thestuartkings: “Portrait of Queen Catherine of Braganza as Saint Catherine” by
thestuartkings:“Portrait of Queen Catherine of Braganza as Saint Catherine” by Jacob Huysmans“One day Queen Catherine decided she wanted to visit a country fair incognito. She set off on the back of a cart horse ridden by a courtier in what she fondly imagined to be the country style. Unfortunately, both the queen and courtiers, including Frances Stuart, now Duchess of Richmond and the Duchess of Buckingham, ‘had all over-done it in their disguise’. In their red petticoats and waistcoats, they looked more like ‘Antiques than Country folk’. Catherine continued for a while innocently enjoying herself. At a booth she bought a pair of yellow stockings ‘for her sweetheart’. But of course, quite apart from her ‘antique’ clothes, her heavy foreign accent - what a witness unkindly called her ‘gibberish’ - could not help drawing attention. Soon a crowd gathered to gape at these strange birds in their even stranger plumage, and the queen was mobbed.”From the book, ‘King Charles II’ by Antonia Fraser. -- source link
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