Germains;
how Lady Oglethorpe had taken charge of the Queen's diamonds when she
fled from Whitehall and safely returned them three years later,
travelling as an old doctor-woman in a riding-hood, selling powders
and plasters in a little basket. There was unseemly jubilation over
the death of Queen Anne's son, the little Duke of Gloucester, in July
1700--though Fanny admits they were sorry at first--and somewhat
partisan comparisons were drawn between him, 'a poor, soft child who
had no wit' (he was really a very promising, spirited boy), and the
little Prince of Wales, 'who was very witty.'
To this careless chatter Fanny Shaftoe added exaggerations and
backstairs gossip, and an astounding statement which lived as the
feeblest lie _can_ live. Anne Oglethorpe, she said, informed her that
the real Prince of Wales (born June 10, 1688) had died at Windsor of
convulsions when five or six weeks old; that Lady Oglethorpe hurried
up to town with her little son James, born a few days before the
Prince, and that the Oglethorpe baby died, or _was lost on the road_.
The truth was a secret between her mother and the Queen! All they knew
was that their little brother never turned up again.
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