On the accession of the present King the Duke of Cumberland wished to continue the same system, which his Majesty was resolved he should not, and he ordered that the colonels of the regiments should take the Stick in rotation. He also ordered (through Sir R. Peel) that Lord Combermere should command the troops at the funeral as Gold Stick. This the Duke of Cumberland resisted, and sent down orders to Lord Cathcart to assume the command. The Duke of Wellington, however, represented to Lord Cathcart that he had better do no such thing, as nobody could disobey the King's orders gone through the Secretary of State, and accordingly he did nothing. But the King was determined to put an end to the pretensions of the Duke of Cumberland, and spoke to the Duke on the subject, and said that he would have all the regiments placed under the orders of the Commander-in-Chief. The Duke recommended him to replace the matter in the state in which it stood before the Duke of Cumberland's pretensions had altered it, but he would not do this, and chose to abide by his original intention; so the three regiments were placed under the orders of the Horse Guards like the rest, and the Duke of Cumberland in consequence resigned the command of the Blues. August 3rd, 1830 {p.023} [Page Head: WARDROBE OF GEORGE IV.] Notwithstanding the above story, the King dined with the Duke of Cumberland at Kew yesterday. I went yesterday to the sale of the late King's wardrobe, which was numerous enough to fill Monmouth Street, and sufficiently various and splendid for the wardrobe of Drury Lane. He hardly ever gave away anything except his linen, which was distributed every year. These clothes are the perquisite of his pages, and will fetch a pretty sum. There are all the coats he has ever had for fifty years, 300 whips, canes without number, every sort of uniform, the costumes of all the orders in Europe, splendid furs, pelisses, hunting-coats and breeches, and among other things a dozen pair of corduroy breeches he had made to hunt in when Don Miguel was here. His profusion in these articles was unbounded, because he never paid for them, and his memory was so accurate that one of his pages told me he recollected every article of dress, no matter how old, and that they were always liable to be called on to produce some particular coat or other article of apparel of years gone by. It is difficult to say whether in great or little things that man was most odious and contemptible. Nothing from France yesterday but the most absurd reports. August 5th, 1830 {p.023}