If more taste had been shown in those who catered for the royal family when they went to the play, it would have been as well. At an evening drawing room, in February, the Duchess of Roxburgh, hearing that the Princess of Wales was going to Drury Lane the following day, told the Countess of Lippe and Buckinberg that the play which was to be acted on that occasion ‘was such a one as nobody could see with a good reputation.’ ‘It was “The Wanton Wife,”’ says the Countess Cowper in her Diary, and the Princess’s irreproachable lady-in-waiting adds of Betterton’s play, which is better known by its second title, ‘The Amorous Widow,’――‘I had seen it once, and I believe there are few in town who had seen it so seldom; for it used to be a favourite play, and often bespoke by the ladies. I told this to the Princess, who resolved to venture going, upon my character of it.’ The result is admirably illustrative of the morals of the time.――‘Went to the play with my mistress; and to my great satisfaction she liked it as well as any play she had seen; and it certainly is not more obscene than all comedies are.’ ‘It were to be wished,’ adds the lady, ‘our stage was chaster, and I cannot but hope, now it is under Mr. Steele’s direction, that it will mend.’ [Sidenote: _FLIGHT OF ORMOND._] While Princesses and their ladies were amusing themselves in this way, the public found amusement in watching the Duke of Shrewsbury, who was to be seen looking, half the day long, through his windows into the street. They knew therefrom that he had been turned out of his Lord Chamberlainship. Whigs who rejoiced at this disgrace were almost as glad at seeing the Earl of Cardigan leisurely riding down Piccadilly. He had nothing more to do, they said, with the Buckhounds. It was reported in the coffee-houses that Dean Swift had been arrested. This was not correct. It was quite true, however, that Lord Oxford was not only in the Tower, but was kept in closer restraint than ever. While Tories were buying Ormond’s portrait, ‘engraved by Grebelin,’ for 1_s._ 6_d._, as the portrait of a leader who had not fled, and was not under ward in the Tower, there was one morning partly a cry, partly a whisper running through the town,――‘Ormond’s away!’ It was time. Secretary Stanhope had impeached him and other, but less noble, peers, of High Treason; and the tender-hearted Whig, Sir Joseph Jekyll, had said in the Commons, ‘If there is room for mercy, he hoped it would be shown to the noble Duke.’ When the warrant reached Richmond, the nest was warm but the bird had flown.