The breach of trust became something worse as years rolled by, and none of Washington, Earl Ferrers’ successors, after having adorned themselves with the coronet, cared to recognise their obligation towards the needy and ill-used knight. D’Eon had awaited the pleasure of the several earls during fifteen years, before making the fearless exposure of their conduct and giving public expression to her feelings thereon, in the preface to her catalogue. When bitterly tried, a decade later, by fresh reverses of fortune, she renewed her efforts (October 1802) to recover what was her own, this time through Admiral Shirley, a brother of the deceased earl, Washington. She sent to him a copy of the bond, a calculation of the interest due on her capital of 3,000_l._ during twenty-seven years, and a proposal for the final adjustment of the affair. The encumbered condition of the Ferrers’ estates would have rendered nugatory any further promises, even if any such had been held out to the Chevalière, who reduced her demands to a minimum by asking for 500_l._ wherewith to pay pressing calls, and a yearly allowance of 100_l._ for the remainder of her days, no great exaction, seeing that she was then in her seventy-fifth year! Upon these conditions she was prepared to surrender the bond to the admiral, to be disposed of as he might think proper. It does not appear what notice was taken of this proposition by the deceased earl’s brother, but it is very certain that so late as January 1805, the Chevalière had not received one farthing from the Ferrers family![366] Scarcely had the distribution of D’Eon’s Catalogue taken place, than sympathising friends made up a purse to meet her immediate necessities; a subscription list was opened at Mr. Hammersley’s, the banker, Pall Mall, where, in a very short time, the sum of 465_l._ 5_s._ was collected, 100_l._ being a contribution from the Prince of Wales. Another expression of feeling was a public entertainment given for D’Eon’s benefit, on June 29, 1791, by the managers of Ranelagh,[367] ‘in consideration of her having been deprived of a considerable part of her fortune by the odious detention of a deposit.’ [Sidenote: SALE OF JEWELLERY.]