ROYAL VISITS 131 



Gloucester. It is a straggling, inconvenient, old 

 house, but delightfully situated, in a village 

 looking indeed at present like a populous town, 

 from the amazing concourse of people that have 

 crowded into it. 



" The Bowmen and Archers and Buglehorns are 

 to attend the King while he stays here, and in 

 all his rides. 



" The Duke of Gloucester was ready to re- 

 ceive the Royal Family, who are all in the 

 highest spirits and delight. 



" I have a small old bed-chamber, but a 

 large and commodious, parlour in which the 

 gentlemen join Miss Planta and me to breakfast 

 and to drink tea. They dine at the royal table. 

 We are to remain here some days. 



" During the King's dinner, which was in a 

 parlour looking into the garden, he permitted 

 the people to come to the window, and their 

 delight and rapture in seeing their monarch at 

 table, with the evident hungry feeling it occasioned, 

 made a contrast of admiration and deprivation, 

 truly comic. They crowded, however, so exces- 

 sively, that this can be permitted them no 

 more. They broke down all the paling, and much 

 of the hedges and some of the windows, and all 

 by eagerness and multitude, for they were perfectly 

 civil, and well-behaved." 



