The motion for the address to the King, praying him to confer a jointure on the princess, and to settle 100,000_l._ a-year out of the civil list on the prince, was brought before the House of Peers by Lord Carteret. That nobleman so well served his royal client that, before bringing forward the motion, he made an apology to the Queen, declaring that office had been forced on him. The exercise thereof was a decided failure. The Lords rejected the motion, on a division of 103 to 40, the minority making strong protest against the division of the House, and in very remarkable language. The latter did not trouble their Majesties, and this settling of the question helped to restore Walpole to the royal favour, from which he had temporarily fallen. There was another public affair which gave the Queen as much perplexity as any of her domestic troubles. This was the investigation into the matter of the Porteous riot at Edinburgh, with the object of punishing those who were most to blame. It is not necessary to detail this matter at any length, or indeed further than the Queen was personally connected with it. She was exceedingly desirous that it should be decided on its merits, and that it should not be made a national matter of. On this account, she was especially angry with the Duke of Newcastle, on whom she laid the blame of having very unnecessarily dragged up to London such respectable men as the Scotch judges; and she asked him ‘What the devil he meant by it?’ While the affair was still pending, but after the judges had been permitted to go back again, the Queen remarked to Lord Hervey, ‘she should be glad to know the truth, but believed she should never come at it--whether the Scotch judges had been really to blame or not in the trial of Captain Porteous: for, between you and the Bishop of Salisbury’ (Sherlock), said she, ‘who each of you convinced me by turns, I am as much in the dark as if I knew nothing at all of the matter. He comes and tells me that they are all as black as devils; you, that they are as white as snow; and whoever speaks last, I believe. I am like that judge you talk of so often in the play (Gripus,[29] I think you call him), who, after one side had spoken, begged t’others might hold their tongue, for fear of puzzling what was clear to him. I am Queen Gripus; and since the more I hear the more I am puzzled, I am resolved I will hear no more about it; but let them be in the right or the wrong, I own to you I am glad they are gone.’ The city of Edinburgh was ultimately punished by the deposition of its provost, Mr. Wilson, who was declared incapable of ever serving his Majesty, and by the imposition of a fine of two thousand pounds sterling. The ‘mulct’ was to go to the ‘cook-maid widow of Captain Porteous, and make her, with most unconjugal joy, bless the hour in which her husband was hanged.’[30]