But as it has been before stated, the favourites of the King who excited the most resentment of the populace—who were very free in expressing their opinion—were Schulemburg and Kielmansegge.
On one occasion Schulemburg was so beset by the crowd that she ventured to argue with them, and thrust her red wig and painted face out of her coach to address them in the best English she had.
“Goot pipple,” she exclaimed, “what for you abuse us, we come for all your goots?”
“Yes, d..n ye,” added a man in the mob, “and for all our chattels, too.”
When the Duke of Somerset, in 1715, resigned the Mastership of the Horse as a protest against the arrest of his son-in-law, Sir William Wyndham, Schulemburg, who was nothing if not a daughter of the horse-leech, suggested that the office should be left vacant and the salary, £7,500 per annum, paid to her. To the disgust of the nation the King complied with her wish.
It does not say much for the dignity of the Court in those days that some of the leading Whig nobility and even their wives and daughters filled the rooms of these two old harridans at St James’s, which apartments were placed respectively at opposite ends of the Palace, with those of the King conveniently between them to keep peace, for they hated each other as much as their friend the Devil detests holy water.
The lives of the Prince and Princess of Wales had been exceedingly gay, especially during the absence of George the First in Hanover.
They extended a liberal hospitality, keeping almost open house, with the object no doubt of securing popularity against the time when they should be King and Queen.
Hampton Court appears to have been a very favourite summer residence of theirs, the river offering a convenient mode of progression. In the summer of 1716 they proceeded to Hampton Court in state barges hung with crimson and gold, and preceded by a band of music.
Here at this riverside Palace they collected a brilliant throng of the wittiest, the most learned, and most important of all from the point of view of a Court, the most beautiful.