Lord Hardwicke rode out to meet her Majesty at Royston at the head of a large cavalcade which included the gentry and yeomanry of the county. After an inspection of that little town, the party started for Wimpole, and on arriving at the House in the Fields the Queen's escort of Scots Greys filed off at Lord Hardwicke's request, their places being taken by a troop of the Whittlesea Yeomanry Cavalry, the Lord-Lieutenant roundly declaring that 'the county cavalry was well able to guard her Majesty so long as she might stay in Cambridgeshire.' On the following day Lord Hardwicke gave a dinner in honour of her Majesty, followed by a ball, of which the Queen makes mention in her letter, to which three hundred guests were invited. I may perhaps print here another reference by Queen Victoria to my father. Writing to Lord Melbourne in 1842 her Majesty said: 'Lord Hardwicke the Queen likes very much; he seems so straightforward. He took the greatest care of the Queen when on board ship. Was not his father drowned at Spithead or Portsmouth?' Lord Hardwicke, as commander of the _Black Eagle_ yacht, had taken her Majesty to Scotland. He was in waiting during a visit of the King and Queen of the Belgians to Windsor, and wrote on that occasion to my mother: 'Our Court news is not filled with much interest; to-morrow the King and Queen of the Belgians go back to their own country, and yesterday at dinner the Queen of the Belgians told me her father (King Louis Philippe) was so fond of English cheese that he had sent to her to procure for him a "Single Gloster," I could not refrain from offering a Wimpole cheese that she graciously accepted and which I must now beg you to give.' I find a reference to this little incident in the Queen's Letters, vol. ii, p. 28. In a letter to her Majesty during King Louis Philippe's visit in 1844, the Queen of the Belgians wrote: 'If by chance Lord Hardwicke was in waiting during my father's stay, you must kindly put my father in mind to thank him for the _famous cheese_, which arrived safely, and was found very good.' Queen Victoria's conversation with my father upon this occasion I find related at length in a copy in my mother's handwriting of a letter he wrote to Sir Robert Peel. This letter is of so private a character as to preclude its publication, but I may say that it is clear that the Queen (though, as Lord Hardwicke says, 'in very good humour; I never saw her so gracious to all as she was during her stay at Wimpole') was still quite ready to state in very plain terms her objection to certain points of the policy of the Tory party, which, as she said, she could 'forgive but not forget.' All this Lord Hardwicke reported at length to the Prime Minister for his information and instruction.