over his whole face and body of the humours in his blood came out, that it probably saved his life.
'At this moment the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester came to town from Weymouth. The King, as usual, vented his complaints to the Duke of Gloucester. The King told the Duke that though, on the reconciliation, he had told the Duke of Cumberland that all his doors would be opened to him, "yet," said the King, "he comes to the Queen's house fourteen times a week to my son, the Prince, and passes by my door, but never comes in to me; and, if he meets me there, or when we are hunting, he only pulls off his hat, and walks, or rides away. I am ashamed," continued he, "to see my brother paying court to my son." The King resented it, and, though he invited the principal persons who hunted, to dinner, he never invited the Duke of Cumberland. The Prince of Wales seemed to be very weak and feeble. He drank hard, swore, and passed every night in ——: such were the fruits of his being locked up in the palace of piety!