he
immaculate Mrs Clayton, with whom she was supposed to have negotiated
the appointment of Lord Pomfret as master of the horse, for a pair of
diamond rings, worth L1,400. The rumour appears to have obtained
considerable currency; for one day when she appeared at the Duchess of
Marlborough's with the jewels in her ears, the Duchess (old Sarah) said
to Lady Wortley Montague, "How can the woman have the impudence to go
about _in that bribe_!" Lady Wortley keenly and promptly
answered,--"Madam, how can people know where wine is to be sold, unless
where they see the sign?"

Another of the curiosities of this court menagerie, was Katherine,
Duchess of Buckingham. She was a daughter of James the Second by
Katherine Sedley, daughter of the wit, Sir Charles. James, who with all
his zeal for popery was a scandalous profligate, and as shameless in his
contempt of decent opinion as he was criminal in his contempt for his
coronation oath; gave this illegitimate offspring the rank of a Duke's
daughter, and the permission to bear the royal arms! She found a husband
in the Earl of Anglesea, from whom she was soon separated; the earl
died, and she took another husband, John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham,
certainly not too youthful a bridegroom. The duke, always a wit, had
been in early life one of the most dissipated men of his day, and
through all the varieties and _vexations_ of a life devoted to pleasure,
had reached his 59th year. Yet, this handsome wreck, almost the last
relic of the court of Charles the Second, lived a dozen years longer,
and left the duchess guardian of his son.

His lordly dowager afforded the world of high life perpetual amusement.
Her whole life was an unintentional caricature of royalty. Beggarly
beyond conception in her private affairs, she was as pompous in public
as if she had the blood of all the thrones of Europe in her veins. She
evidently regarded the Brunswicks as usurpers, and hated them; while she
affected a sort of superstitious homage for the exiled dynasty, and gave
them--every thing but her money. She once made a sort of pilgrimage to
visit the body of James, and pretended to shed tears over it. The monk
who showed it, adroitly observed to her, that the velvet pall which
covered the coffin was in rags, but her sympathies did not reach quite
so far, and she would not take the hint, and saved her purse.

At the opera, she appeared in a sort of royal robe of scarlet and
ermine, and everywhere m