With these disappointments, the king returned to England, and arrived at St. James's, November 18th. The princess appeared again in public, and the king gave her the same honours and place as the queen used to have. He was not in the same gracious mood with others of the court. The calamity of Lord Holderness, the secretary of state, was singular; he was for some days in disgrace, for having played at blindman's-buff in the summer at Tunbridge. To Lord Harcourt the king said not a word. In the beginning of December the chancellor and the archbishop sent to Lord Harcourt that they would wait on him by the king's command. He prevented them, and went to the chancellor, who told him that they had orders to hear his complaints. He replied, "They were not proper to be told but to the king himself," which did not make it a little suspicious, that even the princess was included in his disgusts. The first incident that had directly amounted to a quarrel was the Bishop of Norwich finding the Prince of Wales reading Père d'Orleans's "Révolutions d'Angleterre," a book professedly written by the direction, and even by the communication, of James II., to justify his measures. Stone at first peremptorily denied having seen that book in thirty years, and offered to rest his whole justification upon the truth or falsehood of that accusation. At last it was confessed that the prince had the book, but it was qualified with Prince Edward's borrowing it of his sister Augusta. Stone acted mildness, and professed being willing to continue to act with Lord Harcourt and the bishop; but the sore had penetrated too deep, and they who had given the wounds had aggravated them with harsh provocations. The bishop was accused of having turned Scott one day out of the prince's chamber by an imposition of hands that had at least as much of the flesh as the spirit in the force of the action. Cresset, the link of the connection, had dealt out very ungracious epithets both on the governor and preceptor; and Murray, by an officious strain of strange impudence, had early in the quarrel waited on the bishop, and informed him that Mr. Stone ought to have more consideration in the prince's family; and repeating the visit and opinion, the bishop said, "He believed that Mr. Stone found all proper regard, but that Lord Harcourt, the chief of the trust, was generally present." Murray interrupted him, and cried, "Lord Harcourt! pho! he is a cypher, and must be a cypher, and was put in to be a cypher." A notification, however understood before by the world, that could not be very agreeable to the person destined to a situation so insignificant! Accordingly, December 6th, Lord Harcourt had a private audience in the king's closet, and resigned. The archbishop waited on his Majesty, desiring to know if he would see the Bishop of Norwich, or accept his resignation from his (the archbishop's) hands. The king chose the latter.[11]
The poor princess was sadly perplexed by all this pother, and told Melcombe that she knew nothing of it, and could not conceive what they meant: but she added, after profound reflection, "indeed, the bishop was teaching them logic, which, as she was told, was a very odd study for children of their age, not to say of their condition." Perhaps, if Prince George had paid more attention to the study, he would not have behaved so illogically during the American war. However, it all blew over again, ere long, and we find Lord Melcombe able to record:
"1753, February 8.—I waited on the princess. She began at once by saying she had good news to tell me; that they were very happy in their family; that the new bishop gave great satisfaction; that he seemed to take great care and in a proper manner; and that the children took to him and seemed mightily pleased.
"I stick (the princess is speaking) to the learning as the chief point; you know how backward they were when we were together, and I am sure you don't think them much improved since. It may be that it is not too late to acquire a competence, and that is what I am most solicitous about; and if this man, by his manner, should hit upon the means of giving them that, I shall be mightily pleased. The Bishop of Norwich was so confused, that one could never tell what he meant, and the children were not at all pleased with him. The stories about the history of the Père d'Orleans were false; the only little dispute between the bishop and Prince Edward, was about le Père Péréfixe's history of Henry IV."
One more extract, and we return Lord Melcombe to the limbo whence we drew him.
"1753, November 17.—The princess sent for me to attend her between eight and nine o'clock. I went to Leicester House, expecting a small company and a little music, but found nobody but her royal highness. She made me draw a stool and sit by the fireside. Soon after came in the Prince of Wales and Prince Edward, and then the Lady Augusta, all in undress, and took their stools and sat round the fire with us. We continued talking of familiar occurrences till between seven and eleven, with the ease and unreservedness and unconstraint, as if one had dropped into a sister's house, that had a family, to pass the evening. It is much to be wished that the princess conversed familiarly with more people of a certain knowledge of the world."
Bubb's closing remark may be truly endorsed. Though Dr. Thomas, Bishop of Peterboro', the new preceptor to the Prince of Wales, was a very excellent man, and gave great satisfaction to the princess, from the extraordinary care and proper manner manifested in his conduct, and though the royal children loved him, and were much pleased with his instruction,—for all that I do not think him the right man in the right place. Granted that the course of education became of the most beneficial kind, and that the public were fully satisfied that the prince, instead of being separated from his remaining parent, should be especially under her care, whilst he received his elementary initiation into literature and politics, still, the result was a faulty one, as a competent writer on the subject allows.[12]
In the plan, however, of keeping the prince exempt from the vices of the age, there was, perhaps, too much and unnecessary strictness; as it went so far as even to restrain him, with a few exceptions, from all intercourse with the young nobility, confining his knowledge of the world to books and the social circle at Leicester House, which, though select and cheerful as well as unrestrained, was not adapted to give that manliness of character necessary for a monarch, and might have been productive of much evil, had not the prince's own natural resolution, since denominated obstinacy, preserved him from acquiring that milkiness of character which might have been expected.
Little did people think at the time how bitterly a fair-haired cherub, then playing about the gardens of Carlton House, would suffer from the want of knowledge of the world in which her brother was being brought up.