GEORGIUS REX
THE Professions you have lately made in your Letters, of your particular Regard to Me, are so contradictory to your Actions, that I cannot suffer My self to be imposed upon by them. You know very well, you did not give the least Intimation t Me, or to the Queen, that the Princess was with Child, until within a Month of the Birth of the young Princess.
You removed the Princess twice in the Week immediately preceding the Day of her Delivery, from the Place of My Residence, in Expectation (as you voluntarily declar’d) of her Labour; and both Times, upon your Return, you industriously conceal’d from the Knowledge of Me and the Queen, every Circumstance relating to this important Affair: And you, at last, without giving Notice to Me, or to the Queen, precipitately hurried the Princess from Hampton-Court, in a Condition not to be nam’d. After having thus, in Execution of your own determin’d Measures, exposed both the Princess and her Child to the greatest Perils, you now plead Surprize, and Tenderness for the Princess, as the only Motives that occasion’d these repeated Indignities offer’d to Me and the Queen your Mother.
This extravagant and undutiful Behaviour, in so essential a Point, as the Birth of an Heir to My Crown, is such an Evidence of your premeditated Defiance of Me, and such a Contempt of My Authority, and of the natural Right belonging to your Parents, as cannot be excus’d by the pretended Innocence of your Intentions, nor pallitated or disguised by specious Words only, but the whole Tenor of your Conduct, for a considerable Time, has been so entirely void of all real Duty to Me, that I have long had Reason to be highly offended with you: And, until you withdraw your Regard and Confidence from those by whose Instigations and Advice you are directed and encouraged in your unwarrrantable Behaviour to Me, and the the Queen, and until you return to your Duty, you shall not reside in my Palace, which I will not suffer to be made the Resort of them, who, under the Appearance of an Attachment to you, foment the Division which you have made in my Family, and thereby weakened the common Interest of the Whole.
In this Situation I will receive no Reply; but when your Actions manifest a just Sense of your Duty and Submission, that may induce me to pardon what at present I most justly resent.
In the mean Time, it is My Pleasure, that you leave St. James’s, with all your Family, when it can be done without Prejudice or Inconvenience to the Princess.
I shall, for the present, leave to the Princess the Care of my Grand-daughter, until a proper Time calls upon me to consider of her Education.
G.R.
Eighteenth-Century Reading Room 