Let us do the prince the justice to say, that, in asking that his income might be doubled, he did not ask that the money should be drawn from the public purse. When Bubb Dodington first advised him to apply to parliament for a grant, his answer was spirited enough. ‘The people have done quite enough for my family already, and I would rather beg my bread from door to door than be a charge to them.’ What he asked for was, that out of his father’s civil list of nearly a million sterling per annum, he might be provided with a more decent revenue than a beggarly fifty thousand a-year, paid at his father’s pleasure. Pulteney’s motion was denounced by ministers as an infraction of the King’s prerogative. Well, Frederick could not get the cash he coveted from the King, and he would not take it from the public. Bubb Dodington had advised him to apply to parliament, and he rewarded Bubb for the hint by easing him occasionally of a few thousands at play. He exulted in winning. ‘I have just nicked Dodington,’ said he on one occasion, ‘out of 5,000_l._, and Bubb has no chance of ever getting it again!’ The battle, however, was not yet concluded. The prince’s party resolved to make the same motion in the Lords which had been made in the Commons. The King and Queen meanwhile considered that they were released from their engagement, whereby the prince’s revenue was to be placed entirely in his own power. They were also anxious to eject their son from St. James’s. Good counsel, nevertheless, prevailed over them to some extent, and they did not proceed to any of the extremities threatened by them. In the meantime, the scene within the palace was one to make a very stoic sigh. The son had daily intercourse with one or both of his parents. He led the Queen by the hand to dinner, and she could have stabbed him on the way; for her wrath was more bitter than ever against him, for the reason that he had introduced her name, through his friends, in the parliamentary debate, in a way which she considered must compromise her reputation with the people of England. He had himself declared to the councillors who had brought him the terms of the King’s offer, that he had frequently applied through the Queen for an interview with the King, at which an amicable arrangement of their differences might be made; but that she had prevented such an interview, by neglecting to make the prince’s wishes known to his father. This story was repeated by the prince’s friends in parliament, and Caroline called heaven and earth to witness that her son had grossly and deliberately lied. In this temper the two often sat down to dinner at the same table. As for the King, although Frederick attended the royal _levées_, and stood near his royal sire, the latter never affected to behold or to consider him as present, and he invariably spoke of him as a brainless, impertinent puppy and scoundrel.[28]