74 KEW GARDENS 



followed by a mob of guide-books, servum pecus, 

 that often go tumbling after one another into the 

 same ditch. But Miss Burney and other wit- 

 nesses prove that it was not so ; and Thorne has 

 misled himself in his reference to George Rose's 

 Diary. Rose clearly refers to the next serious 

 attack in 1801. It was whispered that in 1795 

 there had been a recurrence of the symptoms, 

 passing off in a few days. But at the beginning 

 of the next century, when the King's mind was 

 agitated by the resignation of Mr. Pitt on the 

 Catholic Emancipation question, he caught a bad 

 cold that ended as before. This time the illness 

 began at Buckingham House; then, after His 

 Majesty seemed fit to attend to business again, 

 on his going to Kew a severe relapse took place, 

 shown by his informing the Prince of Wales that 

 he proposed to abdicate the English Crown and 

 retire to Hanover or America. 



It was now that he came to be separated from 

 his family, and confined in the " Dutch House " 

 under charge of the Willises, to whom he had 

 taken a strong dislike, and is said to have struck 

 one of them before his removal could be effected 

 by force. The father no longer appears as taking 

 the leading part in the King's treatment ; but 



