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showing all signs of fast becoming that.
    ‘Reflect,’ said Charles James Fox to his friend Edmund Burke, ‘how the people welcomed the restoration of Charles the Second. How they adored him when he promenaded in St James’s Park, a mistress on either side and more following behind. And how they loathed poor dull Noll Cromwell because he was a faithful husband and a Puritan. So do they feel about His virtuous but oh so dull and just a little stupid Majesty.’
    Burke agreed with Fox, but Fox was not going to leave it at that. He had an idea and like most of his ideas it was a brilliant one.
    It was natural that since the King showed no favour towards him he should be on good terms with those who had a grudge against His Majesty and his mind immediately went to the Cumberlands.
    Henry, Duke of Cumberland had, under the influence of hisDuchess, the lady whose eyelashes had brought her fame and fortune, smarted under the King’s neglect. The King did not wish to see his brother Henry. Whenever he thought of him he remembered the disgusting affair with Lady Grosvenor, and phrases from those very revealing letters which Cumberland had written to the lady, and which betrayed such eroticism as the King had scarcely known existed, haunted his nightmares in which to his dismay women figured so prominently. No, the King could not bear to see Cumberland. It was different with his brother William, Duke of Gloucester, who had made another mésalliance, it was true, by marrying Lady Waldegrave, but although this lady was illegitimate and a milliner’s daughter, Gloucester’s life was comparatively respectable. Moreover, the King had always been very fond of Gloucester.
    This state of affairs made the Cumberlands even more resentful, and it was to them that Charles James Fox decided to turn.
    He called at the Cumberland House where he was always a welcome guest. Fox was a witty conversationalist, a high liver, a gambler, an amorist – in fact he indulged freely in all the fleshly vices. At the same time he was the cleverest politician in the country and while the Cumberlands could attract such men to their house their parties could be the most amusing in town. Moreover, they could give not only offence but anxiety to the King.
    Fox, a stubble on his double chin, for over-indulgence in food and drink had made him fat in spite of the fact that he was only thirty years of age, his coat slightly splashed with grease from his last meal, for he made no concessions to royal dukes, arrived at Cumberland House, his mind full of the project.
    The Duchess, fluttering her long lashes, received him boisterously. There was nothing regal about the Duchess. Her conversation was amusing and droll and not untouched by coarseness, but she was a very beautiful woman.
    The Duke was with his wife – a small man with the loose Hanoverian mouth and the rather bulging blue eyes. Charles James had little respect for his intelligence – the Duchess had more – but his position as uncle to the Prince of Wales made him important.
    He believed that Fox had come for a gamble, for the politician was a gambler by nature and could never resist a game of chance, but Fox quickly disillusioned him.
    ‘I have come to talk to Your Highness of your nephew.’
    ‘George!’ cried the Duchess. ‘There is no talk of anything but George. What a rascal the boy is becoming! He’ll soon be a rival to his uncle.’
    The Duke grinned at her.
    ‘I hope someone will warn him not to write letters,’ continued the irrepressible Duchess. ‘Love letters can be costly when those who receive them are no longer in love.’
    The Duke laughed at this reference to the Grosvenor case. ‘Is everyone going to go on talking of that forever?’
    ‘I’m sure it is what His Gracious Majesty holds against you … far more than your marriage to me.’
    ‘The Prince will need guidance,’ said Fox.
    ‘He’ll get it,’ laughed the Duke.
    ‘Never fear, dear Mr Fox,’ went on the