George Hobart, third Earl of Buckinghamshire, enters from a strongroom on the left and tells his wife Albinia, who is playing the card game faro with her cronies, that her gambling bank has been stolen. The cronies include (left to right) Mrs Concannon, proprietor of a gambling house; Colonel Hanger (subsequently Lord Coleraine), a gambler; Charles James Fox (seated); Richard Brinsley Sheridan; and Sarah Lady Archer. On 30 January 1797, a box containing 500 guineas, the property of the Countess of Buckinghamshire and two other ladies, co-proprietors of the faro bank, had been stolen from Lord Buckinghamshire's house in St James's Square, London. The loss was discovered when a card party was about to begin (British Museum catalogue, loc. cit.). "Hobart succeeded his half-brother as earl of Buckinghamshire on 3 September 1793, but did not inherit the family estates, which the second earl had divided among his daughters. The new countess, already infamous as a gambler, was reported as opening her house for faro games twice a week in order to raise the funds to maintain her new dignity. … In March 1797, alongside Lady Elizabeth Luttrell, she was fined £50 for illicit gambling." (Oxford dictionary of national biography)