The Prince, who soon became aware that he had made a false step, called a council of his chief supporters, including Carteret, Chesterfield and Pulteney, who frankly told him that he had put himself in the wrong, and the best thing he could do would be to patch up a reconciliation with the King and Queen. In view of this the Prince, a few days later, thought he would go to Hampton Court to pay his respects to the King and Queen, but the King, having got ear that he was coming, sent him a message saying he would not see him. Thereupon ensued a lengthy correspondence, in which the Prince would not own himself in the wrong. He expressed himself deeply grieved at having aroused the King’s anger, but insinuated that the Queen was really responsible for the strained relations between himself and his father. He thus struck a note which was taken up by the Prince’s court, and afterwards by the great body of his supporters. Afraid to strike at the King directly, they threw all the blame upon the Queen, who they declared had first artfully inflamed the King’s anger against his son, and now tried to keep him inflexible. It was a cowardly thing to do, as well as unjust, for the Queen had always been on the side of peace; but the Prince hated his mother because the King had appointed her Regent instead of him, and the Opposition hated the Queen because she had shown herself, through storm and shine, the firm supporter of Walpole. In pursuance of this policy, when the Queen, nine days after her daughter-in-law’s confinement, paid her another visit at St. James’s, the Prince treated his mother with marked discourtesy; he avoided meeting her at the main entrance, and only received her at the door of the Princess’s bedchamber; he refused to speak a word to her during the whole visit, though the Queen was in the room with him and her daughter-in-law more than an hour. He could not help escorting her to her coach when she left, but did it all in dumb show; yet when they reached the coach door, and he saw that a considerable crowd had assembled, he knelt down in the muddy street and kissed her hand with every demonstration of respect. At this hyprocrisy, as Horace Walpole says, “her indignation must have shrunk into contempt.”[120] The Queen was deeply wounded by her son’s treatment, and after that she paid no more visits to St. James’s.