John, who, bustling and ridiculous, seemed to be mingling the roles of major-domo and Prime Minister.  Naturally the King fumed over his newspaper at Windsor.  “That woman is a nuisance!” he exclaimed.  Poor Queen Adelaide, amiable though disappointed, did her best to smooth things down, changed the subject, and wrote affectionate letters to Victoria; but it was useless.  News arrived that the Duchess of Kent, sailing in the Solent, had insisted that whenever her yacht appeared it should be received by royal salutes from all the men-of-war and all the forts.  The King declared that these continual poppings must cease; the Premier and the First Lord of the Admiralty were consulted; and they wrote privately to the Duchess, begging her to waive her rights.  But she would not hear of it; Sir John Conroy was adamant.  “As her Royal Highness’s confidential adviser,” he said, “I cannot recommend her to give way on this point.”  Eventually the King, in a great state of excitement, issued a special Order in Council, prohibiting the firing of royal salutes to any ships except those which carried the reigning sovereign or his consort on board.

When King William quarrelled with his Whig Ministers the situation grew still more embittered, for now the Duchess, in addition to her other shortcomings, was the political partisan of his enemies.  In 1836 he made an attempt to prepare the ground for a match between the Princess Victoria and one of the sons of the Prince of Orange, and at the same time did his best to prevent the visit of the young Coburg princes to Kensington.  He failed in both these objects; and the only result of his efforts was to raise the anger of the King of the Belgians, who, forgetting for a moment his royal reserve, addressed an indignant letter on the subject to his niece.  “I am really astonished,” he wrote, “at the conduct of your old Uncle the King; this invitation of the Prince of Orange and his sons, this forcing him on others, is very extraordinary...  Not later than yesterday I got a half-official communication from England, insinuating that it would be highly desirable that the visit of your relatives should not take place this year—­qu’en dites-vous?  The relations of the Queen and the King, therefore, to the God-knows-what degree, are to come in shoals and rule the land, when your relations are to be forbidden the country, and that when, as you know, the whole of your relations have ever been very dutiful and kind to the King.  Really and truly I never heard or saw anything like it, and I hope it will a little Rouse your spirit; now that slavery is even abolished in the British Colonies, I do not comprehend why your lot alone should be to be kept A white little slavey in England, for the pleasure of the Court, who never bought you, as I am not aware of their ever having gone to any expense on that head, or the King’s ever having spent A sixpence for your existence...  Oh, consistency and political or other honesty, where must one look for you!”