When all the world conspires to praise her

The woman’s deaf, and does not hear.

And Gay:—

Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies.

Mrs. Howard continued to be the recipient of the Prince’s attentions in the intervals of his unsuccessful overtures to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Bellenden and others; yet she conducted herself with so much discretion, and was so popular, that every one about the court, from the Princess downwards, conspired to ignore the liaison existing between them. But Mrs. Howard’s spendthrift husband was so inconsiderate as to interrupt this harmony. He held the post of a gentleman of the bedchamber to the King, and under the new rule the ladies whose husbands were in the King’s service were to quit the service of the Princess. Mrs. Howard had refused, but Howard now insisted that his wife should leave Leicester House and return to him. Howard’s action was instigated by the King, who saw in this an opportunity of annoying the Prince and Princess of Wales. Mrs. Howard again refused to obey, and the aggrieved husband went one night, half-tipsy, to Leicester House, and noisily demanded his wife. He was promptly turned out by the lackeys, but the scandal went abroad. Howard then adopted a loftier tone, and made an appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury, beseeching his Grace to use his influence to induce his wife to return to her lawful spouse. Thereon the aged Archbishop wrote a lengthy letter to the Princess, pointing out the obligations of the married state, the duties of the wife and the privileges of the husband, as laid down by St. Peter and St. Paul, and asking her to send Mrs. Howard back to her husband. The Princess took no notice of this homily, and Mrs. Howard remained where she was.

Howard, therefore, went to Leicester House and forced himself into the Princess’s presence. He made a great scene—he declared that he would have his wife even if he had to pull her out of the Princess’s coach. Caroline spiritedly told him “to do it if he dared”. “Though,” she said years later, when relating this scene to Lord Hervey, “I was horribly afraid of him (for we were tête-à-tête) all the while I was thus playing the bully. What added to my fear on this occasion was that as I knew him to be so brutal, as well as a little mad, and seldom quite sober, so I did not think it impossible that he might throw me out of the window.... But as soon as I got near the door, and thought myself safe from being thrown out of the window, je pris mon grand ton de Reine, et je disois, ‘I would be glad to see who should dare to open my coach door and take out one of my servants....’ Then I told him that my resolution was positively neither to force his wife to go to him, if she had no mind to it, nor to keep her if she had.” Howard blustered and swore without any respect for the Princess’s presence, and declared that he would go to the King. Whereupon the Princess said: “The King has nothing to do with my servants, and for that reason you may save yourself the trouble.” So Howard took his leave.

Poor Mrs. Howard was in great alarm, as she dreaded to return to her husband, who had neglected her and used her cruelly. Some of the lords about Leicester House formed a guard to protect her against forcible abduction, and when the Prince’s court moved from Leicester House to Richmond for the summer, as etiquette did not permit her to travel in the same coach as the Princess, it was arranged that she should slip away quietly, and so evade her husband. Therefore, on the day the court set out, the Duke of Argyll and Lord Islay, who were her great friends, conveyed Mrs. Howard very early in the morning to Richmond in a private coach. But this state of affairs could not continue. If Howard carried the matter into the law courts, he could force his wife to return to him, willy-nilly, and the spectacle of the Prince and Princess of Wales defying the law by detaining her was not one which could be allowed. Therefore, after a good deal of negotiation, the matter was settled by Howard’s allowing his wife to remain in the Prince’s household in return for the sum of £1,200 a year, paid quarterly in advance. He had never really wished her to come back, and the whole dispute at last narrowed itself into an attempt to extort money on the one hand, and to withhold it on the other—a dispute far from creditable to any one concerned in it.

As the royal palaces of Windsor, Hampton Court and Kensington were now closed to the Prince and Princess of Wales, it was necessary that they should have some country house, and Richmond was fixed upon as their summer residence. Richmond Lodge, situated in the little, or old park of Richmond, had been the residence of Ormonde before his flight, and he had lived here in great luxury. “It is a perfect Trianon,” says a contemporary writer; “everything in it, and about it, is answerable to the grandeur and magnificence of its great master.” The house itself was not very large; it is described as “a pleasant residence for a country gentleman,” but the gardens were beautiful. Ormonde’s estates were forfeited for high treason, and Richmond Lodge came into the market. The Prince of Wales bought it for £6,000 from the Commissioners of the Confiscated Estates Court, though not without difficulty, for the King endeavoured to prevent his obtaining it.

Richmond was much more in the country then than now, and there were very few houses between it and Piccadilly, except Kensington Palace. The road thither was lonely, and infested with highwaymen and dangerous characters. At night it was very unsafe. Bridget Carteret, one of the maids of honour, when attending the Princess on one of these journeys, had her coach stopped by highwaymen, and was forced to give up all her jewels.[96] The Princess gave her a diamond necklace and gold watch in place of the trinkets she had lost. There were other drawbacks, too, for we read: “Richmond Lodge having been very much pestered with vermin, one John Humphries, a famous rat physician, was sent for from Dorsetshire by the Princess, through the recommendation of the Marchioness of Hertfordshire, who collected together five hundred rats in his Royal Highness’s Palace, which he brought alive to Leicester House as a proof of his art in that way”.[97] He must have been a veritable Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Richmond Lodge soon became quite as gay as Leicester House; a great number of the nobility drove down by road on their coaches, or came by water in their barges, during the summer months. Lady Bristol, who was one of the Princess’s ladies, writes from here: “Yesterday there was a horse race for a saddle, etc., the Prince gave; ’twas run under the terrace wall for their Royal Highnesses to see it. There was an infinite number of people to see them all along the banks; and the river full of boats with people of fashion, and that do not come to court, among whom was the Duchess of Grafton and Mr. and Mrs. Beringer. They all stayed, until it was late, upon the water to hear the Prince’s music, which sounded much sweeter than from the shore. Every one took part in the Prince and Princess’s pleasure in having this place secured to them when they almost despaired of it, and though such a trifle, no small pains were taken to disappoint them.”[98]