When my uncle, Mr Poyntz, married, he went to live at his wife’s beautiful estate of Cowdray Park, and his ancestral home of Midgham was let to strangers. It had not been long in the family. Anna Maria Mordaunt, first cousin to the “great Earl of Peterborough,” was maid of honour to Queen Caroline, wife of George II., who is said to have made Midgham, with the adjacent park and grounds, a wedding present to the said Maid of Honour on her marriage with Stephen Poyntz, a distinguished diplomatist, and minister at Stockholm and other foreign courts. There was a whisper that Her Majesty’s kind intention was never fulfilled in a pecuniary point of view, and that the purchase money came out of the bridegroom’s pocket. But whether this be a fact or not, I am unable to state. It is certain, however, that the Queen retained a great friendship for Mrs Poyntz, whom she appointed governess (as it was termed) to her son, William, Duke of Cumberland. A very large painting recorded this event, and was a great object of interest to me in my young days. I do not know the name of the artist, but well remember the peculiar group of three personages—Queen Caroline, in regal purple and ermine, presenting her eight-year-old son, in square cut coat, short breeches, and dainty silk stockings, to my great-grandmother, who figured as Minerva in full panoply. [Sidenote: MRS POYNTZ] Mrs Poyntz was an amiable and gentle-hearted woman, as her letters testify, and can in no way be considered responsible for the subsequent career of the Royal Duke. I have in my possession a most interesting and touching letter from Lady Cromartie, whose husband was under sentence of death, in 1715, as a Jacobite, in which she makes a most earnest appeal to Mrs Poyntz to intercede with the Queen in behalf of the prisoner, and, to the best of my belief, the intercession was of some avail. At all events, Lord Cromartie’s life was spared, although his title was attainted, and was only revived in 1861, in the person of the late Duchess of Sutherland.[22] The Duke of Cumberland was a frequent visitor at Midgham, and there was a suite of apartments called by his name. The house, as I have said before, was constantly let during my uncle’s life, but in a small, quaint cottage on the skirts of the park, lived, at the time of which I am speaking, an old lady, who had been in the service of my grandmother as lady’s maid, and still occupied a place of trust in that of my uncle. We occasionally visited this dear old retainer of our family, and one summer I accompanied my mother and my brother Charles to Midgham Cottage. Footnote 22: Anne Hay McKenzie, married to third Duke of Sutherland, died 1889. To me that visit was a real holiday. We all loved Illidge (for that was her name) dearly, and were much amused by her eccentricities, while the life in a real _bonâ fide_ cottage seemed to me like a page out of some rural novel.