The especial words ‘in this conference’ would seem to imply that the son of Charlotte did not always speak in so sensible a manner as could have been expected from a royal heir-apparent. It would have been as well, too, if the bishop had told his readers what the principle was on which the Prince had grounded his conduct throughout the King’s illness. When he simply talks of the Prince as a son imbued with the best principles towards both his parents, he would have done well if he had added whether he was considering that son politically or morally. It must have been politically, for the right reverend prelate did not impress upon his younger friend that a mother’s faults should be invisible to the eyes of her children; but, on the other hand, he rather emphatically charged her with ill-humour by advising the Prince ‘to persevere in dutifully bearing with his mother’s ill-humour till time and her own good sense should disentangle her from the web which ministerial cunning had thrown around her.’ Now to _persevere_ in a line of conduct is to continue in that already entered upon, and the line followed by the Prince was one of continual insult and provocation against the Queen. The bishop confesses an inclination to think well of her. ‘I was willing,’ he writes, ‘to attribute her conduct during the agitation of the regency question to her apprehensions of the King’s safety, to the misrepresentations of the King’s minister, to anything rather than a fondness for power.’ There is something inexpressibly ingenuous in the paragraph which follows:--‘Before we rose from table at Sir Thomas Dundas’s, where the Duke of York and a large company were assembled, the conversation turning on parties, I happened to say I was sick of parties, and should retire from all public concerns. “No,” said the Prince, “and mind _who it is that tells you so_, you shall never retire--a man of your talents shall never be lost to the public.”’ This testimony of himself was recorded by the bishop in 1814, and was published by his son in the Queen’s lifetime in 1817. Like the passage touching the Queen, it gave offence to the principal person concerned in it. The aged Queen was not pleased to have her ‘ill-humour’ registered before the world, nor was her son flattered by the innuendo which was conveyed in the paragraph which chronicled his promise of conferring preferment on the Bishop of Llandaff. Dr. Watson died prelate of that small diocese.