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CORONATION OF GEORGE IV.

Dear reader, it was no idle boast about royal residences, for when it came to pass that my father left his post at Somerset House, and, preferring to live in London, took up his abode in Upper Berkeley Street, where we often visited him, my mother and the rest of the family settled at Hampton Court. This proved to be the home of the longest standing I can remember, as with occasional, I may say frequent, flittings, we remained there till 1840. The grant of apartments in those days was in the gift of the Lord Chamberlain, and Lord John Thynne (afterwards Lord Carteret) had bestowed a set of rooms, some years before, on his friend and connection, Mrs Courtenay Boyle. Things altogether were at that time on a very different footing to what they are now, for the palace had gained the name of the Quality Alms House, and, as regarded the quality part of the title, it was well named, seeing that the inhabitants counted Seymours, Montagus, Pagets, Walpoles, Ponsonbys, and other names connected with the Upper House, many of them far from being bedesmen and bedeswomen, and for the most part better off than the present inmates of the palace. Then, too, such a minor detail as a husband did not disqualify a lady from being an occupant. Things are entirely on a different footing now. Now the grant of rooms is solely in the hands of the sovereign, and our beloved Queen,^[12] who cares for the fatherless, and befriends the cause of the widow, takes more into consideration the needs of the candidates, and the services and merits of the husband or relative they survive, than any recommendation of family or of rank.