While this dissension was at its hottest, the Queen fell ill of the gout. She was so unwell, so weary of being in bed, and so desirous of chatting with Lord Hervey, that she now for the first time broke through the court etiquette, which would not admit a man, save the Sovereign, into the royal bed-chamber. The noble lord was with her there during the whole day of each day that her confinement lasted. She was too old, she said, to have the honour of being talked of for it; and so, to suit her humour, the old ceremony was dispensed with. Lord Hervey sate by her bed-side, gossiped the live-long day; and on one occasion, when the Prince of Wales sent Lord North with a message of enquiry after her health, he amused the Queen by turning the message into very slipshod verse, the point of which is at once obscure and ill-natured, but which seems to imply that the prince would have been well content had the gout, instead of being in her foot, attacked her stomach. The prince had been guilty of no such indecency as this; but there was no lack of provocation to make him commit himself. When he was turned out of St. James’s, he was not permitted to take with him a single article of furniture. The royal excuse was, that the furniture had been purchased, on the prince’s marriage, at the King’s cost, and was his Majesty’s property. It was suggested that sheets ought not to be considered as furniture; and that the prince and princess could not be expected to carry away their dirty linen in baskets. ‘Why not?’ asked the King; ‘it is good enough for them!’ Such were the petty circumstances with which Caroline and her consort troubled themselves at the period in question. They at once hurt their own dignity and made their son look ridiculous. The great partisan of the latter (Lord Baltimore) did not rescue his master from ridicule by comparing his conduct to that of the heroic Charles XII. of Sweden. But the comparison was one to be expected from a man whom the King had declared to be, in a great degree, a booby, and, in a trifling degree, mad. As soon as the prince had established himself at Kew, he was waited on by Lord Carteret, Sir William Wyndham, and Mr. Pulteney. The King could not conceal his anger under an affected contempt of these persons or of their master. He endeavoured to satisfy himself by abusing the latter, and by remarking that ‘they would soon be tired of the puppy, who was, moreover, a scoundrel and a fool; and who would talk more fiddle-faddle to them in a day than any old woman talks in a week.’ The prince continued to address letters both to the King and Queen, full of affected concern, expressed in rather impertinent phrases. The princess addressed others, in which she sought to justify her husband’s conduct; but as in all these notes there was a studied disrespect of Caroline, the King would neither consent to grant an audience to the offenders, nor would the Queen interfere to induce him to relent.