beautiful Duchess of Mazarine as much as 1400 guineas, or 5000l. at least of our present money.[1] Basset, long the fashionable game, was I believe introduced into this country from France. Etherege and Lady Mary Wortley have sung its attractions and its snares, and D'Urfey has condemned it in one of the best of his plays. Nor will Evelyn's description of the basset-table which he saw on a Sunday night at Whitehall, only a few hours before the King was seized with his last illness, be effaced from the memory of those to whom his work is known.
Nelly possessed great interest with the King, and her house at Windsor, with its staircases painted expressly for her by the fashionable pencil of Verrio,[2] was the rendezvous of all who wished to stand well at the Castle. The Duke of Monmouth,—the handsome Sydney of De Grammont's Memoirs, afterwards Earl of Romney,—and the patriot Lord Cavendish, afterwards Duke of Devonshire, were among Nelly's friends. Such constant court was paid to her for political purposes by the Duke of Monmouth and
- ↑ Lucas's Lives of Gamesters, 12mo. 1714. Lord Cavendish lost a thousand pounds in two nights, at Madame Mazarine's. Countess Dowager of Sunderland, to the Earl of Halifax, Aug. 5, 1680:—(Miss Berry's Lady Rachael Russell, p. 373.)
- ↑ Accounts of the Paymaster of His Majesty's Works and Buildings, preserved in the Audit Office.
