Kingston House, Bradford. 277 
observed), the Usher of the Black Rod was commanded to bring 
in his prisoner. Elizabeth: calling herself Duchess Dowager of 
Kingston walked in led by Black Rod and Mr. La Roche, curtseying 
profoundly to her Judges. The Peers made her aslight bow. The 
prisoner was dressed in deep mourning, a black hood on her head, 
her hair modestly dressed and powdered, a black silk sacque with 
erape trimmings, black gauze deep ruffles, and black gloves. The 
Counsel spoke about an hour and a quarter each. Dunning’s 
manner was insufferably bad, coughing and spitting at every three 
words, but his sense and expression pointed to the last degree. He 
made her Grace shed bitter tears. The fair victim had four Virgins 
in white behind the Bar. She imitated her great predecessor Mrs. 
Rudd, and affected to write very often; though I plainly perceived 
that she only wrote as they do their love epistles on the stage, 
without forming a letter. The Duchess has but small remains of 
that beauty of which Kings and Princes were once so enamoured. 
She is large and ill-shaped. There was nothing white but her face; 
and had it not been for that she would have looked like a bale of 
bombazeen.”’ 
Lord Chancellor Apsley presided as High Steward. The charge 
was fully proved, and the marriage with the Duke declared illegal. 
The Lady read her own defence, and by her tears, cleverness, im- 
pudence, and eccentricity, so wrought upon the Honourable House, 
that they avoided the enactment of any penalties, amongst which 
would have been, as the law seems then to have stood, the very 
unpleasant one of being branded in the hand. The prosecutors 
however failed in their great object, the restitution of the property. 
The Duke had so worded his bequest that it was inalienably her’s 
under any one of her many titles. 
The Duchess’s whole life had been one of adventure, display, and 
indelicate publicity. She had great means at command, and upon 
her trial incidentally alluded to a balance of £70,000, in her banker’s 
hands. She built Ennismore House, at Kensington. At one of 
her fétes, Horace Walpole says, that on all the sideboards and even 
on the chairs were pyramids and troughs of strawberries and 
cherries. ‘You would have thought her the protegée of Vertumnus 
himself.” 
