The Princess offended more persons than the mere democracy by her arrogance as Ranger. The evidence of Walpole is conclusive on this subject, and is worth citing, often as I have had to quote from his lively pages. In 1752, he writes: ‘Princess Emily, who succeeded my brother in the Rangership of Richmond Park, has imitated her brother William’s unpopularity, and disobliged the whole country, by refusal of tickets and liberties that had always been allowed. They are at law with her, and have printed in the ‘Evening Post’ a strong memorial, which she had refused to receive. The high-sheriff of Surrey, to whom she had denied a ticket, but on better thought had sent one, refused it, and said he had taken his part. Lord Brooke, who had applied for one, was told he couldn’t have one; and, to add to the affront, it was signified that the Princess had refused one to my Lord Chancellor. Your old nobility don’t understand such comparisons. But the most remarkable event happened to her about three weeks ago. One Mr. Bird, a rich gentleman near the palace, was applied to by the late Queen for a piece of ground that lay convenient for a walk she was making. He replied that it was not proper for him to pretend to make a queen a present, but if she would do what she pleased with the ground he would be content with the acknowledgment of a key and two bucks a year. This was religiously observed till the era of her Royal Highness’s reign. The bucks were denied, and he himself once shut out, on pretence it was fence month (the breeding-time, when tickets used to be excluded, keys never). The Princess was soon after going through his grounds to town. She found a padlock on his gate. She ordered it to be broken open. Mr. Shaw, her deputy, begged a respite till he could go for the key. He found Mr. Bird at home. “Lord, sir, here is a strange mistake! The Princess is at the gate, and it is padlocked.” “Mistake! no mistake at all. I made the road; the ground is my own property. Her Royal Highness has thought fit to break the agreement which her royal mother made with me; nobody goes through my grounds but those I choose should.” Translate this to your Florentines,’ adds Walpole to our legate in Tuscany; ‘try if you can make them conceive how pleasant it is to treat blood royal thus.’ George II., who was more liberal, in many respects, than any of his children, save when these affected liberality for political purposes, finally anticipated the award of law by ordering the park to be thrown open to the public in the month of December 1752. But he could not have kept it closed.