“Hampton is very different from the place you knew; and to say we wished _Tom Lepell_, _Schatz_ and _Bella-dine_ at the tea-table, is too interested to be doubted. _Frizelation_, _flirtation_ and _dangleation_ are now no more, and nothing less than a Lepell can restore them to life; but to tell you my opinion freely, the people you now converse with” (books) “are much more alive than any of your old acquaintances.”[23] Mrs. Howard had a good reason to be dispirited, for the new reign had proved a sad disappointment to her. She had expected, and so had her friends, that the King’s accession to the throne would bring her an increase of power, wealth and influence, which would have helped to compensate her for the equivocal position she occupied, a position which, as she was a modest woman, could not have been altogether congenial to her. “No established mistress of a sovereign,” says Horace Walpole, “ever enjoyed less brilliancy of the situation than Lady Suffolk.” The only benefit she received was a peerage for her brother, Sir Henry Hobart, and at the end of a long and trying career at court she managed to amass a sum, not indeed sufficient to give her wealth, but to save her from indigence. The Queen once said that Mrs. Howard received £1,200 a year from the King all the time he was Prince of Wales, and it was increased to £3,200 a year when he became King. He also gave her £12,000 towards building her villa at Marble Hill, near Twickenham, besides several “little dabs” both before and after he came to the throne. But this represented all that Mrs. Howard gained, if indeed she gained so much; patronage or influence she had none, and those who placed their trust in her found themselves out of favour. After a while the courtiers began to find out that it was more profitable to pay their suit to Mrs. Clayton, who had the ear of the Queen, than to Mrs. Howard, who had not the ear of the King. Yet the King still continued to visit Mrs. Howard for some three or four hours every evening, at nine o’clock, “but with such dull punctuality that he frequently walked up and down the gallery for ten minutes with his watch in his hand if the stated minute was not arrived”.[24] The Queen was doubtless glad to get rid of him for a time, but Mrs. Howard must have suffered sadly from the tedium of entertaining her royal master on these daily visits, and certainly deserved more than she got in the way of recompense. She had, as one puts it, “the scandal of being the King’s mistress without the pleasure, the confinement without the profit”. The Queen took care that the profit was strictly limited.