CHAPTER IX

A QUEEN OF COQUETTES


The 29th of May in the year 1660 was indeed a red-letter day in the
calendar of jovial fox-hunting Squire Jennings, of Sandridge, in
Hertfordshire. It was the day on which his Royal idol, the second
Charles, set out from Canterbury on the last stage of the journey to his
crown. Mounted on his horse, caparisoned in purple and gold, at the head
of a gay cavalcade of retainers, he rode proudly through the Kentish
lanes and villages: through avenues of wildly-cheering crowds, flinging
sweet may-blossoms and flowers under his horse's feet, and waving green
boughs over their heads in a frenzy of welcome.

[Illustration: SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH]

And it was on this very day, as the "Merrie Monarch" was riding under
the flowery arches and fluttering pennons of London streets, to the
clanging of joy-bells and the thundering of cannon, with a procession
twenty thousand strong behind him, that Squire Jennings' daughter first
opened her eyes on the world in which, though her simple-minded father
little dreamt it, she was destined to play so brilliant a part. No
birthday could have been more auspicious than this which saw the
restoration of a nation's hope; and the sun which flooded it with
splendour was typical of the good fortune that was to gild the life-path
of the Sandridge baby.

If on that day Squire Richard had been told that his baby-girl would
live to wear a Duchess's coronet and to be the bosom-friend and