The people had idly imagined that advantage would be made of the youth of the Prince’s children to raise the Duke to the Throne. Nobody had doubted but he must be Protector if the King should die during their minority. All the precedents ran in his favour, except two Acts which had never taken place, made in the reign of King Henry the Eighth, for appointing Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour Regents during the eventual minorities of their respective children. No woman had ever yet been Regent in a minority. Even the Black Prince’s widow, though of the most distinguished virtue and character, though an English woman, and of the Blood Royal of England herself, was passed over, and her son regented by his uncles. The King, who never thought of disturbing the right order of succession, and who grew a little jealous of the Duke the moment he had lost his other son, had, immediately on the Prince’s death, proposed to have the future Regency settled by Parliament. The Duke of Bedford, though connected with, and wishing well to the Duke, and upon no terms with the Princess, had the honesty to be the first man that declared for her being Regent. The Pelhams took care not to disagree with him on this article. The Duke[102] had broke entirely with the Duke of Newcastle towards the end of the war, when Lord Sandwich having been ordered to communicate a new plan to Count Kaunitz, had desired to be excused, but the orders being repeated, he had obeyed artfully. The Duke thought him in the wrong, and had received his consent to say everything that might reconcile him to the Duke of Newcastle, but that he thought himself in the wrong. The Duke of Newcastle had neither accepted nor refused the Duke’s mediation, who was not apt to pardon slighter offences than contempt. He loved indiscriminate submission; flattery did not come up to his ideas of obedience, and consequently he overlooked it: but the least opposition he never forgave. With the most heroic bravery, he had all the severity that levels valour to cowardice, and seemed to love war for itself, without feeling the passions that it gratifies.