There remained only the question of the Prince's annuity. Ministers proposed L50,000. A very large majority negatived a proposal by Mr. Hume to reduce it to L20,000. But the Tory leaders supported a proposal of Colonel Sibthorpe's to reduce it to L30,000, and by a considerable majority this was carried. The Queen, and her uncle Leopold, were extremely angry at the time at what they conceived to be the personal slight conveyed in this fact. But the Queen, under the wise and placable guidance of the Prince, afterwards learned to attribute it to the then heat of party rancour, still unallayed after the Bedchamber dispute; and the Prince at an early period of his residence in England contracted warm and abiding friendships with many of the men who had most strongly resisted Ministers on each of the above contested points. On the 28th of January, Prince Albert, accompanied by Lord Torrington and Colonel (now General) Grey, who had been sent to invest him with the insignia of the Garter and conduct him in due state to England, set out from Gotha, as we have already seen at a previous page. He was also accompanied by his father and brother. After a passing visit to King Leopold at Brussels, they were met at Calais by Lord Clarence Paget, who commanded the _Firebrand_, and escorted the distinguished visitors to the shores of England, at which they arrived on the 6th of February. After magnificent and most hearty receptions at Dover and Canterbury, they reached Buckingham Palace in the afternoon of Saturday, the 8th of February, where the Prince found his bride standing with her mother at the door, ready to be the first to meet and to greet him. Half an hour later, the Lord Chancellor administered the oath of naturalisation, and the Prince became a subject of Queen Victoria. A grand dinner to the Prince, the Ministers, and the great officers of State succeeded in the evening. The next day the Prince drove out, amid the cheers of immense crowds, to pay formal visits to all the members of the Royal Family. [Sidenote: THE WEDDING.]