During the early part of the Session the Queen’s interest seems to have been chiefly limited to the ceremonial side of affairs, though, of course, foreign policy, which she made a constant study, the affairs of the Duchy of Lancaster, and, in some degree, the measures for relieving famine, engaged her attention. As to ceremonies, her Majesty and Prince Albert were always curious, and keen to trace out the origins of the old customs to which she had to defer. “On Thursday,” writes Lord Campbell in a letter, dated 6th February, 1847, “I went down to Windsor and shook hands with Prince Albert, the Prince of Wales, and their Royal Highnesses the Princess Royal and the Princess Alice. By-the-by, there was an amusing scene in the Queen’s closet. I had an audience that her Majesty might prick a Sheriff for the county of Lancaster, which she did in proper style with a bodkin I put into her hand. I then took her pleasure about some Duchy livings and withdrew--forgetting to make her sign the parchment roll. I obtained a second audience, and explained the mistake. While she was signing, Prince Albert said to me, ‘Pray, my Lord, when did this ceremony of pricking begin?’ CAMPBELL: ‘In ancient times, Sir, when sovereigns did not know how to write their names.’ QUEEN (as she returned me the roll with her signature): ‘But we now show that we have been to school.’” Her Majesty’s interest in the affairs of the Duchy was abiding. Writing on the 9th of March to his brother, Lord Campbell says:--“I have been to Osborne attending a Council. Had it not been so bitterly cold I should have enjoyed it. I had a private audience of her Majesty; and when my business was over she said, ‘How you were attacked in the House of Lords the other night, Lord Campbell--most abominably.’ I gave a courtier-like answer,” adds this unblushing old political comedian, “without telling her Majesty of the dinner I am to give an Saturday to Lord Stanley and Lord Brougham” (who had attacked him), “for she was excessively angry with them; and she would not understand the levity with which such matters are treated among politicians of opposite parties.”[73] The attack, it may be explained, was due to an indiscreet proposal made by Lord John Russell to appoint new Councillors for the Duchy without a view to Party, who should serve permanently. Lords Lincoln, Hardwicke, Spencer, Portman, and Sir James Graham were named, and the whole project was attacked as a Whig job, designed to conciliate the Peelites, whose precarious alliance was worth purchasing. When the fight was over, Campbell invited all the combatants to dine with the Councillors, old and new; and he gives a most amusing account of the banquet--telling how all these public enemies met on the easiest of convivial terms in private; how Brougham “shook hands with the Premier, and called him John;” and “Stanley said to Sir James Graham, ‘Graham, how are you?’” and how Brougham “related a supposed speech of Sir Charles Wetherell’s,