The prince was very zealous and painstaking in introducing his bride to the people. For this purpose they were often together at the theatre. On one of these occasions the princess must have had but an indifferent idea of the civilisation of the people over whom she fairly expected one day to reign as queen-consort. The occasion alluded to was on the 3rd of May 1736, when great numbers of footmen assembled, with weapons, in a tumultuous manner, broke open the doors of Drury Lane Theatre, and fighting their way to the stage-doors, which they forced open, they prevented the Riot Act being read by Colonel de Veal, who nevertheless arrested some of the ringleaders and committed them to Newgate. In this tumult, founded on an imaginary grievance that the footmen had been illegally excluded from the gallery, to which they claimed to go _gratis_, many persons were severely wounded, and the terrified audience hastily separated; the prince and princess, with a large number of persons of distinction, retiring when the tumult was at its highest. The Princess of Wales had never witnessed a popular tumult before; and, though this was ridiculous in character, it was serious enough of aspect to disgust her with that part of ‘the majesty of the people’ which was covered with _plush_. The King, in spite of Sir Robert Walpole’s threat, proceeded to Hanover in the month of May. Before he quitted England he sent word to his son that, wherever the Queen Regent resided, _there_ would be apartments for the Prince and Princess of Wales. Frederick looked upon this measure in its true light, namely, as making him a sort of prisoner, and preventing the possibility of two separate courts in the King’s absence. The prince determined to disobey his father and thwart his mother. When the Queen removed from one residence to another, he feigned preparations to follow her, and then feigned obstructions to them. He pleaded an illness of the princess which did not exist, and was surprised that his medical men declined to back up _his_ lie by another of their own. The Queen on her side, feigning anxious interest in her daughter-in-law, visited her in her imaginary illness; but the patient, who was first said to be suffering from measles, then from a rash, and finally was declared to be really indisposed with a cold, was kept in a darkened room, and was otherwise so trained to deceive that Caroline left the bed-side as wise as when she went to it. In this conduct towards his mother Frederick was chiefly influenced by his ill-humour at the Queen’s being appointed regent. When she opened the commission at Kensington, which she always did as soon as she received intelligence of the landing of the King in Holland, Frederick would not attend the council, but contrived to reach the palace just after the members had concluded their business. CHAPTER VI. AT HOME AND OVER THE WATER.