After the fall of Walpole several of the Prince's friends took office, and a formal, though by no means cordial, reconciliation was patched up between the King and the Heir Apparent, but there was always veiled hostility between them, and from time to time their differences threatened to become acute. For instance, after the Jacobite rising the Prince of Wales disapproved of the severities of his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, "the butcher of Culloden," and showed his displeasure in no unequivocal manner. When the Jacobite peers were condemned to death the Prince and Princess interceded for them, in one case with success. Lady Cromartie, after petitioning the King in vain for her husband's life, made a personal appeal, as a wife and mother, to the Princess of Wales, and brought her four children to plead with her as well. The Princess said nothing, but, with evident emotion, summoned her own children and placed them beside her. This she followed by praying the King for Cromartie's life, and her prayer was granted. After the reconciliation the Prince and Princess of Wales occasionally attended St. James's, but since the death of Queen Caroline the court of George II. had lost its brilliancy and become both gross and dull, in this respect contrasting unfavourably with Leicester House. Grossness and dulness were characteristic of the courts of our first two Hanoverian kings, but whatever complaint might be brought against Leicester House, the society there was far livelier and more refined than that which assembled at St. James's. The popular grievance against Leicester House was that it was too French. France was just then very unpopular in England, and the British public did not like the French tastes of the Prince of Wales--the masques imitated from Versailles, the French plays acted by French players and the _petits soupers_. High play also took place at Leicester House, but the Princess did her best to discourage this. In the other frivolities which her husband loved she acquiesced, more for the sake of keeping her influence over him than because she liked them. Her tastes were simple, and her tendencies puritanical.