Quiet people were struck by the change which had come over court circles since the days of ‘Queen Anne, who had always been decent, chaste, and formal.’ The change indeed was great, but diverse of aspect. Thus the court of pleasure at which Caroline reigned supreme was a court where decency was respected; respected, at least, as much as it well could be at a time when no superabundance of respect for decency was exhibited in any quarter. Still, there was not the intolerable grossness in the house of the prince which was to be met with in the very presence of his sire. Lord Chesterfield said of that sire that ‘he had nothing bad in him as a man,’ and yet he records of him that he had no respect for women--but some liking, it may be added, for those who had little principle and much fat. ‘He brought over with him,’ says Chesterfield, ‘two considerable samples of his bad taste and good stomach--the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Darlington; leaving at Hanover, because she happened to be a Papist, the Countess von Platen, whose weight and circumference was little inferior to theirs. These standards of his Majesty’s tastes made all those ladies who aspired to his favour, and who were near the statutable size, strain and swell themselves, like the frogs in the fable, to rival the bulk and dignity of the ox. Some succeeded and others burst.’ If the house of the son was not the abode of all the virtues, it at least was not the stye wherein wallowed his father. Upon the change of fashion, Chesterfield writes to Bubb Dodington, in 1716, the year when Caroline began to be looked up to as the arbitress of fashion:--‘As for the gay part of the town, you would find it much more flourishing than when you left it. Balls, assemblies, and masquerades have taken the place of dull, formal, visiting days, and the women are much more agreeable trifles than they were designed. Puns are extremely in vogue, and the license very great. The variation of three or four letters in a word breaks no squares, insomuch that an indifferent punster may make a very good figure in the best companies.’ The gaiety at the town residence of the prince and princess did not, however, accompany them to Richmond Lodge. There Caroline enjoyed the quiet beauties of her pretty retreat, which was, however, shared with her husband’s favourite, ‘Mrs. Howard.’ ‘Leicester Fields’ was, nevertheless, not always such a bower of bliss as Walpole has described it, from hearsay. If the prince and ladies were on very pleasant terms, the princess and the ladies were sometimes at loggerheads, with as little regard for _bienséance_ as if they had been very vulgar people; indeed, they often were exceedingly vulgar people themselves.