golden opinions from all who met him, except perhaps from Lady Dorchester and sundry would-be partners for his duty dances.  Philippe Aubert de Gaspe and other privileged chroniclers record with slightly shocked delight how often he would break loose from Lady Dorchester’s designing care, long before she thought it right for him to do so, and ‘command’ his partners for their pretty faces instead of by precedence.  At Sorel the people were so carried away by their enthusiasm that they insisted on changing the name of their little town to William Henry.  Happily this name never took root in public sentiment and the old one soon came back to stay.

The second member of the Royal Family to come to Canada was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, fourth son of George III, father of Queen Victoria and grandfather of Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, who became the first royal governor-general in 1911, exactly a hundred and twenty years later.  The Duke of Kent would have gladly returned to Quebec as governor-general, and the people would have gladly welcomed him.  But he was not a favourite with the government at home, and so he never came.  There was no doubt about his being a popular favourite in Quebec during the three years he spent there as colonel of the 7th Fusiliers.  Nor has he been forgotten to the present day.  Kent House is still the name of his quarters in the town as well as of his country residence at Montmorency Falls seven miles away, while the only new opening ever made in the walls is called Kent Gate.

The duke made fast friends with several of the seigneurial families, more especially with the de Salaberrys, whose manor-house at Beauport stood half-way between Montmorency and Quebec and not far from Montcalm’s headquarters in 1759.  The de Salaberrys were a military family.  All the sons went into the Army and one became the hero of Chateauguay in the War of 1812.  But the duke mixed freely with many other people than the local aristocracy.  He was young, high-spirited, and loved adventure, as was proved by his subsequent gallantry at Martinique.  He was also fond of driving round incognito, a habit which on at least one occasion obliged him to put his skill at boxing to good use.  This was at Charlesbourg, a village near Quebec, where he was watching the fun at the first election ever held.  Perhaps, from a meticulously constitutional point of view, the scene of a hotly contested election was not quite the place for Princes of the Blood.  But, however that might be, when the duke saw two electors pommelling a third, who happened to be a friend of his, he dashed in to the rescue and floored both of them with a neatly planted right and left.  One of these men, who lived to see King Edward VII arrive in 1860, as Prince of Wales, always took the greatest pride in telling successive generations of voters how Queen Victoria’s father had knocked him down.