For some time the marriage was kept a secret, for Howe feared the displeasure of the then King, William III. At last, just before his departure to Hanover, he permitted the Duke of Albemarle to break the news to the King. William was pleased to be gracious, and even recommended Ruperta to Sophie's notice, saying: "She is very modest, and lives like an angel with her husband."[71] The husband in question met with Sophie's approval, for she thought him "a fine man, rich, and in a good position."[72] With Francesca he had a double cause of enmity, both public and private, and he wrote of her as virulently as his predecessors had done, declaring that she "has done her endeavours continually to cross my transactions here for the Queen's service;"[73] and again,--"She is indeed a very simple creature, but as malitious and violent as is possible for anything to bee."[74] Nevertheless the large-hearted Electress made her niece almost as welcome as she had made her reputed sister-in-law, and the Jacobite _intrigante_ and the Orange Ambassadress, both so closely connected with Rupert, seem to have {365} contrived to reside in comparative peace, under the protection of the mother of the house of Hanover. But for the bar sinister the claim of Ruperta to the English throne would have preceded that of Sophie's son, George I. It has sometimes been regretted that Rupert left no legitimate child who might have reigned in George's stead; but it may be safely conjectured that the fact would not have been a subject of regret with Rupert himself. He would have been the last person to wish that any child of his should supplant the house of Stuart, which he had so long and so faithfully served. Honest in all his dealings, faithful to his friends, and unswervingly loyal to his king he had ever been, and in his old age he would not have turned traitor. Loyalty and strength were the key-notes of his character. Never did he break his given word, with friend and foe alike he scrupulously kept faith, and whatsoever he found to do, he did it with all his might. In all things he had the courage of his opinions; and the rigid temperance which he practised from his earliest youth, in an age and a country where drinking was almost universal, shows an unusual independence of character, and an unusual degree of self-respect.