The immediate result of the Septennial Act was one which Ministers had hardly reckoned with. The rising being quelled, and this Act, which seemed to make his occupation of the throne certain for the next few years, safely passed, the King announced his intention of revisiting his beloved Hanover, from which he had now been exiled long. It was in vain that Ministers pointed out to George the unpopularity which would attend such a step, and the dangers that might ensue. The King’s impatience was not to be stemmed, and he told them frankly that, whether they could get on without him or not, to Hanover he would go. To enable him to go, therefore, the restraining clause of the Act of Settlement had to be repealed, and a Regent or a Council of Regency appointed. The first was easily managed by the docile House of Commons; the second was more difficult. It was naturally assumed that the Prince of Wales would be appointed by the King to act as Regent in his absence. But to this the King objected. It was already an open secret about the Court that the King and the Prince hated one another thoroughly, and the King was especially jealous of the efforts which the Prince and Princess of Wales were making to gain popularity. The Prince looked forward with eagerness to the regency, and he and the Princess already reckoned on the increased importance it would give them. The King, who did not trust his son, refused to entrust him with the nominal government of the kingdom unless other persons, whom he could trust, were associated with him in the regency, and limited his power by a number of petty restrictions. The Prime Minister, Townshend, however, declared that he could find no instance of persons being joined in commission with the Prince of Wales, or of any restrictions on the regency, and that the “constant tenor of ancient practice could not conveniently be receded from”. The King, therefore, had grudgingly to yield his son the first place in his absence, but instead of giving him the title of Regent, he named him “Guardian of the Realm and Lieutenant,” an office unknown in England since the days of the Black Prince. He also insisted that the Duke of Argyll, the Prince of Wales’s trusted friend and adviser, whom he suspected of aiding and abetting him in his opposition to the royal will, should be dismissed from all his appointments about the Prince. The Prince bitterly resented this, and Townshend supported the Prince, thereby incurring the disfavour of the King. The Princess of Wales also threw herself into the quarrel, and the bitterness became intensified. “The Princess is all in a flame, the Prince in an agony,” writes Lady Cowper, and she adds, “I wish to give them advice. They are all mad, and for their own private ends will destroy all.” But resistance was of no avail, the King was obdurate, and in the end the Prince declared himself “resolved to sacrifice everything to please and live well with the King, so will part with the Duke of Argyll”.