As soon as the Queen had set out from Hampton Court the King sent express messengers to Walpole and Lord Harrington, requesting them to hasten to St. James’s to be present at the birth of the Prince’s child. They went thither with all speed, but like the Queen arrived too late. Walpole returned to Hampton Court in the course of the morning, and had a conference with the King and Queen. He agreed that the insult was intolerable, and must be punished. Walpole had learnt his lesson, and was now wholly against the Prince. So far from attempting to moderate the King’s ire he rather sought to inflame it, and declared that if the King and Queen did not conquer him he would conquer them. After much discussion and much strong language, the King sent the Prince a written message, complaining of the “deliberate indignity” offered to him and the Queen, which he “resented in the highest degree”. The King was for taking more drastic measures at once, but Walpole persuaded him to defer them until the Princess was out of danger, and then strike. The King would gain by waiting a little he said, for as soon as it was known that the Prince had been guilty of this grievous act of folly his popularity would wane. In this he was right, for no sooner did the news get abroad than the public, to a man, condemned the Prince’s conduct in risking his wife’s life and that of his unborn child, in order to insult his father and mother. His friends who had supported him through thick and thin in his endeavour to get a separate grant from Parliament were unable to find an excuse for this rash and inconsiderate step, though they urged in palliation the Prince’s natural pique at the surveillance to which he had been subjected, and his ignorance of the danger the Princess had run.