Meanwhile, though the Prince was proving himself a thorn in the side of his father and the Government, and though the Opposition championed his cause with fervour, he could not get his allowance increased, and he sank deeper and deeper into debt. It came to the ears of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that the Prince was in pecuniary distress, and she bethought herself of a scheme which would at once gratify her ambition and wound the feelings of the King and Queen. She asked the Prince to honour her with a visit to Marlborough House, and, when he came, she offered him the hand of her favourite granddaughter, Lady Diana Spencer, in marriage, and promised to give him £100,000 as her portion. Lady Diana was a young lady of much wit and beauty, and the Prince, partly because he wanted the money, and partly because he knew the alliance would anger his father and mother beyond measure, accepted the offer. All arrangements were made. The day of the marriage was actually fixed, and the Prince was to be secretly wedded to Lady Diana by Duchess Sarah’s chaplain in the duchess’s private lodge in Windsor Great Park. The Royal Marriage Act, which made illegal the marriage of a member of the royal family without the consent of the reigning monarch, was not then in existence, and the marriage, if it had been contracted, would have been valid, and impossible to annul, except perhaps by a special Act, which would have had no chance of passing through Parliament. There would have been nothing objectionable about the marriage except its secrecy, for Lady Diana Spencer (who afterwards became Duchess of Bedford) was by birth and fortune, as by wit and beauty, far superior to the petty German princess whom the Prince afterwards married. But Walpole got to hear of the plot in time, and was able to prevent the marriage. It is a pity that it did not take place, for the subsequent interview of the parents with old Duchess Sarah on the one side and Queen Caroline on the other would have been one of the most interesting in history. An early and congenial marriage might have been the saving of the Prince of Wales. Like his father and grandfather he affected a reputation for gallantry, and he was always involved in affairs of a more or less disreputable nature. In pursuit of adventures of this kind he behaved more like a schoolboy than a prince arrived at years of discretion. Peter Wentworth gives an account of one of his absurd escapades. He writes:--