FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES. His birth. Created Duke of Gloucester and Duke of Edinburgh. His love of drinking and gaming.-Kept, by his father, at Hanover, and reluctantly recalled to England in his twenty-second year.-Created Prince of Wales.--His attachment to the Princess Royal of Prussia.—Romantic proposal to her mother.-Mutual dislike between George the Second and the Prince.-The latter heads the opposition against Walpole and the Court.-Insidious advice of Lord Bolingbroke to the Prince.-Duchess of Marlborough offers him the hand of her grand-daughter.-Scheme defeated by Walpole.-Prince married, in 1736, to the daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha.-Proposes to apply to Parliament for an increase of income.-King's message to him in consequence. -His reply.-Debate in the House of Commons on Pulteney's motion to allow the Prince 100,000l. per annum.— Walpole speaks against it.-Motion negatived.-Brutal conduct of the Prince on his wife's accouchment.-The Queen's remonstrance.-Efforts of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke to effect a reconciliation between the King and Prince.-Sir R. Walpole averse to such attempts.-Prince ordered to quit St. James's. Popularity of the Prince.-His affability and condescension.-Anecdotes.-Overtures made by the King to the Prince, through Secker, Bishop of Oxford.-The Prince's reply.-Visits his father, after Walpole's resignation. -Chief vices of the Prince.-His respect for literature and literary men.-Specimens of his poetry in French and English. He is attacked with pleurisy-recovers-and suffers a relapse from imprudently exposing himself.-Particulars of - his last moments.-The King's grief for his son's death.-General regret for the Prince.-Unpopularity of the "butcher" Cumberland. Ironical elegy on the Prince.-Sketch of the Prince of Wales's character. FREDERICK LOUIS, eldest son of George the Second and Queen Caroline, was born at Hanover on the 20th of January, 1707, some years previous to the elevation of the electoral family to the throne of these realms. In 1717, three years after the accession of his grandfather, George the First, he was created Duke of Gloucester: the following year he was installed a Knight of the Garter; and 1726, the title of Duke of Edinburgh was conferred upon him. As the short life of Frederick Prince of Wales comprises, with scarcely a single redeeming exception, a mere catalogue of folly and vice, it may easily be imagined that the tale of his childhood presents but little worthy of being recorded. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, indeed, who saw him at Hanover when he was in his tenth year, has bequeathed us a pleasing portrait of the royal child. To the Countess of Bristol she writes, on the 25th of November, 1716: “I am extremely pleased that I can tell you, without flattery or partiality, that our young Prince has all the accomplishments that it is possible to have at his age, with an air of sprightliness and understanding, and something so very engaging and easy in his behaviour, that he needs not the advantage of his rank to appear charming. I had the honour of a long conversation with him last night, before the King came in. His governor retired on purpose (as he told me afterwards), that I might make some judgment of his genius by hearing him speak without constraint; and I was surprised at the quickness and politeness that appeared in everything he said; joined to a person perfectly agreeable, and the fine hair of the Princess.” * This promise of future excellence, however, was not destined to be realized. He grew to indulge in the vices of drinking and the gaming-table while a mere boy; and as he also maintained an established mistress, the world was startled by the discreditable fact of three generations in the same family, namely, George the First, his son, and his grandson, indulging openly in the same vice at the same time. One characteristic anecdote is related of the Prince's boyhood. His governor happening to prefer a complaint against him to his parents, his mother, as was then customary with her, good-naturedly took his part. "Ah!" she said, "je m'imagine que ces sont des tours de page." The governor replied "Plût à Dieu, madame, que ces fûssent des tours de page! ces sont des tours de laquais et des coquin.” This story was related by George the Second himself to the first Lord Holland, and was also repeated to Lord Hervey by the Queen. The Prince, till he arrived at manhood, resided entirely in Hanover, a country which, if his father had had his will, he would probably never *Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Works, vol. i. p. 316, Ed. 1837. have quitted. A determined opposition between the sovereign and his first-born seems to have been an inherent failing in the House of Hanover; and the repugnance, which George the Second had conceived for his son, was exceeded only by the dislike with which he himself had been previ ously regarded by his own father. His fears, also, as well as his prejudices, prompted him to keep his son at a distance from England. Not only must he have been aware, from his knowledge of his son's disposition, how unlikely it was they could ever agree, but he knew from former experience, that publicity given to a royal quarrel must affect the first interests of the throne; and, moreover, he was conscious how formidable was the opposition with which it was in the power of the heir-apparent to array himself against the court. Such seem to have been the motives which induced the King to defer his son's removal from Hanover to the very last moment; indeed, it was not till the voice of the nation clamorously inveighed against the heirapparent receiving a foreign education,—thus having German predilections instilled into him, which must be highly prejudicial to the interests of his future subjects,-that the King issued a reluctant order to his son to repair to England. The tardiness of the invitation, (for the Prince was now in his twenty-second year,) as well as the circumstance of the King's refusing to pay his debts previous to his taking leave of the Electorate, not unnaturally excited indignation in a weak and ill-regulated mind, and, indeed, form some slight excuse for the Prince's subsequent undutiful conduct. He arrived in England in 1728, shortly after which period he received the titles of Earl of Chester and Prince of Wales, and was admitted a member of the Privy Council. The earliest incident of any importance in the personal history of the young Prince, was an attachment which he formed, shortly before his quitting Hanover, for the Princess Royal of Prussia, a lady who afterwards became Margravine of Bareith, and made herself conspicuous by her celebrated Mémoires. During the reign of George the First a union between the two houses of Brunswick and Brandenburgh appears to have been eagerly desired by both parties, and it was in the course of the negotiations which took place on the subject, that the Prince first conceived that attachment for his intended wife, which, he was assured by her mother, was reciprocated by the Princess. The Queen of Prussia seems to have warmly entered into the feelings of the royal lovers, and to have personally and anxiously desired the match; indeed, the brutal conduct of her husband, Frederick William, both towards her daughter and herself,* rendered it a matter * Lord Chesterfield writes to the plenipotentiaries from the Hague, on the 16th of September, 1730: "My last letters from Berlin inform me, that the King of Prussia had beaten the Princess-Royal, his daughter, most unmercifully, dragged her about the room by the hair, kicking her in the belly and breast, till her cries alarmed the officer of the guard, who came in. She keeps her bed of the bruises she received."-Lord Mahon's History of England, vol. ii. p. 72. Appendix. |