at declared enmity, and the Prince brought the Princess to lye in at Norfolk House, the étiquette of the Court required that the Queen should pay the Princess a visit of ceremony. The Prince of course attended to hand her in and out. It was winter time. There was no Porte-Cochère. A mob of course assembled to see the Queen come in and out. This did not prevent the Prince, as soon as he had handed the Queen into the carriage, before the door was shut, falling on his knees in the midst of the puddle and imploring the Queen's intercession. The Queen's surprise and embarrass was excessive under all the circumstances, with her and the King's temper considered, heightened with regards, by which two such actors knew how to convey to each other what neither could say in the given situation. The Prince however completely gained his point, of convincing the mob that he was the tenderest and most dutiful of sons, and the King and the Queen the most hard-hearted of parents. It is said to have enraged the Queen beyond all measure.[1] Lady Archibald had put off the Prince's marriage as long as possible, expecting the chapter of accidents in regard to Lord Archibald, till the publick called for it and it became indispensable. Her next resource was to look out for the plainest Princess in all Germany, and from whose character she had least to apprehend. The Princess of Wales—beauty out of the question—turned out the direct opposite of what was expected or intended, and in the end proved an overmatch for Lady Archibald. It was some time however before anything happened to show the power she had imperceptibly gained, nor was it even suspected till Lady Archibald resigned, in consequence of an affront cast on Lord Archibald, contrived, as was supposed, ex-
- ↑ Two accounts of the above incident are to be found in the MSS. left by Lord Shelburne (see Preface). Of these the shorter account, which was given in the first edition of this book, appears in the MS. on which this chapter is mainly founded, and was printed in the first edition. The longer and completer account, which is now printed above, is contained in the MS. which in most other respects is not so complete. But it is certainly more correct, and it tallies with the accounts given of the incident in Walpole, Memoirs of George II., i. 74, and in Lord Hervey's Memoirs, ii. 409. See also Walpole, Reminiscences, iv. 309. The defeat of Lady Archibald by the Princess recalls the overthrow of the Princesse des Ursins by Elizabeth Farnese, whom the Princesse herself had induced Philip V. of Spain to marry as his second wife in 1714.
