The men whom Charlotte met at her mother’s dinner table were not attractive to her, though she was aware that several were past or present favourites of the Princess. Conversation, at Blackheath and Kensington, was not censored in Charlotte’s presence, and when she was in her early teens she heard the whole story of Mary Anne Clarke, the Duke of York’s discarded mistress, and the scandal of the sale of Army commissions, relayed, enlarged and dwelt upon with relish. She was not so shocked by this, being accustomed to hear scandalous reports of her uncles, as she was by the conversations she had with Sir William Drummond, the scholar and agnostic, who informed her that the Bible was founded upon myth-‘I can assure you your Royal Highness there is nothing in it, it is all an allegory and nothing more.’ Charlotte met Sir William three times at her mother’s house, in the course of which he told her to study Oriental history, as being more amusing than Scripture, and asserted that the Royalty and Nobility of this country had always been educated by priests-‘the most corrupt and contemptible of mankind’. For once Charlotte found herself on the side of the Bishop of Salisbury – the ‘great U.P.’, her much mocked preceptor, to whom, having extricated herself with dignity from Sir William, she confided the appalling statements which he had made.
A decree came from on high: Princess Charlotte was to meet no society whatever at her mother’s house.
[an extract from ‘Prinny’s Daughter: A Biography of Princess Charlotte of Wales’ by Thea Home]
More about these meetings in the footnote here
Princess Charlotte of Wales 