The Queen wished to give her husband precedence next after herself. Some difficulty was experienced in procuring the consent of the Royal Dukes, but at last their scruples were removed. Only the King of Hanover stubbornly held out, and the Duke of Wellington, in the House of Peers, declined on behalf of his party to consent. The proposal was, therefore, withdrawn from Parliament, but shortly after the Queen conferred a patent of precedence by the exercise of her own prerogative. On a similar matter of dispute, it was not until the Prince himself had pointed out the unaccountably overlooked precedent of the privilege as enjoyed by Prince Leopold in the life-time of the Princess Charlotte, that Garter King-at-Arms could be induced to withdraw his opinion adverse to Prince Albert quartering the Royal Arms of England with his own. In the matter of his Household, the Prince's own admirable judgment solved the difficulty with the clear adroitness of honest simplicity. He stipulated that considerations of party should have nothing to do with these appointments; that they should be filled by men of undoubted probity and purity of character; and he indicated his decided wish that they should be men of some kind of eminence; either very rich, very clever, or men who had deserved well of their country in the field of science or of arms. These wishes, to the Prince's considerable annoyance, were not all closely followed out. [Sidenote: ANNOUNCEMENT TO PARLIAMENT.] The Queen was tremendously cheered when, in January, 1840, she went to open Parliament, and no doubt was left in her mind as to the thorough popularity of the proposed union. The announcement of her intention contained in the Speech was a virtual repetition of that already made to the Council. From both sides of both Houses she was personally congratulated, and her choice approved, but the Duke of Wellington strongly objected to the omission of the statement that the Prince was a Protestant, with some shrewdness attributing its absence to Melbourne's reluctance to irritate his Irish Catholic supporters. The Duke at the same time repeated again and again his own perfect personal conviction in the thorough fidelity of the Prince to the historic and heroic Protestantism of his race. Lord Brougham spoke on this point, and very pertinently: "I may remark," he said, "that my noble friend (Lord Melbourne) is mistaken as to the law. There is no prohibition as to marriage with a Catholic. It is only attended with a penalty, and that penalty _is merely the forfeiture of the Crown_." In spite of this, a sentence asserting the fact of the Prince's Protestantism was, at the Duke of Wellington's instance, inserted in the Address agreed to in answer to the Speech from the Throne.