The King was so mean that at one time he even suggested, indirectly, that the Queen should pay Mrs. Howard’s husband out of her privy purse for keeping himself quiet. This was too great a tax even on Caroline’s complaisance and in one of her bursts of confidence she told Lord Hervey that when Howard insisted on his wife returning to him, “That old fool, my Lord Trevor, came to me from Mrs. Howard, and after thanking me in her name for what I had done, proposed to me to give £1,200 a year to Mr. Howard to let his wife stay with me; but as I thought I had done full enough, and that it was a little too much not only to keep the King’s _guenipes_” (in English trulls) “under my roof, but to pay them too, I pleaded poverty to my good Lord Trevor, and said I would do anything to keep so good a servant as Mrs. Howard about me, but that for the £1,200 a-year I really could not afford it”. So Howard’s silence was bought out of the King’s pocket, and Mrs. Howard’s maintenance was partly provided by him, and partly by the Queen, who gave her a place in her household and so threw a veil of respectability over the affair. Mrs. Howard found that she gained so little by the King’s accession, that she wished to retire from court, but was not allowed to do so. Meanwhile all her nominations were refused. She seems to have shown her resentment in divers ways. Her refusal to kneel during the ceremony of the Queen’s dressing was perhaps one manifestation of it. With regard to her uprising and retiring, her dressing and undressing, Queen Caroline followed the custom which had been observed by all kings and queens of England until George the First, who refused to be bound by precedent in this matter. Caroline performed the greater part of her dressing surrounded by many persons. The Queen, who had a great idea of what was due to her dignity, desired that the bedchamber-woman in waiting should bring the basin and ewer and present them to her kneeling. Mrs. Howard objected to this, and, considering the peculiar relations which existed between her and the King, her objection was natural enough. But the Queen insisted. “The first thing,” said Caroline to Lord Hervey later, “this wise, prudent Lady Suffolk” [Mrs. Howard] “did was to pick a quarrel with me about holding a basin in the ceremony of my dressing, and to tell me, with her little fierce eyes, and cheeks as red as your coat, that positively she would not do it; to which I made her no answer then in anger, but calmly, as I would have said to a naughty child, ‘Yes, my dear Howard, I am sure you will; indeed you will. Go, go! fie for shame! Go, my good Howard; we will talk of this another time.’” Mrs. Howard went, and in her dilemma wrote to Dr. Arbuthnot to inquire of Lady Masham, who had been at one time bedchamber-woman to Queen Anne, whether this disputed point was really according to precedent. She got little comfort from Lady Masham, who through Arbuthnot replied:--