SOVEREIGNS DINING AND SUPPING IN PUBLIC.
In some observations which I made upon two or three pictures in Hampton Court Palace, in Vol. viii., p. 538., I specified two worthy of notice on the above subject, and which are the first instances of such ceremony I have met with. It has been supposed to have been a foreign custom but I do not find any traces of it upon record.[[1]]
One can easily imagine that the fastueux Louis XIV. would have no objection to such display, and that his mistresses, as well as queen, would be of the party, when we read, that in the royal progresses two of the former were scandalously paraded in the same carriage with his queen. To this immoral exhibition, indeed, public opinion seemed to give no check, as we read, that "les peuples accouraient 'pour voir,' disaient-ils, 'les trois reines,'" wherever they appeared together. Of these three queens, the true one was Marie-Thérèse: the two others were La Marquise de Montespan and Mme. de la Vallière. But to return to my subject. I find by the London Gazette, No. 6091. of Sept. 4, 1722, that Geo. I., in his progress to the west of England, supped in public at the Bishop's (Dr. Richard Willis) palace at Salisbury on Wednesday, Aug. 29, 1722; and slept there that night.
The papers of the period of George II. say:
"There was such a resort to Hampton Court on Sunday, July 14, 1728, to see their Majesties dine, that the rail surrounding the table broke; and causing some to fall, made a terrible scramble for hats, &c., at which their Majesties laughed heartily."
And,—
"On Thursday, the 25th of the same month, it is stated, the concourse to see their Majesties dine in public at Hampton Court was exceedingly great. A gang of robbers (the swell-mob of that day?) had mixed themselves among the nobility and gentry; several gold watches being lost, besides the ladies' gown tails and laced lappets cut off in number."
And again:
"On Sunday, 15th September, 1728, their Majesties dined together in public at Windsor (as they will continue to do every Sunday and Thursday during their stay there), when all the country people, whether in or out of mourning, were permitted to see them."
Besides those three occasions of George II. and Queen Caroline dining in public, we have another recorded attended with some peculiar circumstances, as mentioned in the London Gazette, No. 7623. of Tuesday, Aug. 2, 1737:
"The 31st ult. being Sunday, their Majesties, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the Princesses Amelia and Caroline, went to chapel at Hampton Court, and heard a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Blomer. Their Majesties, and the rest of the royal family, dined afterwards in public as usual before a great number of spectators. About seven o'clock that evening, the Princess of Wales was taken with some slight symptoms of approaching labour, and was removed to St. James's; where, a little after eleven, she was delivered of a princess."
This was the Princess Augusta, who was married to the Prince of Brunswick Wolfenbüttel.
Φ.
Richmond.
Footnote 1:[(return)]
[The custom was observed at a much earlier period; for we find that King Edward II. and his queen Isabella of France kept their court at Westminster during the Whitsuntide festival of 1317; and on one occasion, as they were dining in public in the great banqueting-hall, a woman in a mask entered on horseback, and riding up to the royal table, delivered a letter to King Edward, who, imagining that it contained some pleasant conceit or elegant compliment; ordered it to be opened and read aloud for the amusement of his courtiers; but, to his great mortification, it was a cutting satire on his unkingly propensities, setting forth in no measured terms all the calamities which his misgovernment had brought upon England. The woman was immediately taken into custody, and confessed that she had been employed by a certain knight. The knight boldly acknowledged what he had done, and said, "That, supposing the King would read the letter in private, he took that method of apprising him of the complaints of his subjects."—Strickland's Queens of England, vol. i. p. 487.—Ed.]