The next affair was the quarrel with the Princess of Orange, from her
reluctance to return to Holland. As she was about to be confined, her
husband was desirous that his child should be born in Holland. To this
the Princess demurred. However, they at length contrived to send her on
board, and she sailed from Harwich; but after she had been some time at
sea, she either grew so ill, or pretended to be so ill, that she either
was, or pretended to be, in convulsions: we give his lordship’s rather
ungallant surmise. On this, and the wind not being quite fair, she
obliged the captain of the yacht to put back to Harwich. She then
despatched a courier to London with letters, written, as it was
supposed, by her own absolute command, from her physician, her
accoucheur, and her nurse, to say that she was disordered with her
expedition, and that she could not be stirred for ten days from her bed,
nor put to sea again, without the hazard of her child’s life and her
own. The King and Queen declined giving any orders. The Prince of Orange
was written to, and he desired that his wife might go by France to
Holland. The King, hating the bustle of a new parting, directed that she
should cross the country from Harwich to Dover; but his Majesty, after
having been informed that the roads were impassable at this time of the
year in a coach, (how strangely this sounds in our day of universal
locomotion!) permitted her to come to London and go over the bridge; but
it was a positive command that she should not lie in in London, nor even
come to St James’s. Accordingly, “after all her tricks and schemes, to
avoid going to Holland, and to get back to London, she was obliged to
comply with those orders; and had the mortification and disgrace to go,
without seeing any of her family, over London Bridge to Dover.”
A note conjectures, that the Princess Royal might have had some
expectation of ascending the throne of England, neither of her brothers
being then married; a circumstance, which may account for the Princess’s
anxiety to have her child born in this country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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