the cost was paid from the privy-purse. When queen Anne issued her palace-ordinance to the public, "that no more places were to be sold in her household," lady Marlborough records the fact; but, after indulging at length in the warmest flow of self-praise on her own generosity, assures her friends, public and private, "that the command was really issued by herself." It is dubious whether queen Anne's master of the horse, her comptroller of the household, and her groom of the stole, would have obeyed any orders but those of the queen, which obliged them to relinquish the profits of the sale of places under them, which they were no more ashamed of taking than they were of receiving their rents of landed property." The queen actually followed the impulse of her own bountiful temper, and her favourite made the best of the royal orders for the exaltation of her own consequence, by holding a sort of tribunal in the palace, something like the court of requests, where, with great pomp, she heard petitions and grievances. Her account of her own doings, at the accession, affords some information regarding the establishment of the royal household of queen Anne.

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"The first thing of the kind," says the Marlborough,' "that comes into my mind, is in relation to sir Edward Lawrence. Some time after the death of king William, he desired leave to speak with me; on being admitted, he addressed himself to me with this complaint: he had given eight hundred pounds for a place in that king's household, lord Jersey being lord chamberlain, but by the death of his majesty, and his servants not being paid by the queen, he had lost his money and his salary too, and hoped I would consider his case.' I told him that he came too late, for the queen had appointed all her family; however, I would do what I could for the queen to take him on the next vacancy,' which I accordingly did, without receiving anything from him, and he still enjoys the place. The pages of the backstairs are places so considerable, that I have been told several grooms of the stole have sold them for a thousand guineas each, but I gave them freely to Mr. Kirk, Mr. Saxton, and Mr. Smith, purely at the request of three ladies, lady Charlotte Beverwaert, lady Fitzharding, and

1 Coxe MSS., vol. xliv. Letter to Mr. Hutchinson, inedited. Brit. Museum.

the countess of Plymouth, that married bishop Biss. All the other places I had to dispose of were in the robes, which I made no more advantage of than the others.

"I gave the place of waiter in the robes,' to Mr. Curtis, who had married a woman that had served my children. I gave another place of the kind to Mr. Foster, who had served the duke of Marlborough, and I made William Lovegrove coffer-bearer, who was also a servant of the duke of Marlborough. These three were turned out of their places by the duchess of Somerset in the most shameful manner, to make room for her own servants.'

"To proceed: I also gave a place of coffer-bearer to Mr. Woolrich, and another, under the groom of the stole to Mr. Hodges, who had both been servants in the family of the princess; besides these, I made Mrs. Abrahal, whom I shall have occasion to mention hereafter, the queen's starcher,' and settled a hundred a year on her, because she had washed the queen's heads for twenty pounds a year when she was princess.

The queen's heads" were the Brussels-lace cornette caps of three stages, an old lady style of dress which had been made fashionable throughout Europe, by the costume which Madame de Maintenon, the elderly spouse of Louis XIV., thought proper to adopt. Even babies wore this very queer cap, which somewhat resembled the façade of a church, with three galleries, each higher than the other.

Between the queen's starcher, Mrs. Abrahal, and the duchess, a fierce feud ensued afterwards, but all was harmonious at this halcyon period. "I gave the place of sempstress to the queen," pursues the duchess, "to Mrs. Ravensford (who has since married a son of the bishop of Ely) because her mother was in the same place before."

The queen further caused an order of council to be enforced in the department of the green cloth, that every person taking office, was to testify, by solemn oath, that he did not pay anything for his place. The duchess of

1 Several years afterwards, when the duchess of Marlborough was deprived of her offices of mistress of the robes and groom of the stole.

2 Coxe MSS., vol. xliv. Letter of the duchess of Marlborough to Mr. Hutchinson. Inedited.

Marlborough claims all these steps as the result of her own bright integrity and scorn of ready cash, while giving the only information leading to the fact, that queen Anne was the sovereign who actually destroyed the place-selling system at the British court. It had been winked at by easy Charles, her uncle, who suffered his court-harpies to fill all lower offices with mercenaries who could not be removed, for their misdeeds, because "the poor folk, oddsfish, had paid their cash to Buckingham or Killigrew, or some other merry villains." Intelligence of this custom went forth into distant provinces, and shoals of harmless country gentlemen swarmed up to court with their ready cash in hand, to deal for court places with the said "merry villains." The story was rife at queen Anne's board of green cloth, that Killigrew had actually sold to some of these good people the imaginary offices of "the king's physic-taster," and the "royal curtaindrawer."1 And when the injured parties claimed their places, or the return of their gold, they found that the gold was spent and the invention of these absurd offices was only meant as a capital good joke.

