Among those who had preferred the service of the King to that of the heir apparent, was the Duke of Newcastle;, (95) Who, having married his sister to Lord Townshend, both his royal highness and the viscount had expected would have adhered to that connexion-and neither forgave his desertion.-I am aware of the desultory manner in which I have told my story, having mentioned the reconciliation of the King and Prince before I have given any account of their public rupture.  The chain of my thoughts led me into the preceding details, and, if I do not flatter myself, will have let you into the motives of my dramatis personae better than if I had ’more exactly observed chronology.- and as I am not writing a regular tragedy, and profess but to relate facts as I recollect them; or (if you will allow me to imitate French writers of tragedy) may I not plead that I have unfolded my piece as they do, by introducing two courtiers to acquaint one another, and by bricole the audience, with what had passed in the penetralia before the tragedy commences?

The exordium thus duly prepared, you must suppose, ladies, that the second act opens with a royal christening The Princess of Wales had been delivered of a second son.  The Prince had intended his uncle, the Duke of York, Bishop of Osnaburg, should with his Majesty be godfathers.  Nothing could equal the indignation of his Royal Highness when the King named the Duke of Newcastle for second sponsor, and would hear of no other.  The christening took place as usual in the Princess’s bedchamber.  Lady Suffolk, then in waiting as woman of the bedchamber, and of most accurate memory painted the scene to me exactly.  On one side of the bed stood the godfathers and godmother; on the other the Prince and the Princess’s ladies.  No sooner had the Bishop closed the ceremony, than the Prince, crossing the feet of the bed in a rage, stepped up to the Duke of Newcastle, and, holding up his hand and fore-finger in a menacing attitude, said, “You are a rascal, but I shall find you,” meaning, in broken English, “I shall find a time to be revenged."-"What was my astonishment,” continued Lady Suffolk, “when going to the Princess’s apartment the next morning, the yeOMen in the guard-chamber pointed their halberds at my breast, and told me I must not pass!  I urged that it was my duty to attend the Princess.  They said, ’No matter; I must not pass that way.’”

In one word, the King had been so provoked at the Prince’s outrage in his presence, that it had been determined to inflict a still greater insult on his Royal Highness.  His threat to the Duke was pretended to be understood as a challenge; and to prevent a duel he had actually been put under arrest-as if a Prince of Wales could stoop to fight with a subject.  The arrest was soon taken off; but at night the Prince and Princess were ordered to leave the palace, (96) and retired to the house of her chamberlain, the Earl of Grantham, in Albemarle Street.