Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/73

Rh but of an agreeable face, captivating manners, and the highest, most domineering spirit. She obtained a complete ascendancy over the Prince, to such a degree that he pledged himself by every solemn tie which it was possible to invent to marry her, as soon as her husband died, who, however, though old, lived longer than was convenient to his wife or to the Prince. Circumstances obliged the Prince to take the resolution to marry, and Lady Archibald thought fit to permit it, for without her it could not have proceeded. She had still influence enough to decide in great measure his choice, and thought she had pitched upon one whose figure and understanding made it impossible that she could ever arrive at any influence. Lady Archibald continued after the marriage to rule as before with absolute sway, the Princess appearing to submit to everything. The courtiers of every denomination directed their homage solely to her, without bestowing a single attention elsewhere. Mr. Pitt and the Grenvilles among others, followed this course, which I have heard assigned as the reason of the unconquerable aversion which afterwards experienced on the part of the present King.

"The Prince's life may be judged in some degree from the account given of it in Lord Melcombe's Diary, a man who passed his life with great men whom he did not know, and in the midst of affairs which he never comprehended, but recites facts from which others may draw deductions which he never could. The Prince's activity could only be equalled by his childishness and his falsehood. His life was such a tissue of both as could only serve to show that there is nothing which mankind will not put up with where power is lodged. In the year of the Rebellion, when the account of the rebels arriving at Derby threw all London in consternation, when the King, his father, was erecting his standard at Barnet, and his younger brother, the Duke, was come from the army in Flanders and gone to meet the Pretender, he was found playing at blindman's-buff with his pages. Mr. Hamilton, Lady Archibald's brother, has told me that he sent a favourite German page for him