Princess Amelia, as well disposed to meddle, was confined to receiving court from the Duke of Newcastle, who affected to be in love with her; and from the Duke of Grafton, in whose connexion with her there was more reality.

Princess Caroline, one of the most excellent of women, was devoted to the Queen, who, as well as the King, had such confidence in her veracity, that on any disagreement among their children, they said, “Stay, send for Caroline, and then we shall know the truth.”

The memorable Lord Hervey had dedicated himself to the Queen, and certainly towards her death had gained great ascendance with her.  She had made him privy-seal; and as he took care to keep as well with Sir Robert Walpole, no man stood in a more prosperous light.

But Lord Hervey, who handled all the weapons of a court, (119) had also made a deep impression on the heart of the virtuous Princess Caroline; and as there was a mortal antipathy between the Duke of Grafton and Lord Hervey, the court was often on the point of being disturbed by the enmity of the favourites of the two Princesses.  The death of the Queen deeply affected her daughter Caroline; and the change of the ministry four years after, dislodged Lord Hervey whom for the Queen’s sake the King would have saved, and who very ungratefully satirized the King in a ballad, as if he had sacrificed him voluntarily.  Disappointment, rage, and a distempered constitution carried Lord Hervey off, and overwhelmed his Princess — she never appeared in public after the Queen’s death; and, being dreadfully afflicted with the rheumatism, never stirred out of her apartment, and rejoiced at her own dissolution some years before her father.

Her sister Amelia leagued herself with the Bedford faction during the latter part of her father’s life.  When he died, she established herself respectably; but enjoying no favour with her nephew, and hating the Princess-dowager, she made a plea of her deafness, and soon totally abstained from St. James’s.

The Duke of Cumberland, never, or very rarely, interfered in politics.  Power he would have liked, but never seemed to court it.  His passion would have been to command the army, and he would, I doubt, have been too ready to aggrandize the crown by it:  but successive disgusts weaned his mind from all pursuits, and the grandeur of his sense, (120) and philosophy made him indifferent to a world that had disappointed all his views.  The unpopularity which the Scotch and Jacobites spread against him for his merit in suppressing the rebellion, his brother’s jealousy, and the contempt he himself felt for the Prince, his own ill success in his battles abroad, and his father’s treacherous sacrifice of him on the convention of Closterseven, the dereliction of his two political friends, Lord Holland and Lord Sandwich, and the rebuffing spite of the Princess-dowager; all those mortifications centring on a constitution evidently tending to dissolution, made him totally neglect himself, and ready to shake off being, as an encumbrance not worth the attention of a superior understanding.