Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/242

 the final signature of the treaty was always delayed by the English king, and at his death in June 1727 was not completed. On the accession of George II Frederick still remained in Hanover, and being, in the words of Carlyle, ‘eager to be wedded to Wilhelmina as one grand, and at present grandest, source of his existence,’ entered into communications with her mother to have the marriage celebrated privately. The mother, who had set her heart on the match, eagerly consented, but having unsuspectingly informed Dubourgay, the English ambassador, of the project, he thought it his duty to prevent it. The antipathy existing between George II and Frederick William proved an insuperable barrier to the match, and after negotiations had been for some time in a state of suspense, they were definitely and finally broken off in 1730. In December 1728 the prince came to England; but, though welcomed by the nation, was received with marked coldness by his father. On 9 Jan. 1729 he was created Prince of Wales. The original cause of the estrangement between the prince and the king, the scandal of the reign, was probably the wreck of the marriage project, but though the breach was also widened by other circumstances, it can only be fully accounted for by the peculiarities of the prince's temper. His power of exasperating his relations, and especially his father, without committing against him any really great offence, indicated fatal incompatibilities of temper between them. His sister Amelia grudged him every hour he continued to live; the queen, his mother, wished a hundred times a day that he were dead, and is said to have remarked: ‘My dear firstborn is the greatest ass, and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world, and I heartily wish he was out of it.’ His father's stingy treatment of him in money matters, and his determination to keep him in a position of dependence, were peculiarly galling to the prince. His filial sentiments were, however, less replaced by indignation than contempt, which he loved on every opportunity to manifest, partly as a proof of his own superiority. He undoubtedly carried this feeling to an extreme when he wrote, or instigated the writing in 1735 of, ‘Histoire du Prince Titi’ (of which two English translations appeared in 1736), in which the king and queen were grossly caricatured. With George Bubb Dodington as his chief counsellor, he also formed an opposition court of his own, and used every influence to undermine the authority of Walpole, his father's favourite minister. Possessing easy manners and great good humour when his wishes were not thwarted, he set himself deliberately to outshine his father in popularity, and the fact that he could pose before the public as one who was to some extent ill-used told greatly in his favour. Partly because of his money embarrassments, and partly possibly because he knew he would deeply pain his father, he entered into negotiations with the old Duchess of Marlborough for the hand of her favourite granddaughter, Lady Diana Spencer, afterwards Duchess of Bedford, stipulating that he should receive 100,000l. for her portion. A day is said to have been actually fixed for the secret marriage in the duchess's lodge in Windsor Great Park, but the project was discovered, just in time to prevent it, by Sir Robert Walpole. The marriage of the princess royal to the Prince of Orange in 1734 was regarded by Frederick as something in the nature of a personal grievance, from the fact that she had anticipated him not only in getting married, but in obtaining a permanent grant from parliament, and an establishment of her own. The rivalry between the two came prominently before the public in connection with the ‘Tweedledum Tweedledee’ controversy, as to the respective merits of the operas of Handel and his Italian rival Buononcini, the princess being a special friend and patron of Handel at the Haymarket, and the prince heading those of the nobility who supported Buononcini at Lincoln's Inn Fields. The marriage of the princess induced Frederick to go to the antechamber of St. James's and request an audience of the king, to whom he made three demands: permission to serve in the Rhine campaign, a fixed income suitable to his circumstances, and the arrangement for him of a suitable marriage. The first was peremptorily refused, but the king promised favourably to consider the second and third, provided Frederick in future acted with proper respect towards the queen. Some time afterwards, with the prince's consent, a negotiation was entered into for the hand of the Princess Augusta, daughter of Frederick, duke of Saxe-Gotha, and the marriage was solemnised at St. James's, 26 April 1736. Instead, however, of proving a means of reconciliation between the king and the prince, the marriage was the occasion of embittering their relations for the remainder of the prince's life. George II himself, when prince of Wales, had obtained an annuity of 100,000l. out of a civil list of 700,000l., and the prince naturally thought himself entitled to at least an equal sum when the civil list had increased to 800,000l. The king proposed to give only 50,000l., whereupon the prince resolved, on the advice of his friends the leaders of the opposition, to appeal to parliament against