244 THE HISTORY OF NEWMARKET. [Book XI. 



1667, she made her escape from her apartments in Whitehall 

 Palace, and joined the duke at a small inn in Westminster ; 

 from thence they fled on horseback to Epsom, where they were 

 married on the following morning by the duke's chaplain. 

 The anger of Charles, when he discovered the flight of his 

 idol, was excessive ; the royal visit to the spring meeting at 

 Newmarket was abandoned in consequence ; and indeed it 

 was one of the very few instances in which he permitted the 

 excitement of the moment to outstep the bounds of politeness. 

 The good-natured monarch soon forgave her the pain she 

 had caused him, and accordingly, the year after her marriage 

 we find her appointed a lady of the bedchamber to Queen 

 Catherine, and apartments allotted to her in Somerset House. 

 From the time of her marriage, Charles, it is said, had no 

 reason to complain of her want of compliance ; indeed he was 

 so drunk at a party at Lord Townshend's as to boast to the 

 duke her husband of the favours which his beautiful wife 

 had conferred on him. About this period " La Belle Stuart " 

 was frequently at Newmarket, where her prowess as an 

 equestrian frequently elicited high praise by the horse-coursers 

 of that era. It was during a race meeting on the Heath 

 that Philip Rotier, the sculptor, sketched her splendid figure, 

 and after retouching it in the pose of a recumbent Diana 

 (the venabiUa stupidly altered to a trident) has perpetuated 

 her likeness under the form of Britannia as we find it on the 

 coinage from that day to this. Felton, in his notes on Waller, 

 says : " so exact was the likeness, that no one who had ever 

 seen her Grace could mistake who had sat for Britannia." 

 An attack of the small pox (at a somewhat later period) 

 almost entirely destroyed her surpassing loveliness, but her 

 figure seems to have still retained the points for which it was 

 so deservedly admired. This merry Duchess died, after a 

 widowhood of thirty years, during the Newmarket October 

 meeting of 1702, lamented by all who knew her. 



^'^^ James Howard, 3rd Earl of Suffolk, Lord Lieutenant of 

 Suffolk and Essex, gentleman of the bedchamber, of whom 

 later. 



