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The Queen had removed the cartoons of Raphael from Hampton Court to St. James's, and had them cut down so as to fit the place which she designed them to occupy. This exasperated Peter to the last degree: it reminded him of a cutting story. In the last war the French prisoners died by scores, and the Mayor of Plymouth to accommodate a first cousin, a carpenter, gave him a contract for their coffins. The carpenter, thinking to save some pence on each coffin, made every one too short; and so as to accommodate the dead to the receptacles made for them, cut off the heads of the deceased prisoners and tucked them en chapeau bas under their arms.

To a Devonshire man one of the most amusing compositions of Peter Pindar is an account of the royal visit to Exeter in 1788, supposed to be written by a farmer of Moreton Hampstead to his sister Nan:—