The Queen never exhibited her _cleverness_ in a clearer light than when, in 1735, she got over the expected difficulty arising from a threatened parliamentary address to the throne for the marriage and settlement of the Prince of Wales. She ‘crushed’ it, to use the term employed by Lord Hervey, by gaining the King’s consent--no difficult matter--to tell the prince that it was his royal sire’s intention to marry him forthwith. The King had no princess in view for him; but was ready to sanction any choice he might think proper to make, and the sooner the better. As if the thing were already settled, the Queen, on her side, talked publicly of the coming marriage of the heir-apparent; but not a word was breathed as to the person of the bride. Caroline, moreover, to give the matter a greater air of reality, purchased clothes for the wedding of her son with the yet ‘invisible lady,’ and sent perpetually to jewellers to get presents for the ideal future Princess of Wales. The lady, however, was not a merely visionary bride. It was during the absence of the King in Hanover that it was delicately contrived for him to see a marriageable princess--Augusta of Saxe Gotha. He approved of what he saw, and wrote home to the Queen, bidding her to prepare her son for the bridal. Caroline communicated the order to Frederick, who received it with due resignation. His mother, who had great respect for outward observances, counselled him to begin his preparations for marriage by sending away his ostentatiously maintained _favourite_, Miss Vane. Frederick pleased his mother by dismissing Miss Vane, and then pleased himself by raising to the vacant bad eminence Lady Archibald Hamilton, a woman of thirty-five years of age and the mother of ten children. The prince visited her at her husband’s house, where he was as well received by the master as by the mistress. He saw her constantly at her sister’s, rode out with her, walked with her daily for hours in St. James’s Park, ‘and, whenever she was at the drawing-room (which was pretty frequently), his behaviour was so remarkable that his nose and her ear were inseparable, whilst, without discontinuing, he would talk to her as if he had rather been relating than conversing, from the time he came into the room to the moment he left it, and then seemed to be rather interrupted than to have finished.’[24]