1899.] George the Third as a Collector. 65 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, February 17, 1899. 



Sir Frederick Bramwell, Bart., D.C.L. LL.D. F.R.S., Honorary 

 Secretary and Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Kichard R. Holmes, Esq., M.V.O. F.S.A. 



George the Third as a Collector. 



The subject of this discourse I have chosen particularly because 

 it is one which has in most histories either been passed over entirely, 

 or treated with indifference. It is generally disposed, of in a few curt 

 phrases taken from the pages of contemporary diarists, repeated by 

 every subsequent writer as containing everything necessary to be 

 recorded of the King's tastes and epitomising his character with 

 epigrammatic smartness, but seldom verified by examination or research. 

 The stormy political quarrels at home and the complication of events 

 abroad have combined to cast into oblivion the early cultivated tastes 

 and pursuits of the King, as in later years the dark clouds of disease 

 obscured the finer workings of his brain. 



To appreciate fully the extent and value of the collections by 

 which George III. has permanently enriched the possessions of the 

 Crown, it is as well to consider briefly the condition in which His 

 Majesty found the ancestral treasure of his Royal house when he 

 succeeded his grandfather on the throne. Spoliation and robbery 

 had played sad havoc among them, and it is only wonderful that 

 anything of value was left at all. The nation perhaps may be con- 

 gratulated that, on the foundation of the British Museum, the ancient 

 library of the Kings of England was transferred there by George II., 

 and so escaped the fate of many of the treasures of the Crown. In a 

 note prefixed to a MS. catalogue of the pictures of Queen Anne by 

 Horace Walpole, who once owned the volume, he says : — 



" As several pictures mentioned in the following catalogue have 

 not appeared in any of the palaces within my memory I imagine 

 many were taken away by different persons between the death of 

 Queen Anne and the arrival of George I. Henrietta Lady Suffolk 

 told me that Queen Caroline never had any of Queen Anne's jewels 

 but one pearl necklace. George I., who hated her and his son, might 

 give what he found to the Duchess of Kendal. Her niece, Lady 

 Chesterfield, certainly had several large diamonds. Catherine of 

 Braganza, widow of Charles II., carried away several of the pictures 

 of the Crown of Portugal. A Lord Chamberlain pawned the Vandyke 

 hangings at Houghton to a banker, who, many years after, they not 



Vol. XVI. (No. 93.) f 



