r.

[Footnote 32: _Narrative of Frances Shaftoe._ Printed 1707.]

Fanny Shaftoe was admitted into the family, she says, on quite
familiar terms, but 'always behaved very meek and humble, ready to
help any of the servants to make beds or to take care of the little
boy' (the General) 'when his nurse was busy helping in the garden.'
Anne and Eleanor were merry, friendly girls, and chatted only too
freely with Fanny Shaftoe over the sewing. She certainly heard a great
deal of 'treason' talked. She heard how Sir Theophilus and his wife
went back and forward, disguised, between England and St. Germains;
how Lady Oglethorpe had taken charge of the Queen's diamonds when she
fled from Whitehall and safely returned them three years later,
travelling as an old doctor-woman in a riding-hood, selling powders
and plasters in a little basket. There was unseemly jubilation over
the death of Queen Anne's son, the little Duke of Gloucester, in July
1700--though Fanny admits they were sorry at first--and somewhat
partisan comparisons were drawn between him, 'a poor, soft child who
had no wit' (he was really a very promising, spirited boy), and the
little Prince of Wales, 'who was very witty.'

To this careless chatter Fanny Shaftoe added exaggerations and
backstairs gossip, and an astounding statement which lived as the
feeblest lie _can_ live. Anne Oglethorpe, she said, informed her that
the real Prince of Wales (born June 10, 1688) had died at Windsor of
convulsions when five or six weeks old; that Lady Oglethorpe hurried
up to town with her little son James, born a few days before the
Prince, and that the Oglethorpe baby died, or _was lost on the road_.
The truth was a secret between her mother and the Queen! All they knew
was that their little brother never turned up again. Anne added,
confusing the story by too much detail, as all accounts of the royal
fraud are confused, that the children had been sick together; that the
Prince had then died, and her brother had been substituted for him.

In November 1700 Frances Shaftoe (according to her later revelations)
left Westbrook: her mother had written from Newcastle to say her
sister was dying. Anne and Eleanor were very sympathetic--they were
really nice girls. Lady Oglethorpe was very kind, and gave her four
guineas for her eleven months' services; and she seems to have been
satisfied with it as handsome remuneration. She asserts,
inconsistently, that she had much ado to get away; b