The Queen was well aware that her daughter knew nothing more of the prince than what she could collect from his counterfeit presentments limned by flattering artists; and Caroline suggested that she should not be too ready to accept a lover whom she had not seen. The princess was resolute in her determination to take him at once, ‘for better, for worse.’ Her royal father was somewhat impatient and chafed by such pertinacity, and exclaimed that the prince was the ugliest man in Holland, and he could not more terribly describe him. ‘I do not care,’ said she, ‘how ugly he may be. If he were a Dutch baboon I would marry him.’ ‘Nay, then, have your way,’ said George, in his strong Westphalian accent, which was always rougher and stronger when he was vexed; ‘have your way: you will find _baboon_ enough, I promise you!’ Could the aspiring Prince of Orange only have heard how amiably he was spoken of _en famille_ by his future relations, he would perhaps have been less ambitious of completing the alliance. Happily these family secrets were not revealed until long after he could be conscious of them, and accordingly his honest proposals were accepted with ostentatious respect and ill-covered ridicule. The marriage of the princess royal could not be concluded without an application to parliament. To both houses a civil intimation was made of the proposed union of the Princess Anne and the Prince of Orange. In this intimation the King graciously mentioned that he promised himself the concurrence and assistance of the Commons to enable him to give such a portion with his eldest daughter as should be suitable to the occasion. The Commons’ committee promised to do all that the King and Queen could expect from them, and they therefore came to the resolution to sell lands in the island of St. Christopher to the amount of 80,000_l._, and to make over that sum to the King, as the dowry of his eldest daughter. The resolution made part of a bill of which it was only one of the items, and the members in the house affected to be scandalised that the dowry of a Princess of England should be ‘lumped in’ among a mass of miscellaneous items--charities to individuals, grants to old churches, and sums awarded for less dignified purposes. But the bill passed as it stood, and Caroline, who only a few days before had sent a thousand pounds to the provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, for the rebuilding and adorning of that college, was especially glad to find a dowry for her daughter, in whatever company it might come, provided only it was not out of her own purse.