Grace Boyle—­for she unworthily bore that great name—­was the daughter and heiress of Richard, Viscount Shannon.  She married Lord Middlesex, bringing him a fortune of thirty thousand pounds.  Short, plain, ’very yellow,’ as her contemporaries affirm, with a head full of Greek and Latin, and devoted to music and painting; it seems strange that Frederick should have been attracted to one far inferior to his own princess both in mind and person.  But so it was, for in those days every man liked his neighbour’s wife better than his own.  Imitating the forbearance of her royal mother-in-law, the princess tolerated such of her husband’s mistresses as did not interfere in politics:  Lady Middlesex was the ‘my good Mrs. Howard,’ of Leicester House.  She was made Mistress of the Robes:  her favour soon ‘grew,’ as the shrewd Horace remarks, ‘to be rather more than Platonic.’  She lived with the royal pair constantly, and sat up till five o’clock in the morning at their suppers; and Lord Middlesex saw and submitted to all that was going on with the loyalty and patience of a Georgian courtier.  Lady Middlesex was a docile politician, and on that account, retained her position probably long after she had lost her influence.

Her name appears constantly in the ‘Diary,’ out of which everything amusing has been carefully expunged.

’Lady Middlesex, Lord Bathurst, Mr. Breton, and I, waited on their Royal Highnesses to Spitalfields, to see the manufacture of silk.’  In the afternoon off went the same party to Norwood Forest, in private coaches, to see a ‘settlement of gypsies.’  Then returning, went to find out Bettesworth, the conjuror; but not discovering him, went in search of the little Dutchman.  Were disappointed in that; but ‘concluded,’ relates Bubb Dodington, ’the peculiarities of this day by supping with Mrs. Cannon, the princess’s midwife.’

All these elegant modes of passing the time were not only for the sake of Lady Middlesex, but, it was said, of her friend, Mrs. Granville, one of the Maids of Honour, daughter of the first Lord Lansdown, the poet.  This young lady, Eliza Granville, was scarcely pretty:  a far, red-haired girl.

All this thoughtless, if not culpable, gallantry was abruptly checked by the rude hand of death.  During the month of March, Frederick was attacked with illness, having caught cold.  Very little apprehension was expressed at first, but, about eleven days after his first attack, he expired.  Half an hour before his death, he had asked to see some friends, and had called for coffee and bread and butter:  a fit of coughing came on, and he died instantly from suffocation.  An abscess, which had been forming in his side, had burst; nevertheless, his two physicians, Wilmot and Lee, ‘knew nothing of his distemper.’  According to Lord Melcombe, who thus refers to their blunders, ’They declared, half an hour before his death, that his pulse was like a man’s in perfect health.  They either would not see or did not know the consequences of the black thrush, which appeared in his mouth, and quite down in his throat.  Their ignorance, or their knowledge of his disorder, renders them equally inexcusable for not calling in other assistance.’