Mistress Brett was left in possession of the field, for Lady Darlington had ceased to count, and she soon gave the court a taste of her quality. Her apartments adjoined those of the King’s granddaughters, Anne, Amelia and Caroline, and Mistress Brett ordered a door leading from her rooms to the garden to be broken down. The Princess Anne ordered the door to be blocked up again, whereat Mistress Brett flew into a rage, and told the workmen to pull down the barriers. But she had met her match in the Princess Anne, who, haughty and determined beyond her years, immediately sent other men to enforce her orders. When the dispute was at its height, news came from Hanover that the King was dead. Anne Brett was turned out of St. James’s Palace, her coronet vanished into air, and she was more than content, some years later, to marry Sir William Leman, and retire into obscurity. The King’s death foiled more than Anne Brett’s expectations; it shattered Bolingbroke’s hopes to the dust, and postponed indefinitely the double marriage scheme so dear to the heart of the Queen of Prussia. The King had landed in Holland four days after leaving Greenwich, and he set out to accomplish the overland journey to Hanover, apparently in his usual health. The Duchess of Kendal stayed behind at the Hague to recover from the crossing, which always made her ill. Attended by a numerous escort, the King reached Delden, on the frontier of Holland, on June 9th. Hard by he paid a visit to the house of Count Twittel, where he ate an enormous supper, including several water-melons. His suite wished him to stay the night at Delden, but after resting there a few hours to change horses, he set off again at full speed in the small hours of the morning. According to Lockhart it was here that the letter was thrown into the King’s coach which had been written by the ill-fated Sophie Dorothea, upbraiding her husband with his cruelty, and reminding him of the prophecy that he would meet her at the divine tribunal within a year and a day of her death.[129] Whether it was the letter, or the supper, or a combination of both, it is impossible to say, but soon after leaving Delden the King became violently disordered and fell forward in a fit. When he partly recovered, his attendants again urged him to rest, but he refused. The last stage of the journey was accomplished in furious haste, the King himself urging on the postilions and shouting: “To Osnabrück, to Osnabrück!” Osnabrück was reached late at night, but by that time the King was insensible. His brother, the Duke of York, Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück, came out to meet him. The King was borne into the castle, and restoratives were applied, but he never recovered consciousness, and breathed his last in the room where he had been born sixty-seven years before.