ROYAL RESIDENCES 28 



of one of Besant's novels ; but it is hard now to tell 

 the truth of it. The idea one gets of this King's 

 youth suggests Blifil rather than Tom Jones. 

 All the other sons turned out more like Tom 

 Jones, while " insipid " was an epithet applied to 

 young George, who would yet develop a strongly- 

 flavoured character. His moral courage and pluck 

 came to be well proved in several trying predica- 

 ments ; and at the opening of the Seven Years' 

 War, he showed spirit by demanding to serve 

 in the Army, to the King's jealous displeasure. 



We need not rake up all the scandals that 

 echoed about the quiet household at Kew. The 

 Whigs went on sounding an alarm that the 

 Prince of Wales was brought up in Jacobite 

 principles, a particular hullabaloo being raised 

 by a charge that his tutor Stone had drunk 

 the Pretender's health twenty years back, in 

 company with Murray, better known as Lord 

 Mansfield. The chief reproach against Bute, as 

 yet, seems to have been his easily supposed 

 illicit relations with the Princess, of which there 

 is no proof. It was after the accession, rather, 

 that he came to be pilloried as having laid him- 

 self out to heighten the Prince's notion of the 

 prerogative. There can be no doubt that he had 



