“. . . I have been giving a curious receipt upon a curious subject. The Duke of Wellington and Sir Wm. Knighton have this day paid me £3,170 as executors of his late Majesty. The money is for tents erected upon that part of Windsor Park called the Virginia Water. The canvas composing the tents is from Ordnance stores, and as his Majesty was pleased to imagine that whenever he took the field, his Ordnance Department must supply him with tents, he never meant to pay for these articles. Tennyson, finding the amount of this job in his books, has demanded payment from the executors. . . . What think you of the payment of the artificers who put up these tents—four large and four small ones—being upwards of £2000 out of the £3,170? I think Knighton must have been one of these artificers. If such a sum can have been spent upon a few tents, what think you of the whole expenditure of the Virginia Water, Cottage, &c., &c.? Oh dear, oh dear! . . . Well our Reform Bill made its first appearance last night, and under most pacific circumstances. . . . Peel was very temperate.’
