Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/216

200 (20th April, 1663); the visit of the Court to Bristol in September, 1663; the birth of Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Euston and Duke of Grafton (20th September, 1663); the return of the Court to London (2nd October, 1663); the mention of the fitting out of the Guinea fleet in August, 1664; the expedition against Gigery in October, 1664; the marriage of La Belle Stuart in March, 1667; the duel of the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Shrewsbury (16th January, 1667-8); Lord Buckhurst's carrying off Nell Gwyn in July, 1667; the attack on Henry Killigrew, 18th May, 1669; and the marriage of Count Grammont to Elizabeth Hamilton in 1668. Here the Memoirs end, De Grammont returning to France with his wife and family in October, 1669.

I have thus reduced a book which, as Walpole says, has really nothing to do with chronology, into something like chronological exactness. A few events, however, still remain unnoticed,—such as the creation of the Countess of Castlemaine to be Duchess of Cleveland, somewhat antedated in the Memoirs, for the creation did not take place till the 3rd August, 1670; the intrigue of the Duchess with Colonel Churchill apparently placed some seven or eight years beforehand; the letter to Lord Cornwallis about his father-in-law, Sir Stephen Fox,