His bushy head, and shoe strings green, His high-crown’d hat and satin doublet, Moved the stout heart of England’s queen, Tho’ Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it.” Many notices occur, too, of Queen Mary’s participation in the revelry of her father’s court, and we find her figuring, in her young days, as a dancer in Court ballets. Some courtly adulator, who had been present at a ball at which many danced with her royal father, appears to have been much struck with her charms, making her appearance the subject of a poetic effusion, wherein he tells us:-- “Ravished I was, that well was me O Lord! to me so fain [willing] To see that sight that I did see, I long full sore again. I saw a king and a princess Dancing before my face, Most like a god and a goddess; I pray Christ save their grace.” Charles II. was specially fond of dancing. Writing from Cologne to Henry Bennett on the 18th of August 1655, he says: “Pray, get me pricked down as many new corrants and farrabands, and ‘other little dances’ as you can, and bring them with you, for I have got a small fiddler that does not play ill on the fiddle.” The last day of the year 1662 concluded with a grand ball at the palace of Whitehall, and Pepys tells us that he got into the room where the dancing was to take place, which was crowded with fine ladies. “By-and-by comes the King and Queen and all the great ones. After seating themselves, all rose again; the King took out the Duchess of York, the Duke the Duchess of Buckingham, the Duke of Monmouth my Lady Castlemaine, other lords other ladies, and they danced ‘the brantle.’ Afterwards the King led a lady a single coranto, and then the lords, one after another, other ladies; very noble it was, and pleasant to see. Then to country-dances, the King leading the first, which he called for by name as ‘Cuckolds all awry,’ the old dance of England. The manner was, when the King dances, all the ladies in the room, and the Queen herself, stand up; and, indeed, he dances rarely, and much better than the Duke of York.” Pepys adds that it was reported the King reprimanded Lady Gerard as he was leading her down the dance, for having spoken against Lady Castlemaine to the Queen, and forbade her to attend her Majesty any more.