The conduct of the Prince of Wales was becoming more and more insolent to the King and Queen every day. Perhaps King George was right in his belief that Walpole's policy of compromise had made Frederick think himself of some real account in public affairs. It is certain that he began to act as if he were determined the whole nation should know how thoroughly independent he was of the authority of his father and mother. He had soon a peculiar opportunity of making a display of this ferocious independence.
The Princess of Wales was about to have her first child. For some reason, which no one could well explain, the news of the coming event was not made known to the King and Queen until the hour of its coming was very near. Even then there seems to have been some conscious or unconscious misleading of the King and Queen as to the actual time when according to calculations the child was to be born. The King and Queen were left under the impression that it was a good deal further off than it really proved to be. The Queen, with all her natural goodness of heart, was painfully suspicious. She was suspicious sometimes even of those she loved and trusted; and she hated both the Prince and the Princess of Wales. She had taken it into her head that the Princess of Wales was not likely to have a child. She persisted in asserting to those around her that the princess was not pregnant and never would be. Naturally when she allowed her mind to be filled with this idea, the next conclusion for her to jump at was the conviction that a supposititious infant was about to be palmed off on the Palace and the {105} country. This idea took full possession of her mind, and she kept constantly telling those around her that, no matter when or where the event might take place, she was determined to be in at that birth. In the most explicit and emphatic way she told people that she would make sure for herself that no child was imported in a warming-pan this time.
The King and Queen were now in Hampton Court Palace; the Prince and Princess of Wales were also living there. Nothing would have been easier for the Queen than to carry out her purpose if the princess were allowed to remain in the palace until after her confinement. It was reported to her that the prince had said he was anxious that his wife should be confined in London—in St. James's Palace. This the Queen was determined to prevent if she could. The Princess Caroline fully shared her mother's belief that the Prince of Wales was quite capable of palming off a spurious child on the country; and indeed the King became after a while as well convinced of it as his wife and his daughter. It was resolved that a message should be sent from the King to the Prince of Wales, giving a sort of Royal command that the princess should remain at Hampton Court until after her confinement. Lord Hervey shook his head at all this. He did not believe in the warming-pan fantasy; and he felt sure that in any case the Prince of Wales would contrive to get his wife out of Hampton Court if he wished to do so. What was to prevent the princess going up to London a little before her time, and then affecting to fall suddenly ill there, and declaring that she could not endure the pain and danger of removal? Lord Hervey had seen a good deal of the prince in old days. They had had friendships and quarrels and final estrangement, and he knew his prince pretty well.
What Hervey had predicted came to pass, but in a worse way than he had ventured to predict. The Queen kept urging Walpole to send the King's order to the prince. Walpole kept putting it off. For one reason, the {106} minister had been told the confinement was to be expected in October, and this was only July. It is very likely, too, that he shared Hervey's scepticism alike as to the supposititious child and the possibility of keeping the prince's wife at Hampton Court against the prince's will. The Royal command was never sent.
[Sidenote: 1737—Neighbors requisitioned]
On Sunday, July 31, 1737, the Prince of Wales and the princess dined publicly with the King and Queen in Hampton Court Palace. Not a word was said to any one about an early approach of the confinement. The princess seemed in her usual condition. The two sets of royal personages did not talk with each other at this time, although they thus had ceremonial meetings in public. The Queen called the attention of some one near her to the princess's appearance, and insisted that she was not going to have a child at all. When dinner was over, the prince and princess went back to their own apartments, and later that evening the princess was taken with the pains of labor. Then followed what has hardly ever happened in the story of the life of a poor washer-woman or a peasant's wife. The unfortunate princess was far gone in her agony before any one had time to think; and before those around them had much time to think the Prince of Wales had determined to carry her off, groaning in labor as she was, and take her ten miles to London. The whole story is a shocking one; and we shall put it into a very narrow compass. But it has to be told somehow. By the help of an equerry and a dancing-master, the writhing princess was hoisted down-stairs and got into a carriage. The dancing-master, Dunoyer, was a hanger-on and favorite of the prince; and, being employed to teach dancing to the younger children of George the Second, acted as a kind of licensed spy, so Hervey says, on the one family and the other. In the carriage with the prince and princess came Lady Archibald Hamilton, who was understood to be the prince's mistress. No royal movement in those days would seem to be thought quite complete without the presence of some mistress of the {107} King or prince. The carriage reached London about ten o'clock. It had been driven at full gallop, the poor princess writhing and screaming all the time, and the prince scolding at her and telling her it was nonsense to cry and groan about pain which would so soon be over. When they got to St. James's Palace there were naturally no preparations made for a lying-in. The prince and Lady Archibald Hamilton set to work to get some things in readiness, and found they had to send round the neighborhood to collect some of the most necessary appliances for such an occasion. So pitifully unprovided was the palace that no clean sheets could be found, and the prince and his mistress put the princess to bed between two table-cloths. At a quarter before eleven the birth took place. A tiny baby was born; "a little rat of a girl," Lord Hervey says, "about the bigness of a good large tooth-pick." The little rat of a girl grew up, however, to be a handsome woman. She was seen by John Wilson Croker in 1809 and had still the remains of beauty. The Lords of the Council had been hurriedly sent for to be present at the birth; but the event was so sudden and so unexpected that only Lord Wilmington, the President of the Council, and Lord Godolphin, the Privy Seal, arrived in time to be able to testify that no warming-pan operation was accomplished.
