JEX. 36.] AND THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 183 



consider her Koyal Highnesses interests to be, in fact, 

 the same with those of your Koyal Highness ; because 

 it is quite impossible not to see that the attempts 

 against your Eoyal Highness must greatly injure 

 nay, very probably prove ruinous to y our Eoyal High- 

 ness's daughter. " * 



But the matter of greatest interest was her father's 

 desire to have her married ; and she conceived that 

 it was coupled with a plan of her living abroad, 

 for the Prince of Orange was soon proposed to 

 her. He was one of the foreign princes who was 

 now in London, but he had served in the Spanish 

 campaigns, and was for some time on the Duke's staff. 

 She gave him no encouragement beyond civil, and 

 perhaps complimentary, expressions, and could not, 

 without offence, refuse some trifling presents which he 

 offered without, indeed, what would have been tanta- 

 mount to a refusal of his hand. Her father was bent 

 upon the match, and this formed the subject of much 

 correspondence with me through her mother, when I 

 plainly told her that she was at perfect liberty to 

 accept or refuse him, without more regard to her 

 father's wishes than merely giving the matter a favour- 

 able consideration in deference to his opinion. She 

 was anxious to know everything as to her leaving the 

 country in case she consented to the marriage, and the 

 steps which Parliament might take to regulate that, 

 and any other particular, if the marriage took place. 

 I gave her all the information she required, and de- 

 tailed the instances, at different times, from Philip and 

 Mary downwards. George Lamb had published a 



* This referred to the possibility of divorce, and the not improbable 

 remarriage of the Prince. 



