Royal journeys were not very frequent in these days, and as this was the first time the Princess-Dowager had quitted England since her marriage many years ago, her sudden departure gave rise to the wildest conjectures. It was generally believed that she was going to meet Lord Bute, who was still wandering in exile about Europe; some said that she was going to bring him back to England for the purpose of fresh intrigue; others that she was not returning to England at all, but meant to spend the rest of her life with Bute in an Italian palace. Against these absurd rumours was to be set the fact that the Duke of Gloucester accompanied his mother, and more charitable persons supposed that she was trying to break off his _liaison_ with Lady Waldegrave, for their secret marriage had not yet been published. Some declared that the Princess-Dowager and Queen Charlotte had had a battle royal, in which the mother-in-law had been signally routed, and was leaving the country to cover her confusion. Others, and this seemed the most probable conjecture, thought that she was going abroad for a little time to escape the scandal which had been brought upon the royal family by her youngest son, Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland. [Illustration: AUGUSTA, PRINCESS OF WALES, MOTHER OF QUEEN MATILDA. _After a Painting by J. B. Vanloo._] The Duke of Cumberland was the least amiable of the sons of Frederick Prince of Wales. Physically and mentally he was a degenerate. Walpole pictures him as a garrulous, dissipated and impudent youth, vulgarly boasting his rank, yet with a marked predilection for low society. Unfortunately he did not confine himself to it, but betrayed to her ruin a young and beautiful woman of rank, the Countess Grosvenor, daughter of Henry Vernon and wife of Richard, first Earl Grosvenor. Lord Grosvenor discovered the intrigue, and brought an action of divorce in which the Duke of Cumberland figured as co-respondent. For the first time in England a prince of the blood appeared in the divorce court, and, what was worse, cut a supremely ridiculous and contemptible figure in it. Several of the Duke's letters to the Lady Grosvenor were read in court, and were so grossly ill-spelt and illiterate that they were greeted with shouts of derision, and furnished eloquent comment upon the education of the King's brother.[133] [133] Lord Grosvenor got his divorce, and the jury awarded him £10,000 damages, which the Duke had great difficulty in paying, and George III., much to his disgust, had to arrange for settlement to avoid a further scandal. So base a creature was this royal Lothario that he abandoned to her shame the woman whom he had betrayed, and scarcely had the verdict been pronounced than he began another disreputable intrigue.