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To Frances Awdry
Elderfield
Oct 22d [1887?]

MS Princeton University, Parrish Collection

My dear Frances

All I know about Juliana Coningsby is in the Cameo of December 1886.2 I got it out of Carte’s history also Knights, and they both took it from the King’s own account which Pepys wrote down at the time. The adventures were really more curious than Jane Lane’s and I have always wondered whether there were anything not told which prevented them from being made more of.2 But Carte is too old to mince matters, and nobody would know if there were anything amiss about her, so I think she is safe. She took Charles from Trent to Charmouth and she had a pension on his restoration like Jane Lane. I am glad George Harris is all right again.3 Six families in Winchester started scarlet fever the same day, it was all traced to one dairy, and nobody else has caught it, and they are all well again

Your affectionate
C M Yonge

Don’t set up a story concerned with the rejoicings for the 7 Bishops, and the flight of Mary Beatrice4

1There is an account of the escape of the future Charles II from pursuing Roundheads after the battle of Worcester in 1651 in the part of Cameos from English History serialized in MP (December 1886), 544: ‘This time he was to be supposed to be a young gentleman running away with an heiress, escaping from a cruel guardian. The lady was represented by Juliana Coningsby, a relation of Colonel Wyndham; and the feelings of a widow at Charmouth were appealed to for the runaway couple, who appeared in due time with Wilmot riding beside them.’
2At another stage of his escape Charles pretended to be a servant to Jane Lane.
3Perhaps George Montagu Harris, the son of CMY's cousin George Collyer Harris (1833-1874).
4No doubt because she was herself planning A Reputed Changeling (1889).

Cite this letter


The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge(1823-1901) edited by Charlotte Mitchell, Ellen Jordan and Helen Schinske.

URL to this Letter is: https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/yonge/2863/to-frances-awdry

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