IMPORTANT POSITION

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 50, 1 March 1937, Page 14

IMPORTANT POSITION

MISTRESS OF THE ROBES

A QUEEN'S PERPLEXITY

One appointment arising out of the return of a Queen to our, monarchial system will be'that of a> Mistress of the Robes, states an exchange. So imr portant is it in the case of a Queen Regent that it is the only office among the Ladies of the Household which is expected to carry sufficient political flavour to require a change, if asked for, with a change of Government. All; this was fought put nearly a century ago, when the "Queen's Ladies" produced a first-class political crisis and. kept Feel and the Tories out of the 'Government: When Melbourne and the Whigs went out in. 1839 Peel .told the Queen that it would be necessary to change some of the chief ladies of her Household.

"The young" Queen," writes Bright in "The Growth of Democracy," "probably" misunderstood the amount of the change intended. She had grown attached to those who had surrounded her since, her accession to the Throne and on whose friendship she could rely. She took fright at the idea of being'left'in the midst of strange surroundings and consulted the outgoing Ministry .as to the constitutional necessity of the change." ' -. ■

She was specially concerned with the ladies of the bedchamber, but the advice of ,the Whigs • was that while office of the Household held by members of Parliament should be changed, they did not think that "a similar principle should be extended to offices Held by ladies inher Majesty's .Household." But they can hardly have extended this opinion to the Mistress o£ the Robes, because, though Melbourne's opinion became the accepted rule for the future for all other ladies in the: Household, the special p.osition of the Mistress "of the Robes: continued to class her among the "politicals."