With these disappointments, the king returned to England, and arrived at St. James's, November 18th. The princess appeared again in public, and the king gave her the same honours and place as the queen used to have. He was not in the same gracious mood with others of the court. The calamity of Lord Holderness, the secretary of state, was singular; he was for some days in disgrace, for having played at blindman's-buff in the summer at Tunbridge. To Lord Harcourt the king said not a word. In the beginning of December the chancellor and the archbishop sent to Lord Harcourt that they would wait on him by the king's command. He prevented them, and went to the chancellor, who told him that they had orders to hear his complaints. He replied, "They were not proper to be told but to the king himself," which did not make it a little suspicious, that even the princess was included in his disgusts. The first incident that had directly amounted to a quarrel was the Bishop of Norwich finding the Prince of Wales reading Père d'Orleans's "Révolutions d'Angleterre," a book professedly written by the direction, and even by the communication, of James II., to justify his measures. Stone at first peremptorily denied having seen that book in thirty years, and offered to rest his whole justification upon the truth or falsehood of that accusation. At last it was confessed that the prince had the book, but it was qualified with Prince Edward's borrowing it of his sister Augusta. Stone acted mildness, and professed being willing to continue to act with Lord Harcourt and the bishop; but the sore had penetrated too deep, and they who had given the wounds had aggravated them with harsh provocations. The bishop was accused of having turned Scott one day out of the prince's chamber by an imposition of hands that had at least as much of the flesh as the spirit in the force of the action. Cresset, the link of the connection, had dealt out very ungracious epithets both on the governor and preceptor; and Murray, by an officious strain of strange impudence, had early in the quarrel waited on the bishop, and informed him that Mr. Stone ought to have more consideration in the prince's family; and repeating the visit and opinion, the bishop said, "He believed that Mr. Stone found all proper regard, but that Lord Harcourt, the chief of the trust, was generally present." Murray interrupted him, and cried, "Lord Harcourt! pho! he is a cypher, and must be a cypher, and was put in to be a cypher." A notification, however understood before by the world, that could not be very agreeable to the person destined to a situation so insignificant! Accordingly, December 6th, Lord Harcourt had a private audience in the king's closet, and resigned. The archbishop waited on his Majesty, desiring to know if he would see the Bishop of Norwich, or accept his resignation from his (the archbishop's) hands. The king chose the latter.[11]