Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/310

222 was exposed upon the other, yet now the case was altered, for, as his heart grew cooler and his temper warmer, so her sufferings were increased, and the usual recompense for them lessened."

Into this unhappy relation there was introduced the miserable, and, as it seemed then and for some time after, traditional hostility between the sovereign and the heir to the throne. Frederick, Prince of Wales, a profligate, faithless, intriguing puppy—his parents used much worse words of him—was married to the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha in 1736, and from that time the family dissensions, bad enough already, became worse than ever. The Prince must needs tell his wife to approach as near to insulting the Queen as she could do without open insolence, and for himself, he must pass the bounds of deliberate affront. The last scene of the domestic tragi-comedy was the hurrying of the Princess of Wales from Hampton Court on Sunday, 31st July 1737, when her child was on the point of being born, full gallop to Saint James's.

It was a marvel that the Princess did not die, and the indignation of the King and Queen was for once justifiable in its extravagance. The night, which Lord Hervey describes with such vivacity, was one such as many another at the Palace, which the courtiers professed to find so dull. The King, Queen, Prince and Princess of Wales had dined together. Then the King retired below-stairs to