Hardwicke made one last desperate effort to move Pitt, but without success. He writes to Newcastle on September 15 (1755): 'I have had a long conversation with the _gentleman_ your Grace knows, but with little effect. I talked very fully and strongly to him upon every part of the case, both as to _persons_ and _measures_. He made great professions of his regard and firm attachment to your Grace and me, but adhered to his _negative_. He puts that negative upon two things: His objections to the two treaties of subsidy ... his other objection arose from _Mr. F._, with whom he declared he could not act.'[290] On this scene, coming more and more into prominence as the King became older, and as the Prince of Wales, or rather Bute and his clique, waxed bolder, appears the mysterious and elusive influence of Leicester House. It is difficult to trace or measure this combination, except in the naked fact of an old King and a young heir, nor is it easy to trace the connection of Pitt with this party. Every movement in Leicester House was jealously watched by the politicians, much as a late Sultan is said to have tracked the movements of the least menial of his dethroned and secluded predecessor. We read of the Princess being stirred to wrath by her father-in-law's project of marrying her son to the daughter, supposed to be active and ambitious, of a woman she detested. Then there is the suspicion that the Heir Apparent was surrounded by persons who were more or less Jacobite; Bute himself having, it was presumed, Jacobite leanings. But the King at once desisted with rare good sense from any idea of the projected marriage, though no doubt it would have given him pleasure. And the danger of an Hanoverian sovereign becoming a Jacobite under any influence seems too fantastic for a pantomime. The real apprehension was no doubt that Leicester House might shake off the domination and destroy the long monopoly of the Whigs, as indeed it eventually did. And certainly Leicester House, with the throne full in view, was becoming more and more inclined to assert itself. Human nature and family relations had, as usual in such cases, much to do with the matter. The Hanoverian Kings did not love their heirs apparent. George the First hated his, but he had no other son to love, and indeed little capacity for loving, except mistresses who found favour with no one else. George the Second hated his with a peculiar hatred, and was thus able to devote what fatherly affection he had to give to his second son, the Duke of Cumberland. These parental preferences, however justifiable, do not tend to affection between sons. And so there was no love lost between Prince Frederick and his family on the one side, and Duke William on the other. These feelings, as is usually the case, survived, when Frederick died, with increasing intensity between the widow and her brother-in-law. She saw him on the right hand of the King, enjoying all