The bridegroom of the Princess Royal was treated by the Court with great coldness, for it was known that he had been discussing English politics with more freedom than discretion: all the ceremonials not absolutely essential were omitted, the servants were not given the customary new liveries for the marriage, and though Charles was perforce lodged at Somerset House, no sentinel was placed at the door of his apartment. Indeed had he been an uninvited guest his reception could not have been more marked by stinging slights. The Prince, a high-spirited, not overwise young man of nine-and-twenty, was very angry at the treatment accorded him by the family of his bride, and since the Court ignored him so far as possible, he accepted the attentions of the leaders of the Opposition, dined with the Duke of Cumberland and the Duke of Newcastle, and visited Pitt at Hayes.
Very different was the conduct of the public, which was delighted to welcome the gallant young soldier, who had distinguished himself in war under Frederick the Great, and cheered him to the echo whenever he appeared in public. One day, he kissed his hand to a soldier of Elliot's Light Horse, who was at once surrounded by a crowd, and asked if he knew the Prince. "Yes," said the man, "he once led me into a scrape, which nobody but himself could have brought me out of again." "You may guess," wrote Walpole, "how much this added to the Prince's popularity, which was at high-water mark before." The Prince had arrived in England on January 12, and was married on the 16th. Two days later the whole royal family went to Covent Garden Theatre, and the public took this occasion to show their opinion of the manner in which the visitor had been received. The King and Queen took their seats in a profound silence, and deafening cheers greeted the appearance of the bridal pair. "The shouts, claps, and huzzas were immoderate," Walpole informed Sir Horace Mann. "He sat behind his Princess and her brothers. The galleries called him to come forward. In the middle of the play he went to be elected a member of the Royal Society, and returned to the theatre when the applause was renewed."
The subsequent life of the Prince and Princess of Brunswick was conventional--conventional, that is, according to the standard of royalty in those days. "The Duchess of Brunswick is brought to bed of a brat, and they say she has not been taken care of, and that the Prince is not good to her," Lady Sarah Bunbury wrote to Lady Susan O'Brien on December 16, 1764; "but I don't believe a word of it." Certainly the Duke was not faithful to his wife, and had many intrigues, the most enduring of which was with Madame de Herzfeldt. "There were some unlucky things in our Court, which made my position difficult," subsequently said Princess Charlotte of Brunswick, who married the Prince of Wales. "My father was most entirely attached to a lady for thirty years who, in fact, was his mistress. She was the beautifullest creature and the cleverest; but though my father continued to pay my poor mother all possible respect, my poor mother could not suffer this attachment. The consequence was that I did not know what to do between them: when I was civil to the one I was scolded by the other; and I was very tired of being shuttlecock between them."