At this time Mary was put into an awkward position by her father suddenly quitting her and returning in all haste to Reading in order to further the Parliamentary election of Mr. Shaw Lefevre, thus cancelling all his engagements with their relatives and friends. She wrote to urge his return, and finally he did so on the 3rd November, and towards the end of the month both father and daughter returned home. Late in life, recording the various events of her tour in the north, Mary writes: “Years many and changeful have gone by since I trod those northern braes; they at whose side I stood lie under the green sod; yet still as I read of the Tyne or of the Wansbeck the bright rivers sparkle before me, as if I had walked beside them but yesterday. I still seem to stand with my dear father under the grey walls of that grand old abbey church at Hexham whilst he points to the haunts of his boyhood. Bright river Wansbeck! How many pleasant memories I owe to thy mere name!” CHAPTER XIV A ROYAL VISIT Before quitting the pleasant society of Lord and Lady Charles Aynsley we should like to introduce an incident in connection with them which took place in the month of February, 1808. This was no less an event than a visit from the exiled King Louis XVIII and his suite to Lord Charles and his wife at the Deanery of Bocking. Here we would explain that the post of Dean in connection with Bocking Church, which is not a cathedral, was of a curious nature. It seems that by an old ecclesiastical ordinance a set of clergymen were called the Archbishop of Canterbury’s “Peculiars,” and that his Commissary and Head of the Peculiars in Essex and Suffolk was constituted Dean of Bocking, a post of such dignity that the Dean was wholly independent of the Bishop of his diocese.[4] [Footnote 4: See _History of the County of Essex_, by Thos. Wright, published 1836.] [Illustration: GOSFIELD HALL] At the time of which we are writing the French King was residing at Gosfield Hall, a mansion lent to him by the Marquess of Buckingham upon his arrival in England during the previous month of November. There, we are told, a mimic court was held in strict accordance with Bourbon traditions; and even the old French custom of the King’s dining in public was preserved. On such occasions the inhabitants of the surrounding neighbourhood were permitted to pass in procession through the long dining-room to witness the sight. In spite, however, of their courtly ceremonies the purses of these royal exiles do not seem to have been very full, to judge by the following story. It was told some years ago by an old Essex woman who could remember when a child seeing the King and his attendants out walking. The King noticed the child and was disposed to give her something, but the royal pockets were searched in vain for a coin of any kind. At last one of the suite produced a half-penny. “I ought to have kept that half-penny,” remarked the old dame.