Note 525 — INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO CHAPTER X
Reading edition
In 1847, when the offer was repeated, Lord Melbourne wrote to the Queen that “for a long time he had found himself much straitened in his circumstances” and that “he knows that the expense of accepting the ribbon amounts to £1,000, and there has been of late years no period at which it would not have been seriously inconvenient to him to pay down such a sum.”