This communication raised a discussion, and Mr. Methuen proposed an address to the Prince, requesting him to acquaint the house by whose advice he had determined never to meet the Princess. The proposition, however, was withdrawn. Mr. Bathurst, the only government advocate, stated that no imputation was intended against the character of the Princess. ‘The charges of guilt,’ he admitted, ‘had been irresistibly refuted at a former period.’ The so-called exclusion from court, he said, simply resolved itself into the non-invitation of the Princess to a court festival--nothing more. But, as Mr. Whitbread subsequently remarked, ‘such non-invitation was an infliction worse than loss of life: it is loss of reputation, blasting to her character, fatal to her fame.’ The government thought to pacify the Princess by holding out to her the prospect of an increase of income; but her friends in parliament asserted that she would scorn to barter her rights for an increased income, or to allow her silence to be purchased in exchange for an adequate provision. CHAPTER VI. A DOUBLE FLIGHT. The Prince of Orange proposes to the Princess Charlotte--His suit declined--Dr. Parr--A new household appointed for the Princess Charlotte--Her astonishment and immediate flight-- Alarm and pursuit--Princess Charlotte removed to Cranbourne Lodge--The Princess of Wales determines to leave England--Her departure from Worthing--The Regent’s continued hatred of her. Among the refugees of exalted rank whom revolution and the fortunes of war had driven to seek an asylum in England, the members of the family of the Stadtholder of Holland were the most conspicuous. The eldest son of this noble family became almost an Englishman by education and habit, and Oxford yet reckons him with pride among the honoured of her _alumni_. As revolution and the fortunes of war had brought the family hither, so a happy turn in the same took them home, and restored them to a country which had now become for them a kingdom. At the peace of 1814 the Prince of Orange once more came to England, not as a refugee, but a visitor and suitor. The heir to a Dutch throne came to sue for the hand of the heiress to the Crown of Great Britain, and his suit was powerfully backed by the sanction of the heiress’s father. Her mother gave no such sanction, nor was she, indeed, asked for any. Most important of all, the young lady thus wooed did not at all sanction the proceeding. Of all the episodes of the season there was none more stirring than this.