(788) Sister of Philip, second Earl Stanhope.

(789) Catherine, Duchess of Buckingham, natural daughter of King James II. by the Countess of Dorchester.  She was so proud of her birth, that she would never go to Versailles, because they would not give her the rank of Princess of the Blood.  At Rome, whither she went two or three times to see her brother, and to carry on negotiations with him for his interest, she had a box at the Opera distinguished like those of crowned heads.  She not only regulated the ceremony of her own burial, and dressed up the waxen figure of herself for Westminster Abbey, but had shown the same insensible pride on the death of her only son, dressing his figure, and sending messages to her friends, that if they had a mind to see him lie in state, she would carry them in conveniently by a back-door.  She sent to the old Duchess of Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car that had carried the Duke’s body.  Old Sarah, as mad and proud as herself, sent her word, “that it had carried my Lord Marlborough, and should never be profaned by any other corpse.”  The Buckingham retorted that, “she had spoken to the undertaker, and he had engaged to make a finer for twenty pounds.” [See ant`e, p. 204.]

(790) Colonel Graham.  When the Duchess was young, and as insolent as afterwards, her mother used to say, “You need not be so proud, for you are not the King’s but old Graham’s daughter.”  It is certain, that his legitimate daughter, the Countess of Berkshire and Suffolk, was extremely like the Duchess, and that he often said with a sneer, “Well, well, kings are great men, they make free with whom they please!  All I can say is, that I am sure the same man begot those two women.”  The Duchess often went to weep over her father’s body at Paris:  one of the monks seeing her tenderness, thought it a proper opportunity to make her observe how ragged the pall is that lies over the body, (which is kept unburied, to be some time or other interred in England,)-but she would not buy a new!

314 Letter 101 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, March 25, 1743.

Well! my dear Sir, the Genii, or whoever are to look after the seasons, seem to me to change turns, and to wait instead of one another, like lords of the bedchamber.  We have had loads of sunshine all the winter; and within these ten days nothing but snows, north-east winds, and blue plagues.  The last ships have brought over all your epidemic distempers:  not a family in London has escaped under five or six ill:  many people have been forced to hire new labourers.  Guernier, the apothecary, took two new apothecaries, and yet could not drug all his patients.  It is a cold and fever.  I had one of the worst, and was blooded on Saturday and Sunday, but it is quite gone:  my father was blooded last night:  his is but slight.  The physicians say that there has been nothing like it since the year Thirty-three, and then not so bad:  in short, our army abroad would shudder to see what streams of blood have been let out!  Nobody has died of it, but old Mr. Eyres, of Chelsea, through obstinacy of not bleeding; and his ancient Grace of York:(791) Wilcox of Rochester(792) succeeds him, who is fit for nothing in the world, but to die of this cold too.