It must have been a strange meeting between mother and son. The Queen received him amiably; the succession could not be altered, so she determined to make the best of him, but the King was very harsh. George had an unnatural and deep-rooted aversion to his eldest son, whom he regarded as necessarily his enemy. This peculiarity was hereditary in the House of Hanover for some generations, for the Sovereign and his first-born were always at war with one another. Some pity must be extended to the young Prince, who never had a fair chance. He was only twenty-two years of age when he came to England, and he found himself among strangers and enemies in a country of which he knew nothing. He was very shy and frightened at first, and his father’s manner did not tend to reassure him. Lord Hervey says that, “Whenever the Prince was in the room with him (the King) it put one in mind of stories that one has heard of ghosts that appear to part of the company but are invisible to the rest; and in this manner, wherever the Prince stood, though the King passed him ever so often, or ever so near, it always seemed as if the King thought the Prince filled a void of space”. The Prince did not dine in public at St. James’s the Sunday after his arrival, but the Queen suffered him to hand her into her pew at the Chapel Royal, and this was his first appearance before the English Court. But, however much his parents might slight him, the fact remained that he was, by Act of Parliament, heir to the throne, and, through the insistence of the Privy Council, the King soon after his arrival created him Prince of Wales. But he was careful not to give him the allowance of £100,000 a year which had been voted by Parliament for the Prince of Wales in the Civil List. True, Parliament had given the King control over the Prince’s income, and he exercised it by giving him only a small allowance. The young Prince quickly made friends, some of them not of a very desirable character. He had been taught to speak English fairly well, and he had pleasant manners. He had inherited from his mother a taste for letters, and he also possessed the art of dissimulation and a love of intrigue. He had not the slightest affection for either of his parents--how could he have?--and he soon began to deceive them, a task in which he found plenty to help him. Lady Bristol in one of her letters gave a very flattering account of him as being “the most agreeable young man it is possible to imagine, without being the least handsome, his person little, but very well made and genteel, a loveliness in his eyes that is indescribable, and the most obliging address that can be conceived.” The poets praised him; and one sycophant rhapsodised over him as follows:-- Fresh as a rose-bud newly blown and fair As op’ning lilies: on whom every eye With joy and admiration dwells. See, see He rides his docile barb with manly grace. Is it Adonis for the chase arrayed Or Britain’s second hope?