That sad note had struck the one most tender chord in the despised Prince’s nature, the depths of which his mother and sisters could not sound; the love of little children. When his own grew up around him, that great fount of love welled up and covered many of his sins, as we know that love will do. This is what is said of him at that time: “Notwithstanding this, he played the father and husband well. He loved to have his children with him, always appeared most happy when in the bosom of his family, left them with regret, and met them again with smiles, kisses and tears.” And this was the nature which Queen Caroline could not understand; was it not one full of love to shower on _some one_? Had he but had the chance of a mother’s full love in those cold years of his childhood spent in Hanover, is it not reasonable to think that his whole nature would have been altered, and that he might have so wound himself around Caroline’s heart that even her handsome younger son could never have loosened those tendrils of affection. But alas! there were those fourteen years of separation, when the boy was left practically to his own resources to grow up without the tenderness of a mother’s love to guide him. How different was his conduct as a father to that of his own father, who candidly admitted that he could not bear to have his children playing about in the same room with him. But in this happy time of a young father’s life, there were black clouds gathering over the Prince’s household and this is how the old Duchess of Marlborough speaks of them in her matter of fact way: “They have found a way in the City to borrow thirty thousand pounds for the Prince at ten per cent. interest to pay his crying debts to trades-people. But I doubt that sum won’t go very far. But they have got it though great pains was taken to hinder it. “The salaries in the Prince’s family are twenty-five thousand pounds a year, besides a good deal of expense at Cliefden in building and furniture. And the Prince and Princess’s allowance for their clothes is six thousand pounds a year each. I wish his Royal Highness so well that I am sorry there is such an increase of expense more than in former times, where there was more money a great deal, and really I think it would have been more for the Prince’s interest, if his counsellers had thought it proper to have advised him to live only like a great man, and to give the reasons for it; and in doing so he would have made a better figure, and have been safer; for nobody that does not get by it themselves can possibly think the contrary method a right one.” _The Duchess of Marlborough to Lord Stair_, 1738. But though the pall of debt hung heavy over the Prince, yet there was hope ahead, for even as far back as 1737--it must have been the very end of the year--Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, writes to Lord Stair:--