Howard, therefore, went to Leicester House and forced himself into the Princess’s presence. He made a great scene--he declared that he would have his wife even if he had to pull her out of the Princess’s coach. Caroline spiritedly told him “to do it if he dared”. “Though,” she said years later, when relating this scene to Lord Hervey, “I was horribly afraid of him (for we were _tête-à-tête_) all the while I was thus playing the bully. What added to my fear on this occasion was that as I knew him to be _so brutal_, as well as a little mad, and seldom quite sober, so I did not think it impossible that he might throw me out of the window.... But as soon as I got near the door, and thought myself safe from being thrown out of the window, _je pris mon grand ton de Reine, et je disois_, ‘I would be glad to see who should dare to open my coach door and take out one of my servants....’ Then I told him that my resolution was positively neither to force his wife to go to him, if she had no mind to it, nor to keep her if she had.” Howard blustered and swore without any respect for the Princess’s presence, and declared that he would go to the King. Whereupon the Princess said: “The King has nothing to do with my servants, and for that reason you may save yourself the trouble.” So Howard took his leave. Poor Mrs. Howard was in great alarm, as she dreaded to return to her husband, who had neglected her and used her cruelly. Some of the lords about Leicester House formed a guard to protect her against forcible abduction, and when the Prince’s court moved from Leicester House to Richmond for the summer, as etiquette did not permit her to travel in the same coach as the Princess, it was arranged that she should slip away quietly, and so evade her husband. Therefore, on the day the court set out, the Duke of Argyll and Lord Islay, who were her great friends, conveyed Mrs. Howard very early in the morning to Richmond in a private coach. But this state of affairs could not continue. If Howard carried the matter into the law courts, he could force his wife to return to him, willy-nilly, and the spectacle of the Prince and Princess of Wales defying the law by detaining her was not one which could be allowed. Therefore, after a good deal of negotiation, the matter was settled by Howard’s allowing his wife to remain in the Prince’s household in return for the sum of £1,200 a year, paid quarterly in advance. He had never really wished her to come back, and the whole dispute at last narrowed itself into an attempt to extort money on the one hand, and to withhold it on the other--a dispute far from creditable to any one concerned in it.