the world as a spy, leagued with the King's enemies, and was compelled
to leave England for ten years of exile and disgrace.

This corruption and ruin of her own son was the crowning infamy of one
of the worst women who ever enlisted their beauty, of their own free
will, in the service of the devil.




CHAPTER VII

A PROFLIGATE PRINCE


Of the sons of the profligate Frederick, Prince of Wales, Henry
Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, was, by universal consent, the most
abandoned, as his eldest brother, George III., of "revered memory," in
spite of his intrigue with the fair Quakeress, was the least vicious.
Each brother had his amours--many of them highly discreditable; but for
unrestrained and indiscriminate profligacy Henry Frederick took the
unenviable palm.

Even the verdict of posterity is unable to credit this Princeling with a
solitary virtue, unless a handsome face and a passion for music can be
placed to his credit. In his career of female conquest, which began as
soon as he had emancipated himself from his mother's apron strings, he
left behind him a wake of ruined lives; not the least tragic of which
was that of the lovely and foolish Henrietta Vernon, Countess Grosvenor,
whom he dragged through the mire of the Divorce Court, only to fling her