The Earl appears to have ridden eastward, in the direction pointed by
his own lion’s tale, before he drove down to Windsor. The show seems to
have interested all ranks between the Crown and the Conduit in Fleet
street. Where Viscount Wimbledon’s house was, “in the fairest part of
the Strand,” I can not conjecture, and as I can not find information on
this point in Mr. Peter Cunningham’s “Hand-Book of London,” I conclude
that the site is not known.
In connection with Charles I. and his Garter, I will here cite a
passage from the third volume of Mr. Macaulay’s “History of England,”
page 165. “Louvois hated Lauzun. Lauzun was a favorite at St. Germains.
He wore the Garter, a badge of honor which has very seldom been
conferred on aliens who were not sovereign princes. It was believed,
indeed, in the French court, that in order to distinguish him from the
other knights of the most illustrious of European orders, he had been
decorated with that very George which Charles I. had, on the scaffold,
put into the hands of Juxon.” Lauzun, I shall have to notice under the
head of foreign knights. I revert here to the George won by Charles and
given to Lauzun. It was a very extraordinary jewel, curiously cut in an
onyx, set about with twenty-one large table diamonds, in the fashion of
a garter. On the under side of the George was the portrait of Henrietta
Maria, “rarely well limned,” says Ashmole, “and set in a case of gold,
the lid neatly enamelled with goldsmith’s work, and surrounded with
another Garter, adorned with a like number of equal-sized diamonds, as
was the foresaid.” The onyx George of Charles I. was in the possession
of the late Duke of Wellington, and is the property of the present Duke.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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