personal rights over his own family. But it is impossible to regard
transactions which may affect the right of succession to the throne as
matters of only private interest. And indeed the bill was treated as one
involving a constitutional question by both sides of both Houses, and as
such was discussed with remarkable earnestness, and with vehemence
equalling that of any other debate which had as yet taken place since
the commencement of the reign. The bill had its origin in the personal
feelings of the King himself, who had been greatly annoyed at the
conduct of his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, in marrying a widow of
the name of Horton, daughter of Lord Irnham, and sister of the Colonel
Luttrell whom the vote of the House of Commons had seated as member for
Middlesex; and perhaps still more at the discovery that his other
brother, the Duke of Gloucester, to whom he was greatly attached, had
married another subject, the widowed Lady Waldegrave. His Majesty's
dissatisfaction was, perhaps, heightened by the recollection that he
himself, in early manhood, had also been strongly attracted by the
charms of another subject, and had sacrificed his own inclinations to
the combined considerations of pride of birth and the interests of his
kingdom. And, though there was a manifest difference between the
importance of the marriage of the sovereign himself and that of princes
who were never likely to become sovereigns, he thought it not
unreasonable that he should be empowered to exercise such a general
guardianship over the entire family, of which he was the head, as might
enable him to control its members in such arrangements, by making his
formal sanction indispensable to the validity of any matrimonial
alliances which they might desire to contract. A somewhat similar
question had been raised in 1717, when George I., having quarrelled with
the Prince of Wales (afterward George II.), asserted a claim to control
and direct the education of all the Prince's children, and, when they
should be of marriageable age, to arrange their marriages. The Prince,