[345] Nichols's Preface to Queen Elizabeth's Progresses, p. xxiii.
[346] Camden's Elizabeth.
[347] Biographical History of England, I. 193, 8vo.
[348] Chronicle, p. 867. This Coachman's Wife had also the honour of introducing the Art of Starching Cambric and Lawn, and was the first Starcher the Queen had. Idem in eod.
[349] I must here stop a moment to relate an Anecdote of the late Right Honourable Arthur Onslow, when Speaker of the House of Commons, whose ideas of travelling did not exceed the expedition of a pair of horses tugging his own lumbering State Coach. King George II. died on Saturday morning early, October 25, 1760. The Duke of Devonshire (then at Chatsworth) was Lord Chamberlain; and the Duke of Rutland (then at Belvoir Castle) was Lord Steward. Expresses were dispatched to these great Officers, among others, immediately; and the Duke of Devonshire arrived in Town on the Monday evening, though the distance was 150 miles. Tuesday and Wednesday came, but without the Lord Steward, to the utter astonishment of the Speaker, who knew that his distance from the Metropolis was not so great as that of the Duke of Devonshire, who had arrived on the Monday. "But I am told," cried he, "that his Grace of Devonshire travels at a prodigious rate; not less than 50 miles a day!" Such was the prejudice of ideas, confirmed by long habitude, in a man who never extended his journeys further than his Seat in Surrey, a few miles from London; and in Parliament time did little more than oscillate between his Town House and the House of Commons.—It was a misconception on the part of the Duke of Rutland, who understood that the King of Prussia was dead, and not King George II. I mention the circumstance, only to shew the ignorance of some parts of mankind, when taken out of their routine.—The Duke of Devonshire at that time usually ran to or from Chatsworth in about 18 or 20 hours.
[350] See the French Lexicographers.
[351] Northumberland Household Book, p. 127.
[352] The Romaunt of the Rose.
[353] Love's Labour's Lost, Act ii. Sc. 2.
[354] Mortimer's Pocket Dictionary.