“two nights afterwards, being left alone with her, while her mother and sister were at Bedford House, he found himself so infatuated that he sent for a parson.  The doctor refused to perform the ceremony without licence or ring—­the Duke swore he would send for the Archbishop.  At last they were married with the ring of the bed-curtain, at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel.  The Scotch are enraged, the women mad that so much beauty has had its effect.”

If the wooing be happy that is not long in doing, the new Duchess should have been a very enviable woman; as no doubt she was, for she had achieved a splendid match; the daughter of the penniless Irish squireen had won, in a few days, rank and riches, which many an Earl’s daughter would have been proud to capture; and, although her Ducal husband was “debauched, and damaged in his fortune and his person,” he was her very slave, and, as far as possible to such a man, did his best to make her happy.

Translated to a new world of splendour the Irish girl seems to have borne herself with astonishing dignity and modesty.  She might, indeed, have been cradled in a Duke’s palace, instead of in a “dilapidated farmhouse in the wilds of Ireland,” so naturally did she take to her new role.  When Her Grace, wearing her Duchess’s coronet, made her curtsy to the King one March day in 1752,

“the crowd was so great, that even the noble mob in the drawing-room clambered upon tables and chairs to look at her.  There are mobs at the doors to see her get into her chair; and people go early to get places at the theatre when it is known that she will be there.”

A few weeks after the marriage, the Duke of Hamilton conducted his bride to the home of his ancestors; and never perhaps has any but a Royal bride made such a splendid progress to her future home.  Along the entire route from London to Scotland she was greeted with cheering crowds struggling to catch a glimpse of the famous beauty, whose romantic story had stirred even the least sentimental to sympathy and curiosity.  When they stopped one night at a Yorkshire inn, “seven hundred people,” we are told, “sat up all night in and about the house merely to see the Duchess get into her post-chaise the next morning.”

Arrived at her husband’s Highland Castle she was received with honours that might almost have embarrassed a Queen, and which must have seemed strange indeed to the woman whose memories of sordid life in that small cottage on the outskirts of Dublin were still so vivid.  Indeed no Queen could have led a more stately life than was now opened to her.