The father of the last Duke of Mantua, Charles III., loved to go abroad in the dirtiest of disguises, and “accompanied by an escort of equally ill-clad bullies for his defence.” It was his sport, when so engaged, “to assail all he met in the coarsest terms, and when some person assaulted, more impatient than others, fell upon him in return with tongue or cudgel, he would laugh till he was sore, and then his escort came to the rescue. On other occasions he would enter the shops of vendors of very breakable materials, and taking up mirror or drinking glass, or any other fragile matter that came to hand, he would let it fall to the ground, and find double provocation to laughter in the ruin he had committed, and in the expressions of unrestrained abuse which were showered on him in consequence.”[80]
Gustavus III. in his incognito travels assumed the name of Count Haga, and one of his adventures, on his way to Italy in 1783, was amusing. It appears that he had long promised a visit to the little Court of Schwerin. Accordingly, as soon as the Duchess of Mecklenburg heard of his landing in Germany, she prepared two fêtes in his honour--one in her capital, the other at Ludwigslust; but Gustavus, who “rather disdained these petty German Courts, thought it a good joke, instead of going himself to Schwerin, to send two of his attendants--a page named Peyron, and Desvouges, a _valet-de-chambre_, who had formerly been an actor. These two personated Count Haga and his minister, Baron Sparre, and sustained the characters throughout; accepted all the homage meant for their master, danced with all the Mecklenburg ladies who were presented to them, and Peyron went even so far as to ask one of them for her portrait. Meantime Gustavus was taking his pleasure at Ludwigslust, and the mistake lasted long enough for him fully to enjoy the mystification.”[81]
The disguise adopted by Anne of Warwick, the sad and unfortunate girl-widow of Edward, Prince of Wales, who fell beneath the Yorkist daggers after the fatal field of Tewkesbury, to elude Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was one of the most romantic incidents in our history. Richard was anxious to make her his wife, but, in order to conceal from him her whereabouts, she put up with every privation, and, with the privity of her brother-in-law, Clarence, she went so far as to descend from the rank of Princess of Wales to the disguise of a servant--a scullery-maid--in a mean house in London, under which servile condition the future Queen-Consort was eventually discovered. The incident, as told by the Latin chronicler, is thus recorded: “Richard, Duke of Gloucester, wished to discover Anne, the youngest daughter of the Earl of Warwick, in order to marry her; this was much disapproved by his brother, the Duke of Clarence, who did not wish to divide his wife’s inheritance; he therefore hid the young lady.”