[51] Colonel Willm. Townshend, Groom of the Bedchamber.
[52] Lord of the Bedchamber.
[53] The “stuttering puppy” was Groom of the Bedchamber and brother of Lord Scarborough.
[54] The original £700,000 a year had been much augmented.
[55] Trulls.
CHAPTER XXI.
The Death of the Queen.
But now over the squabblings and disagreements of this Royal Family, with their enormous wealth and power, was gathering a dark cloud from which presently descended a greater Power than theirs, the Power which one day touches all, and which the riches of a Palace are as impotent to resist as the poverty of a poor man’s dwelling—the Power of Death.
For some time past the Queen’s health had been steadily failing; possibly the excitement of the last few months, Madame de Walmoden, the King’s danger in the storm, the affair of the Prince’s income, and lastly the émeute at the birth of his child, had been all too much for her, yet her death as will be seen was mainly the result of her own fault, the foolish concealment of a malady.
On Wednesday, the 9th of November, 1737, the Queen was taken ill while superintending the arrangements of her new library attached to St. James’s Palace—the library is now pulled down. She described her complaint as the cholic and suffered great pain, Doctor Tesier, the German Physician to the Household, gave her some of a concoction called “Daffy’s Elixir,” and ordered her to bed.
Nevertheless, that being a Drawing Room day, and fearing to disappoint the King, and the company, she rose, dressed and attended the function.