flotilla of flat-bottomed boats was assembled at Dunkirk to transport an army to the English coast. The speculations of politicians were prefaced with, "If no French come." The situation was pronounced by some of them comical, and the nation droll. In March of the following year "the King notified the invasion to both Houses, and his having sent for Hessians. There were some dislikes expressed to the latter; but, in general, fear preponderated so much that the cry was for Hanoverians too." Hanoverian officers were even preferred to the native-born. But the cynics of London laughed, invented, and lied. "They said that the night the Hanover troops were voted, George II. sent for his German cook, and said, ' Get me a very good supper; get me all de varieties: I don't mind expense.' " Exquisites, like Walpole, were wondering where their foreign defenders would be encamped. If the Hanoverians should be stationed at Hounslow, "Strawberry Hill would become an inn, and all the misses would breakfast there, to go and see the camp!"[1] Even in George Townshend's "admirable" cartoon, "which so diverted the town," "the Hanoverian drummer, Ellis," "though the least like, was a leading feature." Instead of fighting, Englishmen were sneering or laughing.
It was in these days of fear and threatened invasion that the King's Hanoverian Guards were ordered to England.[2] Isaac Herschel and his two sons, Jacob and
- ↑ Walpole, Letters, iii. 109, 164, 165, 206, 209, 217.
- ↑ "Towards the end of the year 1755," Caroline Herschel says (p. 8). This does not seem to be correct. Horace Walpole's Letters would lead a reader to place it several months later, in 1756. Neither she nor her brother seems to have been sure of the date. (Memoirs, p. 218.)
