In 1785, an association with Mary Granville Delany, a woman known in both literary and royal circles, allowed Frances to travel to the court of King George III and Queen Charlotte, where the Queen offered her the post of "Keeper of the Robes", with a salary of £200 per annum. Frances hesitated, not wishing to be separated from her family, and especially resistant to employment that would restrict free use of her time in writing. However, unmarried at 34, she felt constrained to accept and thought that improved social status and income might allow her greater freedom to write. Having accepted the post in 1786, she developed a warm relationship with the queen and princesses that lasted into her later years, yet her doubts proved accurate: the position exhausted her and left her little writing time. Her sorrow was intensified by poor relations with her colleague Juliane Elisabeth von Schwellenburg, co-Keeper of the Robes, who has been described as "a peevish old person of uncertain temper and impaired health, swaddled in the buckram of backstairs etiquette."