The relations between the Prince of Wales and his parents went from bad to worse as the months wore on, but they were not even yet strained to breaking point. Acting on the advice of his supporters the Prince still occasionally attended levées and drawing-rooms. The King treated him as though he were not in the room; the Queen, though she recognised his presence, did not speak to him more than was absolutely necessary, and in private she declared that she was afraid to do so lest he should distort her words. The Prince still resided in his father’s house, making his headquarters at St. James’s Palace. But when the King and Queen moved to Hampton Court for the summer he had perforce to go there too, but much against his will. Though he and the Princess lived under the same roof as the King and Queen they saw little of them, and only met them in public. In July the Prince wrote a letter to the Queen announcing that the Princess was with child. The Queen congratulated him and the Princess on the auspicious event, and asked the latter some maternal questions about her condition. To all these the Princess made the same answer--“I do not know”. The Queen had doubts, which were shared by her daughters, as to whether the Princess was really pregnant. Both she and the King considered the Prince quite capable of palming off a spurious child on them, and their prejudices against him were so strong that they half believed he was plotting to do so. They had no wish that the Princess of Wales should bear children; it was generally thought that she would not. If she did it would destroy the remaining chance that their beloved younger son, William, might one day succeed to the crown. The Prince, who resented these suspicions, wished that his wife should be confined at St. James’s, but the King determined that the event should take place at Hampton Court. The Queen declared that “at her labour I positively will be, let her lie in where she will,” but again expressed herself sceptical about the Princess being confined at all, as she could see no signs of it. The Prince, on the other hand, who knew and resented these suspicions, vowed that his mother should not be present at the birth, and that the child should be born at St. James’s. He kept his word.