The consolation of such a friend as Lord Hervey can easily be conceived,
when he told her majesty that he had resolved, in case the king had been
lost at sea, to have retired from her service, in order to prevent any
jealousy or irritation that might arise from his supposed influence with
her majesty. The queen stopped him short, and said, 'No, my lord, I
should never have suffered that; you are one of the greatest pleasures
of my life. But did I love you less than I do, or less like to have you
about me, I should look upon the suffering you to be taken from me as
such a meanness and baseness that you should not have stirred an inch
from me. You,' she added, 'should have gone with me to Somerset House;'
(which was hers in case of the king's death). She then told him she
should have begged Sir Robert Walpole on her knees not to have sent in
his resignation.
The animosity of the Prince of Wales to Lord Hervey augmented, there can
be no doubt, his unnatural aversion to the queen, an aversion which he
evinced early in life. There was a beautiful, giddy maid of honour, who
attracted not only the attention of Frederick, but the rival attentions
of other suitors, and among them, the most favoured was said to be Lord
Hervey, notwithstanding that he had then been for some years the husband
of one of the loveliest ornaments of the court, the sensible and
virtuous Mary Lepel.
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