“Horrid!” said Rhoda. “I forget where she came from, Mrs Dolly?”
“She came from Portingale, my dear, being daughter to the King of that country, and her name was Catherine.”
“And what was the King like?”
“When he was little, my dear, his mother, Queen Mary, used to say he was so ugly a baby that she was quite ashamed of him. He was better-favoured when he grew a man; he had good eyes, but a large Mouth.”
(Note: Queen Mary was Henrietta Maria, always termed Queen Mary during her own reign.)
“He was a black man, was he not?”
By which term Rhoda meant what we now call a dark man.
“Yes, very black and swarthy.”
“Where did he commonly live?”
“Mostly at Whitehall or Saint James’s. At times he went to Hampton Court, and often, for a change of sir, to Newmarket; now and then to Tunbridge Wells. He was but little at Windsor.”