(82) Colonel Brett, the companion of Wycherley, Steele, Davenant, etc. and of whom the following particulars are recorded by Spence, on the authority of Dr. Young:-"The Colonel was a remarkably handsome man.  The Countess looking out of her window on a great disturbance in the street, saw him assaulted by some bailiffs, who were going to arrest him.  She paid his debt, released him from their pursuit, and soon after married him.  When she died, she left him more than he expected; with which he bought an estate in the country, built a very handsome house upon it, and furnished it in the highest taste; went down to see the finishing of it, returned to London in hot weather and in too much hurry; got a fever by it, and died.  Nobody had a better taste of what would please the town, and his opinion was much regarded by the actors and dramatic poets.”  Anecdotes, p. 355.-E.

CHAPTER III.

Quarrel between George the First and his Son-Earl of
Sunderland-Lord Stanhope-South Sea Scheme-Death of Craggs-Royal
Reconcilement-Peerage Bill defeated-Project for seizing the
Prince of Wales and conveying him to America-Duke of
Newcastle-Royal Christening-Open Rupture-Prince and Princess of
Wales ordered to leave the Palace.

One of the most remarkable occurrences in the reign of George I. was the open quarrel between him and his son the Prince of Wales.  Whence the dissension originated; whether the prince’s attachment to his mother embittered his mind against his father, or whether hatred of’ his father occasioned his devotion to her, I do not pretend to know.  I do suspect front circumstances, that the hereditary enmity in the House of Brunswick between the parents and their eldest sons dated earlier than the divisions between the first two Georges.  The Princess Sophia was a woman of parts and great vivacity:  in the earlier part of her life she had professed much zeal for the deposed House of Stuart, as appeared by a letter of hers in print, addressed to the Chevalier de St. George.  It is natural enough for all princes,-who have no prospect of being benefited by the deposition of a crowned head, to choose to think royalty an indelible character.  The Queen of Prussia, daughter of George I. lived and died an avowed Jacobite.  The Princess Sophia, youngest child of the Queen of Bohemia, was consequently the most remote from any pretensions to the British crown; (83) but no sooner had King William procured a settlement of it after Queen Anne on her Electoral Highness, than nobody became a stancher Whig than the Princess Sophia, nor could be more impatient to mount the throne of the expelled Stuarts.  It is certain, that during the reign of Anne, the Elector George was inclined to the Tories, though-after his mother’s death and his own accession he gave himself to the opposite party.  But if be and his mother espoused different factions, Sophia found a ready partisan in her grandson,