curious contemporary letter tells of this interlude:— [Illustration: AUDLEY END.] “Last week there was a Faire neare Audley End, the Queen, the Dutchess of Richmond and the Dutchess of Buckingham had a frolick to disguise themselves like country-lasses, in red petticoates, wastcoates, etc., and soe goe see the Faire. Sir Bernard Gascoign, on a cart-jade, rode before the Queen, another stranger before Dutchesse of Buckingham, and M^{r.} Roper before Richmond. They all soe overdone it in their disguise, which look’d soe much more like the Antiques than Country volk, that as soon as they came to the Faire the people began to goe after them; but the Queen, going to a booth, to buy a pair of yellow stockings for her sweet hart, and Sir Bernard asking for a pair of gloves, stitcht with blue, for his sweet hart, they were soon, by their gebrish, found to be strangers, which drew a bigger flock about them. One amongst them had seen the Queen at dinner, knew her, and was proud of her knowledge: this soon brought all the Faire into a crowd, to stare at the Queen. But thus discovered, they, as soon as they could, got to their horses; but as many of the Faire as had horses got up with their wives, children, sweet harts, or neighbours behind them, to get as much gape as they could till they brought them to the Court gate. Thus, by ill conduct, was a merry frolick turned into a pennance.” The Earl of Suffolk and his successors did not do so badly over this incompleted purchase, for to one of their kin was given the care of the place, together with the salaried post of Housekeeper and Keeper of the Wardrobe, and at last, in 1701, when it became evident that no King or Queen was ever likely to reside here, Audley End was reconveyed to the fifth Earl of Suffolk, on the easy terms of his undertaking to relinquish his claims to the outstanding £20,000. The Earls of Suffolk ended in 1745, when the tenth of that title died and was illegally succeeded in the property by his kinsman, the Earl of Effingham, from whom the Countess of Portsmouth, one of the two daughters and co-heiresses of Lord Griffin, who were the true but dispossessed owners, bought the house and estate. Her heir was her nephew, John Griffin Whitwell, who in 1788 became Baron Braybrooke. Again, on his death, childless, the property changed hands, coming into possession of the Nevilles, who still own it and the Braybrooke title.