It was a bitter cup for the princess to drink, but she drank it:  she reflected that it might be the only way of quitting a court where, in case of her father’s death, she would be dependent on her brother Frederick, or on that weak prince’s strong-minded wife.  So she consented, and took the dwarf; and that consent was regarded by a grateful people, and by all good courtiers, as a sacrifice for the sake of Protestant principles, the House of Orange being, par excellence, at the head of the orthodox dynasties in Europe.  A dowry of L80,000 was forthwith granted by an admiring Commons—­just double what had ever been given before.  That sum was happily lying in the exchequer, being the purchase-money of some lands in St. Christopher’s which had lately been sold; and King George was thankful to get rid of a daughter whose haughtiness gave him trouble.  In person, too, the princess royal was not very ornamental to the Court.  She was ill-made, with a propensity to grow fat; her complexion, otherwise very fine, was marked with the small-pox; she had, however, a lively, clean look—­one of her chief beauties—­and a certain royalty of manner.

The Princess Amelia died, as the world thought, single, but consoled herself with various love flirtations.  The Duke of Newcastle made love to her, but her affections were centred on the Duke of Grafton, to whom she was privately married, as is confidently asserted.

The Princess Caroline was the darling of her family.  Even the king relied on her truth.  When there was any dispute, he used to say, ’Send for Caroline; she will tell us the right story.’

Her fate had its clouds.  Amiable, gentle, of unbounded charity, with strong affections, which were not suffered to flow in a legitimate channel, she became devotedly attached to Lord Hervey:  her heart was bound up in him; his death drove her into a permanent retreat from the world.  No debasing connection existed between them; but it is misery, it is sin enough to love another woman’s husband—­and that sin, that misery, was the lot of the royal and otherwise virtuous Caroline.

The Princess Mary, another victim to conventionalities, was united to Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse Cassel; a barbarian, from whom she escaped, whenever she could, to come, with a bleeding heart, to her English home.  She was, even Horace Walpole allows, ’of the softest, mildest temper in the world,’ and fondly beloved by her sister Caroline, and by the ‘Butcher of Culloden,’ William, Duke of Cumberland.

Louisa became Queen of Denmark in 1746, after some years’ marriage to the Crown Prince.  ‘We are lucky,’ Horace Walpole writes on that occasion, ‘in the death of kings.’

The two princesses who were still under the paternal roof were contrasts.  Caroline was a constant invalid, gentle, sincere, unambitious, devoted to her mother, whose death nearly killed her.  Amelia affected popularity, and assumed the esprit fort—­was fond of meddling in politics, and after the death of her mother, joined the Bedford faction, in opposition to her father.  But both these princesses were outwardly submissive when Lord Hervey became the Queen’s chamberlain.