In reading the memoirs of the court of Charles II., one is apt to overlook the fact that at the period there was a queen in England. There was a time when the consort of the king was not so styled; her position was a personal one, as related to her husband, but she did not share the honors of the throne. How strangely reversed since the later Anglo-Saxon period, as contrasted with the reign of Charles II., had become the relation of the wife of the monarch! for in these last times the full recognition was tendered Catherine of Braganza to which her position as consort of Charles gave her title--there was no question as to there being a queen in England in the full meaning of the term. But her personal relation to the king as her husband was an equivocal one; perhaps once in a month he might honor her with his presence at supper, and occasionally absent himself from the enticements of his mistresses. It was so from the very first; for, before Catherine had landed in England, the intrigue of Charles II. with the notorious Castlemaine was a matter of common knowledge. The graceless king had the effrontery to include Lady Castlemaine in the list of appointees for the queen's following. The indignant bride had not yet learned the futility of seeking to assert her rightful position, and, haughtily declaring that she would return to her own country rather than submit to such an indignity, drew her pen across the name and swept Lady Castlemaine from proximity to her person. In so doing she incurred the deeper enmity of the female fury who ruled Charles with an iron will and was for long years to be the queen's evil genius. The queen was not brilliant, but she was in every sense a woman; and when on a particular occasion, similar to a present-day drawing room, Lady Castlemaine was introduced by the king, the queen, who did not know her and imperfectly caught the name, received her with grace and benignity; but realizing in a moment who it was, she became transformed, her urbanity disappeared, and, fully alive to the insult which had been publicly offered her, she was swept with a wave of passion: "She started from her chair, turned as pale as ashes, then red with shame and anger, the blood gushed from her nose, and she swooned in the arms of her women." Lord Clarendon, who was a witness of the contest between the wife and mistress and sought to prevent the king from becoming controlled by the latter, finally absented himself from court; thereupon the king wrote him a letter in which, after declaring his purpose of making Lady Castlemaine a lady of his wife's bedchamber, he added: "And whosoever I find to be my Lady Castlemaine's enemy, I do promise upon my word to be his enemy as long as I live." The king's missive had its effect; and Lord Clarendon undertook to persuade the queen to bear the indignity, although he had replied to the king that it was "more than flesh and blood could comply with," and reminded him of the difference between the French and English courts: "That in the former, such connections were not new and scandalous, whereas in England they were so unheard of, and so odious, that the mistress of the king was infamous to all women of honour."