and out of the fair, but not out of their trouble, for as many country-people as had horses followed with their wives, children, sweethearts, or neighbours behind them, and attended the Queen to the court gate. "And thus," says the writer to whom we are indebted for the relation of the adventure, "was a merry frolic turned into a penance."[1] The readers of Pepys and De Grammont will remember that La Belle Jennings had a somewhat similar mishap when, dressed as an orange girl and accompanied by Miss Price, she endeavoured to visit the German fortune-teller.
While the court was alternately annoyed and amused with diversions of this description, and the death of the Earl of Sandwich and the war with the Dutch were still subjects of conversation, the Duchess of Cleveland on the 16th of July, 1672, was delivered of a daughter, and on the 29th of the same month and year the fair Quérouaille produced a son. The King disowned the girl but acknowledged the boy, and many idle conjectures were afloat both in court and city on the subject. The father of the Cleveland child was, it is said, Colonel Churchill, afterwards the great Duke of Marlborough, then
- ↑ Mr. Henshaw to Sir Robert Paston, Oct. 13 1670. Ives's Select Papers, 4to. 1773, p. 39.
