There was one very grave and even ominous condition which had to be taken into account. If the King were to die suddenly, and with no provision made for a regency, the girl, perhaps the child, who succeeded him would in the ordinary course of things be left under the guardianship of her eldest uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. Now it is only stating a simple fact to say that the Duke of Cumberland was then the most unpopular man in England. He was not merely unpopular, he was an object of common dread and detestation. He was regarded as a reckless profligate and an unprincipled schemer. There must have been much exaggeration about some of the tales that were told and accepted concerning him, for it is hard to believe that at a time so near to our own a prince of {102} the Royal House of England could have lived a life the story of which might seem to have belonged to the worst days of the Lower Empire. But, whatever allowance be made for exaggeration, it is certain that the Duke of Cumberland was almost universally hated, and that many people seriously considered him quite capable of any plot or any crime which might secure his own advancement to the throne. Sanguine persons, indeed, saw a gleam of hope in the fact that the Duke of Cumberland was in any case the heir to the crown of Hanover. In the House of Hanover the succession is confined to the male line, and the Princess Victoria had nothing to do with it. The hope, therefore, was that the Duke of Cumberland would be content with the prospect of his succession to the throne of Hanover, and that when the time arrived for him to become King of Hanover he would betake himself to his new kingdom and trouble England no more. Still the fact remained that just as yet he was not King of Hanover, and that if no proper provisions were made against a contingency he might become the guardian of the girl, or the child, who was to succeed William the Fourth on the English throne. [Sidenote: 1830--The death of Huskisson]