dabble in the dirt in a foul morning from Somerset-house to St. James’s, her Luciferian confessor riding along by her in his coach!  They have made her to go barefoot, to spin, to eat her meat out of dishes, to wait at the table of servants, with many other ridiculous and absurd penances.  And if they dare thus insult (adds the writer) over the daughter, sister, and wife of so great kings, what slavery would they not make us, the people, to undergo!"[213]

One of the articles in the contract of marriage was, that the queen should have a chapel at St. James’s, to be built and consecrated by her French bishop; the priests became very importunate, declaring that without a chapel mass could not be performed with the state it ought before a queen.  The king’s answer is not that of a man inclined to popery.  “If the queen’s closet, where they now say mass, is not large enough, let them have it in the great chamber; and, if the great chamber is not wide enough, they might use the garden; and, if the garden would not serve their turn, then was the park the fittest place.”

The French priests and the whole party feeling themselves slighted, and sometimes worse treated, were breeding perpetual quarrels among themselves, grew weary of England, and wished themselves away:  but many having purchased their places with all their fortune, would have been ruined by the breaking up of the establishment.  Bassompierre alludes to the broils and clamours of these French strangers, which exposed them to the laughter of the English court; and we cannot but smile in observing, in one of the despatches of this great mediator between two kings and a queen, addressed to the minister, that one of the greatest obstacles which he had found in this difficult negotiation arose from the bedchamber women!  The French king being desirous of having two additional women to attend the English queen his sister, the ambassador declares, that “it would be more expedient rather to diminish than to increase the number; for they all live so ill together, with such rancorous jealousies and enmities, that I have more trouble to make them agree than I shall find to accommodate the differences between the two kings.  Their continual bickerings, and often their vituperative language, occasion the English to entertain the most contemptible and ridiculous opinions of our nation.  I shall not, therefore, insist on this point, unless it shall please his majesty to renew it.”

The French bishop was under the age of thirty, and his authority was imagined to have been but irreverently treated by two beautiful viragos in that civil war of words which was raging; one of whom, Madame St. George, was in high favour, and most intolerably hated by the English.  Yet such was English gallantry, that the king presented this lady on her dismission with several thousand pounds and jewels.  There was something inconceivably ludicrous in the notions of the English, of a bishop hardly of age, and the gravity of whose character was probably tarnished by French gesture and vivacity.  This French establishment was daily growing in expense and number; a manuscript letter of the times states that it cost the king L240 a day, and had increased from threescore persons to four hundred and forty, besides children!