royalty from the lips of the Princess of Wales. But that
strong-minded woman, Caroline Dorothea Wilhelmina, steadily looked away
from the mayor's consort. She would not do what Queen Anne had not
thought worth the doing; and Lady Humphreys, we are sorry to say, stood
upon her unstable rights, and displayed a considerable amount of bad
temper and worse behaviour. She wore a train of black velvet, then
considered one of the privileges of City royalty, and being wronged of
one, she resolved to make the best of that which she possessed--bawling,
as ladies, mayoresses, and women generally should never do--bawling to
her page to hold up her train, and sweeping away therewith before the
presence of the amused princess herself. The incident altogether seems
to have been too much for the good but irate lady's nerves; and unable
or unwilling, when dinner was announced, to carry her stupendous
bouquet, emblem of joy and welcome, she flung it to a second page who
attended on her state, with a scream of 'Boy, take my _bucket_!' In
_her_ view of things, the sun had set on the glory of mayoralty for
ever.

"The king was as much amazed as the princess had been amused; and a
well-inspired wag of the Court whispered an assurance which increased
his perplexity. It was to the effect that the angry lady was only a mock
Lady Mayoress, whom the unmarried Mayor had hired for the occasion,
borrowing her for that day only. The assurance was credited for a time,
till persons more discreet than the wag convinced the Court party that
Lady Humphreys was really no counterfeit. She was no beauty either; and
the same party, when they withdrew from the festive scene, were all of
one mind, that she must needs be what she seemed, for if the Lord Mayor
had been under the necessity of borrowing, he would have borrowed
altogether another sort of woman." This is one of the earliest stories
connecting the City with an idea of vulgarity and purse pride. The
stories commenced with the Court Tories, when the City began to resist
Court oppression.

A leap now takes us on in the City chronicles. In 1727 (the year George
I. died), the Royal Family, the Ministry, besides nobles and foreign
ministers, were entertained by Sir Edward Becher, mayor (Draper). George
II. ordered the sum of L1,000 to be paid to the sheriffs for the relief
of insolvent debtors. The feast cost L4,890. In 1733 (George II.), John
Barber--Swift, Pope, and Bolingbroke's friend--the Jacobite pri