“My brother Matt is at present prosecuting the minister of Lyminge for non-residence, in revenge for some offence he has given him about the tithes; and my father bids fair for being engaged in prosecuting a clergyman at Canterbury, for saying he was in the Rebellion in the year ’16.... Report says that the Duchess of Richmond and some other ladies, whose husbands are going or gone to Germany, are going there likewise, and are to be at Brunswick. I much question whether their husbands will rejoice in their company, but certainly Prince Ferdinand will not be fond of such auxiliaries. It is the oddest party of pleasure I ever heard of. Thomas Diaforus, who invites his mistress to the lively amusement of making one at a dissection, would be an agreeable lover to these ladies.... Perhaps they think Germany may afford them more of their husbands’ company than they can obtain in England; for some among them would think that a valuable acquisition, and possibly they may not be mistaken, for a drum that leads to battle may not be so powerful a rival to a wife as one that leads its followers only to coquetry.” Mrs. Scott’s reference to Pitt, secretary of state and soul of the ministry, of which the old imbecile Duke of Newcastle was the nominal head, seems to have been made with Almanzor’s lines in her memory. “Know, that I alone am king of me! I am as free as Nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran. I saw th’ oppress’d, and thought it did belong To a king’s office to redress the wrong,” etc. The public mind, however, was not so much occupied with men of mark as with a ceremony which had not been witnessed in England for very many years. In a letter from Batheaston, September 14, 1761, written by Mrs. Scott to her sister-in-law, at Naples, she describes the time as one of general madness, and continues as follows: