Soon at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields Buononcini’s operas were being performed in rivalry with Handel’s at the Haymarket.

The Princess Royal was furious, seeing in this her brother’s hatred of herself and his parents; and that he should direct this against her beloved music master was more than she could bear.

‘It will be useless,’ she stormed to Amelia and Caroline.

‘Lincoln’s Inn will never rival the Haymarket. And how can anyone in his senses compare the Italian with great Handel?’

But music had little to do with the affair. The King’s Court was dull; the Prince’s was becoming more lively. To it went all the rebels, all the young who wanted a change; and the way in which they could show their willingness to follow the Prince was to go to the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Anne was desperate; she implored her parents to come with her to the opera.

‘Frederick is deliberately flouting us all,’ she declared; and the Queen agreed with her.

As for the King, he had hated his son from the first and he was ready to make a state occasion of a visit to the Haymarket.

And each week it became more and more obvious that the audience at the Haymarket was growing less and less and that at Lincoln’s Inn Fields greater.

There came a night when the King, the Queen, with the Princesses and young William, all seated in the royal box, were the only audience for the Handel opera.

To make this more humiliating the roads were jammed on the way to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and as the theatre was filled to its capacity, people stood outside to wait for the Prince and his friends to leave that they might give them a cheer and shout ‘Long Live the Prince of Wales ... and Buononcini.’

The Prince had won his wager. The King was mightily discomfited; Handel and the Haymarket were in financial difficulties; and Walpole and the Queen were worried.

This was the full cycle.

The Prince of Wales had now come into the open as the enemy of the King and Queen.

Sarah Churchill’s Bargain


THERE was a woman who watched the antics of the Court with malicious pleasure. She was one of the richest women in England and had at one time been the most powerful. This was Sarah, the widowed Duchess of Marlborough.