The royal bride chosen was Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a girl of seventeen, who for more than half a century gave a new tone to English society. After a little flutter of gaiety natural in her position, she entered upon a life of dignified propriety and domesticity with a husband who won her heart as well as her hand, and George, whatever wild oats he may or may not have sown, made a constant husband to his rather plain bride. This model couple agreed in the simple tastes at which worldly courtiers sneered. St. James’s Palace they kept as a stage for State functions; and they made little use of Windsor in the first years of the reign. For the “Queen’s House” was bought the Duke of Buckingham’s red-brick mansion on the site of what is now Buckingham Palace; and out of town the King lived a good deal at Richmond Lodge, also given to the Queen, where perhaps his mother still liked to keep him near her. Every evening, it appears, King and Queen dutifully visited that domineering princess either at Kew, or at her London residence, Leicester House. Carlton House, afterwards given to the next Prince of Wales, was also hers; and at one or other of these she lived “in a privacy that exceeded economy.” That is Horace Walpole’s reproach, who speaks of her as avaricious, but does not give the Dowager credit for paying off her husband’s debts, nor for her liberal charities. Her worst fault seems to have been a masterful temper that expressed itself in the lesson imprinted on her son’s softness, “George, be a king!” Richmond Lodge soon proving too small for the growing royal family, George III. proposed to build a new palace for himself in Richmond Gardens, near the river opposite Syon House. The design is still preserved, and the work was actually begun; but a hitch occurred in the obstinacy of the Richmond people, who refused to sell the King a piece of ground he wanted to round off his demesne. Then the Princess Dowager, when her other sons left the nest, gave up Kew House to George and Charlotte, taking for herself the “Dutch House” across the way, till her death, not long afterwards; and when the lease ran out, it was bought for the Queen. The larger mansion had also been acquired, the royal family thus, from tenants, coming to be owners of both houses.