The unsuspecting King and Queen had gone to bed, according to their usual quiet custom, at eleven o'clock. Their feelings, as a certain class of writers are in the habit of saying, may be more easily imagined than described when they were roused from sleep about two in the morning by the couriers, who came to tell them that the princess had become the mother of a girl, and that the prince and princess were at St. James's Palace, London. There was racing and chasing. Within half an hour the Queen was on the road to London with the two eldest princesses, Lord Hervey, and others. The Queen comported herself with some patience and dignity when she saw the prince and princess. The child was shown to her. {108} No clothes had yet been found for it but some napkins and an old red cloak. "The good God bless you, poor little creature," said the Queen in French; "you have come into a very disagreeable world!"
[Sidenote: 1737—Applying a precedent]
The King and Queen consented to become the godfather and godmother of the poor little creature who had been brought thus disagreeably into this disagreeable world. But the conduct of the prince was regarded as unpardonable, and he was banished by Royal letter from the King's palace, whether at Hampton Court or St. James's. The prince's own party, Pulteney and his colleagues, utterly refused to give their sanction to the extraordinary course which Frederick had taken. Bolingbroke wrote from France, angrily and scornfully condemning it. But the Patriots were willing, and resolved to stand the prince's friends all the same, and they had not even the courage to advise him to make a frank and full apology for his conduct. Indeed the action of the prince seems to suggest an approach to insanity rather than deliberate and reasoned perverseness. He had forced his wife to run the risk of losing her own life and her child's life, he had grossly and wantonly offended his father and mother, and he had thrown a secrecy and mystery round the birth of the infant which, if ever there came to be a dispute about the succession, would give his enemies the most plausible excuse for proclaiming that a spurious child had been imposed upon the country. As a friend of the Queen said at the time, if ever the Crown came to be fought for again, the only question could be whether the people would rather have the Whig bastard or the Tory bastard.
The whole business, as might be expected, caused a terrible scandal. Not merely was the prince banished from the palace, not merely did the King refuse to see him or to hold further communication with him, but it was formally announced by the Secretaries of State to all the foreign ministers that it would be considered a mark of respect to the Sovereign if they would abstain from visiting the prince. Furthermore, a message was sent in {109} writing to all peers, peeresses, and privy councillors, declaring that no one who went to the prince's court would be admitted into the King's presence. Never probably was domestic dirty linen more publicly washed. Nevertheless, it very soon was made apparent that the course taken by the King was in strict accordance with a precedent which at one time had a very direct application to himself. Some of the prince's friends thought it a clever stroke of policy just then to print and publish the letters which passed between the late King and the present Sovereign when the latter was Prince of Wales and got into a quarrel with his father. The late King sent his vice-chamberlain to order his son "that he and his domestics must leave my house." A copy was also published of a circular letter signed by the honored name of Joseph Addison, then Secretary of State, addressed to the English ministers at foreign courts, giving the King's version of the whole quarrel, in order that they might report him and his cause aright to the unsatisfied.