The opposition was moribund. An annual motion was made for shortening the duration of parliaments; but it attracted little attention, and other questions which had lately agitated men's minds fell equally out of date. A momentary revival of political excitement was caused by a bill which affected the king personally. George had family troubles. His sister Caroline, Queen of Denmark, was accused of adultery and imprisoned; she was allowed to retire to Hanover, and remained there until her death. Soon after hearing of her daughter's disgrace the king's mother died of cancer. She had long ceased to have any political influence and was eminently charitable, yet the sufferings of her last days were exulted over by scribblers opposed to the court, and her funeral was hailed with the cheers of the city mob. About the same time one of George's brothers, the Duke of Cumberland, after disgracing him by his flagrant immorality, married Mrs. Horton, the widowed daughter of Lord Irnham, and sister of Luttrell, the Middlesex member; and the private marriage of another brother, the Duke of Gloucester, to the widow of Lord Waldegrave, a bastard daughter of Horace Walpole's brother, was publicly announced. George was deeply annoyed by these marriages and forbade the offenders to appear at court. At his wish the royal marriage bill was laid before parliament. By this act no descendant of George II. under the age of twenty-six can enter into a valid marriage without the sovereign's consent; nor above that age, should the sovereign's consent be withheld, except by giving a year's notice to the privy council, so that parliament may, if it chooses, forbid the marriage. The doctrine implied in this act, that the whole royal family forms a class apart from the rest of the nation, was foreign to English ideas and smacked rather of German than English royalty. Yet, whatever the effects of the act may have been on those most nearly concerned, they have been beneficial to the nation.