After all, how can we account for Lady Chesterfield’s conduct, unless we attribute it to the disease incident to most coquettes, who, charmed with superiority, put in practice every art to rob another of her conquest, and spare nothing to preserve it.

But before we enter into the particulars of this adventure, let us take a retrospect of the amours of his Royal Highness, prior to the declaration of his marriage, and particularly of what immediately preceded this declaration.  It is allowable sometimes to drop the thread of a narrative, when real facts, not generally known, give such a variety upon the digression as to render it excusable:  let us see then how those things happened.

The Duke of York’s marriage, with the chancellor’s daughter, was deficient in none of those circumstances which render contracts of this nature valid in the eye of heaven the mutual inclination, the formal ceremony, witnesses, and every essential point of matrimony, had been observed.

[The material facts in this narrative are confirmed by Lord Clarendon.—­’Continuation of his Life’, p. 33.  It is difficult to speak of the persons concerned in this infamous transaction without some degree of asperity, notwithstanding they are, by a strange perversion of language, styled, all men of honour.]

Though the bride was no perfect beauty, yet, as there were none at the court of Holland who eclipsed her, the Duke, during the first endearments of matrimony, was so far from repenting of it, that he seemed only to wish for the King’s restoration that he might have an opportunity of declaring it with splendour; but when he saw himself enjoying a rank which placed him so near the throne; when the possession of Miss Hyde afforded him no new charms; when England, so abounding in beauties, displayed all that was charming and lovely in the court of the King his brother; and when he considered he was the only prince, who, from such superior elevation, had descended so low, he began to reflect upon it.  On the one hand, his marriage appeared to him particularly ill suited in every respect:  he recollected that Jermyn had not engaged him in an intimacy with Miss Hyde, until he had convinced him, by several different circumstances, of the facility of succeeding:  he looked upon his marriage as an infringement of that duty and obedience he owed to the King; the indignation with which the court, and even the whole kingdom, would receive the account of his marriage presented itself to his imagination, together with the impossibility of obtaining the King’s consent to such an act, which for a thousand reasons he would be obliged to refuse.  On the other hand, the tears and despair of poor Miss Hyde presented themselves; and still more than that, he felt a remorse of conscience, the scruples of which began from that time to rise up against him.