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Updated: June 28, 2025
James's little court consisted of the Earls of Arran, Lichfield, Middleton, Dumbarton, and Ailesbury, the Duke of Berwick, Sir Stephen Fox, Major-General Sackville, Mr. Grahame, Fenton, and a few others. On the evening of the King's flight the company dispersed as was customary, when Ailesbury intimated, by removing his Majesty's stockings, that the King was about to seek his couch.
He is an offshoot of that disreputable family of Esmond-Castlewood, of whom all the men are gamblers and spendthrifts, and all the women well, I shan't say the word, lest Lady Ailesbury should be looking over your shoulder.
The central walk between Marlborough and Savernake is unsurpassed in England and probably in Europe. It leads to Tottenham House, situated at the eastern extremity and belonging to the Marquis of Ailesbury. By marriage the estates afterwards went to the Bruces, who still hold them. Herds of deer roam the open glades, and wild life is abundant and varied.
My Lord Craven near ninety years old at this time was in his full-dress as colonel of the foot-guards, for he had attended a few minutes before to receive from His Majesty the pass-word of the day: and my Lord Ailesbury was but half dressed with his points hanging loose; for he had been all undressed just now, when the King had been taken ill.
Upon one of these occasions the Earl and she had a disagreement about the lease, and so forcible were the lady's coarse expressions, for she never could restrain the licence of her tongue, that she had to be ejected from the premises, whereupon, says Ailesbury, "she bade me go to my King James," with the assurance that "she would make King William spit on me."
There is also a little Moor in Hertfordshire, thro' which a Water runs that frequently gives the Passant Horses that drink of it, the Colick or Gripes, by means of the aluminous sharp Particles of its Earth; Its Air is also so bad, as has obliged several to remove from its Situation for their Healths: The Dominion of the Air is likewise so powerful over Vegetables, that what will grow in one Place won't in another, as is plain from the Beech and Black Cherry Tree, that refuse the Vale of Ailesbury tho' on some Hills there, yet will thrive in the Chiltern or Hilly Country: So the Limes and other Trees about London are all generally black-barked, while those in the Country are most of them of a Silver white.
Those gentlemen that were with the King there was scarcely one of them about whom I did not know something considerably to his discredit: there was my Lord Ailesbury in strict attendance on him; and Killigrew he that had the theatre and the less said of him the better: and there were three or four more like him; the Earl of Craven was there, colonel of the foot-guards; and Lord Keeper Guildford; and the Earl of Bath; and there, in the midst, the King himself, with his blue silk cloak over his shoulders, and his princely walk, going fast as he always did, and smiling-well, what of those thirteen known mistresses of his that he had had, as well as of those other God knows how many! poor maids, who must look upon him as their ruin?
When the song was done the King clapped his hands to applaud and stood up; and all stood with him. "Odd's fish!" said he, "that is a pretty boy and a pretty song." Then he gave a great yawn. "It is time to go to bed," said he. My Lord Ailesbury carried a tall silver candlestick in his hand with the candle burning in it. He bowed to His Majesty. "Did I not say so?" said the king.
It included the Earl of Pembroke as the Comte d'Angouleme, with Princess Augusta of Cambridge as Princess Claude; Prince George of Cambridge as Gaston de Foix, with the Marchioness of Ailesbury as the Duchesse de Ferrare; Lord Cardigan as Bayard, with Lady Exeter as Jeanne de Conflans; Lord Claud Hamilton as the Comte de Chateaubriand, with Lady Lincoln as Ann de Villeroi.... The Duchess of Gloucester and the Duchess of Saxe-Weimar represented two French Chatelaines of the period.
Lord Ailesbury turned the bishop's hat over and over, examined it carefully inside and out, and gave it back again. "No," he said, "I haven't, and I'll be damned if I'd wear it, if I had." Even before the establishment of the invincible despotism which clothes the gentlemen of Christendom in a livery, we find the masculine mind disposed to severity in the ruling of fashions.
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