Although queen Anne had put such stringent restrictions on the sale of places, whether disposed of in jest or earnest, still it was impossible to eradicate from the minds of the country gentry, that the old system was not pursued on every change of ministry-a notion which produced a comic incident or two in palace-life, which the prime minister of the day, Harley, did not disdain to relate, for the information of his friend and contemporary Swift, and as the queen was personally concerned, the adventure will be related according to its anno domini.

During the recess of parliament, the queen, alarmed at the effects of an asthma, which had, in the course of 1702, endangered the life of the prince, her husband, resolved to make a western progress, from Windsor to Bath, for the recovery of his health. Her majesty took Oxford in her way, and though she rested there but one night, was received with the most fervent loyalty. The example of William III., who refused to eat the banquet provided for him at Oxford, on some suspicion of poison, in the year 1696, was not followed by his successor, who did more than ample justice to the hospitality of the university, took most Tracts by Swift.

graciously the accustomed gift of Woodstock gloves, and a bible, promising at the same time a future visit.' It is supposed that on this western tour an incident occurred regarding the queen's consort, which, as it has found a place in the topographical history of Bristol, may be considered as authentic as any passage of biography not based on contemporary autographs. It is the last of the anecdotes of incognito-royalty of which our ancestors were so passionately fond, and loved to weave them into their national ballads. Of this class, we find many, beginning with the martial songs of Robin Hood; of Prince Edward and his Provençal, Adam o' Gordon, or Gurdon; King John and the Abbot; Edward III. and the Shepherd; Henry V. and the Miller of Mansfield; and of Edward IV. and the Tanner of Tamworth; the series ending with James II. and the Fisher

man.

The Bristol incident of prince George of Denmark is not of the martial order, and probably when he came to look about the "bright city," the worthy prince, who was the very antithesis to romance, never dreamed of getting into an adventure. But one morning, whilst examining the lions of Bristol, he went on the Exchange, attended solely by a military officer; he remained there till the merchants had withdrawn, none of them having either the courage or the inclination to ask him to partake of any hospitality. All departed excepting a humble bodice-maker, one John Duddlestone, whose abode was in Corn-street. The good man walked up to prince George, and asked him, " Are you, sir, the husband of our queen Anne, as folk say you are?" The prince replied "that such was the fact." John Duddlestone resumed, "that he had seen with great concern that none of the prime merchants on 'Change had invited him home; but it was not for want of love or loyalty, but merely because each was afraid of the presumption of addressing so great a man." John Duddlestone added, "that the shame to Bristol would be great nevertheless, if the husband of their queen was obliged, for want of hospitality, to dine at an inn; he, therefore, begged him, humble as he was, to accompany him home to dinner, and to bring his soldier-officer along with him-if they could eat what he had to offer 1 Boyer's Annals, 1702.

them, which was a good piece of roast beef, a plum-pudding, and some ale of his wife's own brewing.

Prince George was charmed with this most original invitation, and accepted it with gratitude, although he had already bespoken his dinner at the White Lion. His royal highness and his noble companion accompanied John Duddlestone to his home, and when that worthy citizen arrived there, he called to his spouse, at the foot of the stairs, "Wife, wife! put on a clean apron and come down, for the queen's husband and a soldier-gentleman are come to dine with us." Dame Duddlestone descended forthwith, clad in a clean blue apron, and, according to the national English custom of that era, was saluted by prince George when she entered the parlour.

In the course of their dinner, his royal highness asked his entertainer, "if he ever went to London ?" John Duddlestone replied, "that since the ladies had chosen to wear stays instead of bodices, he sometimes went thither to buy whalebone." The prince, when he took leave, requested his host, "that the next time he travelled there he would bring his wife, and to be sure to take her to court.' He at the same time gave him a card, which he said would facilitate his admission at Windsor Castle.

When John Duddlestone needed a new supply of whalebone, he actually took his worthy dame behind him on his pack-horse, and journeyed Londonward. With the assistance of the royal card, he found an easy admittance at the royal castle of Windsor in his way from the west, and was introduced by prince George to the queen. Her majesty thanked them for their hospitality to her consort, and in return invited them to dine with her. She told them they must have court-dresses for the occasion, which should be provided by the officers of her wardrobe, but she wished them to choose the material. John Duddlestone and his dame chose purple velvet, such as the prince had on at that time. The suits were accordingly made, and worn at the royal dinner-party, queen Anne herself presenting them to her guests "as the most loyal persons in the city of Bristol."

After dinner, her majesty desired John Duddlestone to kneel down, and according to the very words and accent of his good helpmate, in her oft-repeated description of