LOYALTY IS DORMANT

and that astute Minister, who had found peace his best policy, but had offered the people no glories in exchange for war, reluctantly gave way.

The antagonism subsisting between St. James's Palace and Leicester House deepened. Of the intrigues and petty conspiracies which occupied the Court party and that of the followers of the Prince of Wales, the reader will scarce need to be reminded.

Something less than justice, it seems to us, has been done to the character of Frederick, Prince of Wales. He has been called shallow and a dilettante, but at least he was perspicacious enough to see the defects of the régime. He realised that he lived in a society from which the great factor of sincerity had been withdrawn. It was an engine side-tracked and pistonless, wasting its steam in impotent sibilation. The example of the Court of his father, George II., although not as profligate as that of Louis XV., on the other side of the Channel, was yet vulgar and uninspiring. How, indeed, could loyalty thrive?

Loyalty requires to be nourished by grace, outward or inward, and George II. no more than George I. could nourish it. There was no poetrynothing even respectable in the monarchy; there was nothing save a traditional veneration for the kingly institution to allure men's minds, hearts, or sympathies to the monarch. Albeit if no young

squire's eye flashed, or his bosom heaved, or his voice broke into melodious roundelays at the toast of the phlegmatic, commonplace Hanoverian who sat on the British throne, yet he had at least two good reasons for keeping him in that posture. There

was the dread of the Stuarts, and distrust and dislike of the Scots. At any moment the Pretender might land in Britain. England might not be jealous of her neighbours or of her virtue, but as the "predominant partner" she was jealous of her hegemony.

It is fit thus to emphasise the state of the time in order that we may have a background for our central figure, that we may see what were the forces and conditions which, beginning at his birth, and rendered inveterate during his minority, the official head of society had during his long reign to combat.

In a brick mansion differing but little from its neighbours, in the south-eastern corner of St. James's Square, London, George William Frederick, sixth in descent from James I., and afterwards King of Great Britain and Ireland, was born on the 4th June 1738.1

His mother, Augusta, Princess of Wales, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, had so little expected her labour, that a few hours previously she had been strolling in St. James's Park with the Prince, her husband. The fortunes of this royal pair shared the confusion and instability of the times. Less than a twelvemonth after their marriage Frederick had quarrelled openly with his father, George II., who took the very violent, but on the whole not unreasonable, measure of turning the couple out of his palace. Norfolk House, unpalatial as it was, afforded them temporary refuge, and here into such

1 24th May, O.S.

CHARACTER OF GEORGE'S MOTHER

an England as we have briefly attempted to describe the infant prince was prematurely ushered.1

Augusta, who had already given birth to a daughter, afterwards Duchess of Brunswick, was a woman of strong character, pious, and with an uncompromising horror of laxity and licentiousness. Proud and reserved, she had few intimates; her chief joy in life was in the bosom of her family, while others of high rank found theirs in the diversion of masquerades, gambling, and scandalmongering. At Leicester House or Cliveden the utmost propriety was observed. "The Prince's family," wrote Lady Hervey in 1748, "is an example of innocent and cheerful amusement. All this last summer they played abroad, and now in the winter in a large room they divert themselves at baseball, a play all who are or have been schoolboys are well acquainted with. The ladies as well as gentlemen join in this amusement, and the latter return the compliment in the evening by playing for an hour at the old and

1 Concerning George's birthplace, the present Duke of Norfolk courteously writes: "The house in which George III. was born is old Norfolk House, which stands behind the present house in St. James's Square. The back part of Norfolk House was pulled down for the making of Waterloo Place, but the front face was preserved, and looks upon the small garden behind the present Norfolk House. I do not know in what room George III, was born. There is a large room with a zoned painted ceiling called the Painted Chamber, which I have heard stated was the room in question. I think this is extremely improbable, as it was clearly the largest Drawing Room, or State Room, in the house. It has since been broken up into smaller rooms with partitions, and it is very probable that the room in which George III. was born may have been among those pulled down.”

innocent game of push-pin." When a frivolous French marquis called at Leicester House, expecting the diversions of faro and scandal, he was asked to choose between "rounders" and a reading from Addison.

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Prince George, with his brothers and sisters, seems to have passed his childhood in simple, pleasant fashion, similar to that of many noblemen's sons of our own day. He was hardly seven when Dr. Francis Ayscough, afterwards Dean of Bristol, was appointed preceptor to him and his brothers. "I thank God," writes Ayscough to a friend in February 1745, "I have one great encouragement to quicken me in my duty, which is, the good disposition of the children entrusted to me. As an instance of it, I must tell you that Prince George, to his honour and my shame, has learned several pages in your little book of verses without any directions from me. And I must say of all the children-for they are all committed to my care-that they are as conformable and as capable of receiving instruction as any I ever yet met with. How unpardonable then should I be in the sight of God and man if I neglected my part towards them! All I can now say is that no care or diligence shall be wanting in me, and I beg the prayer of you and every honest man for the Divine blessing on my endeavours." 1

Ayscough, however, was, unhappily, kept too busy as Clerk of the Closet to Frederick to attend

1 Life and Times of Countess Huntingdon, vol. i. pp. 175–6.