“I got here very safe to-night, but the journey from Ferrybridge has been very unpleasant, from the great depth of the waters. Our coach is fortunately hung very high, all the people who passed Newark to-day got a great deal of water into their carriage, but I had very little. The waters were impassable till this morning, and it is now raining hard, so I had good fortune to get thro’ in the short interval; some of the water near Barnby Moor was as deep as at Newark, and tho’ this is only a long day’s journey, I have got out every day as soon as it was light; the horses perform admirably. I shall get to Stilton to-morrow, and, I hope, get you some cheese.” Writing the same evening to Lord Lyttelton, she says-- “Do not figure to yourself that I sit like Aurora in her car drawn by the rosy-bosom’d hours, _les jeux et les ris_, but imagine Dobbin and Whitenose and their 4 companions all mire and dirt, dragging me through deep water, over huge stones, the winds blowing, the clouds low’ring and rain darkening the windows of the coach.” [Page heading: A GREAT LADY’S AVARICE] In a letter to Mr. Montagu, from Stilton, is this amusing passage-- “Lord Panmure pass’d me on the road yesterday, and I hear all the Scotch are gone to town from Peers to Pedlars, and I suppose all with the same intention to sell something and to get money. I found that a Scotch countess had bought all the black cloth, crapes and bombazeen, black ribbons, and fans at Darlington before the poor shopkeepers knew of the King’s death. She bought a great many suits of broad cloth and crape, which must be with an intention to sell them at a higher price in town, but surely nothing could be more mean than to enter into such a traffick and take advantage of the Shopkeepers’ ignorance, and it seems to me not honest. This lady is wife to Lord C----t; I believe I mistook when I called her a countess. The town was soon inform’d of the reason she had bought such a quantity of mourning, and I wonder she was not mobbed. The ladies at Darlington and in the neighbourhood are very angry, for she left but two yards of crape in the whole town.” Lady Frances Williams, writing on November 19 to Mrs. Montagu from Bath, where she was drinking the waters, says-- “I no sooner heard of the loss of our good old King than I thought with regret of our friend Mrs. Pitt. I believe it has prevented her coming to this place, where I proposed much pleasure in meeting her. I hear the G--t minister’s friends, the mob, have posted upon all the Palaces-- ‘_A Pittical administration,--no Sc--tch influence_;’ and on the Royal Exchange-- ‘_No petticoat administration, no Lord G. S--k--lle[299] at Court_.’” [299] Lord George Sackville. [Page heading: THE KING’S FIRST SPEECH] [Page heading: GOING TO COURT] Writing on November 20 to her husband, Mrs. Montagu says--