Since the King’s visit to Hanover the previous summer, his divorced wife, Sophie Dorothea, had died at Ahlden (November 13th, 1726), after thirty-three years’ captivity in her lonely castle, where she had never ceased from the first hour of her imprisonment to demand release. Prince Waldeck arrived in England with secret despatches giving an account of the ill-fated princess’s last moments, and the Courts of Hanover and Berlin assumed mourning, for the deceased Princess was the mother of the Queen of Prussia, and by birth Princess of Celle. It would have suited the King better to ignore the death of his hated consort altogether, but he was unable to do so after the public notice that had been taken of it by the Court of Berlin. So he had a notice inserted in the _London Gazette_ to the effect that the “Duchess of Ahlden” had died at Ahlden on the date specified. He countermanded the court mourning at Hanover, and he would not allow the Prince and Princess of Wales to assume mourning for their mother, or make any allusion to her death. He himself, the very day he received the news, went ostentatiously to the theatre, attended by his mistresses. But he was superstitious, and therefore a good deal worried by remembering a prophecy that he would not survive his wife a year. It was rumoured that the King morganatically married the Duchess of Kendal soon after Sophie Dorothea’s death, and that the Archbishop of York performed the ceremony privately. But there was nothing to prove the rumour, and the duchess was never acknowledged as the King’s wife, either morganatically or otherwise. She always assumed airs of virtue and respectability, and was regular in her attendance of the services at the Lutheran Chapel Royal, though one of the pastors in years gone by had refused to administer the sacrament to her, on the ground that she was living with the King in unrepentant adultery. He was soon replaced by another more complaisant. It is exceedingly unlikely that a morganatic marriage took place, for the King, shortly after the death of his ill-treated consort, took to himself another mistress, who in time might have proved a formidable rival to the old-established favourites. On this occasion he selected an Englishwoman, Anne Brett, a bold and handsome brunette, who was the daughter of the divorced Countess of Macclesfield by her second husband, Colonel Brett. Anne demanded a coronet as the price of her complaisance and the old King was so enamoured that he promised her everything she wished. He lodged her in St. James’s Palace, gave her a handsome pension, and promised the title and coronet on his return from Hanover. He set out thither on June 3rd, 1727, accompanied by the Duchess of Kendal, and Lord Townshend as Minister in attendance.