The French embassy made as magnificent an appearance m England as the English embassy had made in France.  The mansion of the Duke of Ormond, one of the finest houses in Saint James’s Square, was taken for Tallard.  On the day of the public entry, all the streets from Tower Hill to Pall Mall were crowded with gazers who admired the painting and gilding of his Excellency’s carriages, the surpassing beauty of his horses, and the multitude of his running footmen, dressed in gorgeous liveries of scarlet and gold lace.  The Ambassador was graciously received at Kensington, and was invited to accompany William to Newmarket, where the largest and most splendid Spring Meeting ever known was about to assemble.  The attraction must be supposed to have been great; for the risks of the journey were not trifling.  The peace had, all over Europe, and nowhere more than in England, turned crowds of old soldiers into marauders.12 Several aristocratical equipages had been attacked even in Hyde Park.  Every newspaper contained stories of travellers stripped, bound and flung into ditches.  One day the Bristol mail was robbed; another day the Dover coach; then the Norwich waggon.  On Hounslow Heath a company of horsemen, with masks on their faces, waited for the great people who had been to pay their court to the King at Windsor.  Lord Ossulston escaped with the loss of two horses.  The Duke of Saint Albans, with the help of his servants, beat off the assailants.  His brother the Duke of Northumberland, less strongly guarded, fell into their hands.  They succeeded in stopping thirty or forty coaches, and rode off with a great booty in guineas, watches and jewellery.  Nowhere, however, does the peal seem to have been so great as on the Newmarket road.  There indeed robbery was organised on a scale unparalleled in the kingdom since the days of Robin Hood and Little John.  A fraternity of plunderers, thirty in number according to the lowest estimate, squatted, near Waltham Cross, under the shades of Epping Forest, and built themselves huts, from which they sallied forth with sword and pistol to bid passengers stand.  The King and Tallard were doubtless too well attended to be in jeopardy.  But, soon after they had passed the dangerous spot, there was a fight on the highway attended with loss of life.  A warrant of the Lord Chief justice broke up the Maroon village for a short time, but the dispersed thieves soon mustered again, and had the impudence to bid defiance to the government in a cartel signed, it was said, with their real names.  The civil power was unable to deal with this frightful evil.  It was necessary that, during some time, cavalry should patrol every evening on the roads near the boundary between Middlesex and Essex.