“Lord Sundon is in great grief,” writes Horace Walpole. “I am surprised, for she has had fits of madness ever since her ambition met such a check by the death of the Queen. She had great power with her, though the Queen affected to despise her, but had unluckily told her, or fallen into her power, by some secret. I was saying to Lady Pomfret ‘to be sure she is dead very rich,’ she replied with some warmth, ‘She never took money.’ When I came home I mentioned this to Sir Robert. ‘No,’ said he, ‘but she took jewels. Lord Pomfret’s place of Master of the Horse to the Queen was bought of her for a pair of diamond earrings, of fourteen hundred pounds value.’ “One day she wore them at a visit at old Marlboro’s; as soon as she was gone, the duchess said to Lady Mary Wortley, ‘How can that woman have the impudence to go about in that bribe?’ “‘Madam,’ said Lady Mary, ‘how would you have people know where wine is to be sold unless there is a sign hung out?’ “Sir Robert told me that in the enthusiasm of her vanity, Lady Sundon had proposed to him to unite with her and govern the kingdom together; he bowed, begged her patronage, but, he said, he thought nobody fit to govern the kingdom but the King and Queen.” About the period of 1742 rumours of a fresh Stuart rebellion began to permeate the country, and it was probably this fact, together with the Prince of Wales’s popularity with the public, which decided the King to come to a reconciliation with him. There was, however, now no Sir Robert to apply his wonderful statesmanship in bringing about the matter with the finesse and forethought he always displayed in cases of this sort, though it must be admitted that his arts had always been directed against the Prince. However, the matter was done, though clumsily. It was commenced by a gentle hint given to the Prince that a letter from him to his father would be acceptable. This proposition does not appear to have met at first with the Prince’s favour, he, possibly, thinking that the King owed him some reparation, and that the first step should come from him. But he eventually put his feelings in his pocket and wrote his father the desired letter. This letter reached the King late at night, and he lost no time in responding to it; he expressed his wish to receive the Prince on the following day. Frederick repaired to St. James’s as desired, attended by five of his suite. He was received by his father in one of the drawing-rooms, and the interview must have been an exceedingly interesting one for the onlookers from its importance, but its duration was bound within the limits of the strictest formality. “How does the Princess do? I hope she is well,” was the sole scrap of conversation which passed King George’s lips, if chroniclers of the time can be credited. The Prince kissed his father’s hand, answered the question concerning his wife’s health, and--withdrew.