Guests at the latter dinner included Alfred, Lord Tennyson and William Thackeray. Other dinners and meetings, held by societies and private individuals, took place at the hotel during the period of the Ellis family ownership, with some of them being reported in "The Times", the leading newspaper of the day. These dinners included a banquet held in 1846 by the Irish Society to mark the Earl of Lincoln retiring from the post of Chief Secretary for Ireland, a public dinner in 1847 for The Scottish Hospital, a charity known today as the Royal Scottish Corporation, and a dinner hosted in June 1855 by the American entrepreneur and philanthropist George Peabody for Millard Fillmore, ex-President of the United States. Among the most prestigious and celebrated events during this period was the stay at the hotel of the ex-Royal Family of France in 1848. Then known as the Count and Countess de Neuilly, and formerly Louis-Philippe I, King of the French and his queen Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily, the couple and their entourage stayed at the Star and Garter while Maria recovered from the effects of the water at Claremont House. The family had been staying at Claremont following their arrival in the country in exile after the revolution in France. The stay at the hotel was several months long while the water pipes at Claremont were replaced, and the group consisted of 88 people occupying between 50 and 60 apartments. The presence of these "illustrious exiles" in the area led to a visit in 1850 by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. "The Times" reported this as the Queen's first visit to Richmond for "many years past" with crowds in attendance. On the arrival of the British royal party, the ex-French King greeted the British monarch and escorted her into the hotel to meet the ex-Queen. Louis-Philippe would die later that year, but his widow Maria (more usually referred to as Marie Amelie or just Amelie) would continue to frequent the hotel until her own death in 1866. One of the stays reported by "The Times" concerned the 1859 visit to see Marie Amelie by a group that included Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Alexandrine of Baden, Duchess of Saxe Coburg Gotha, the Duchess of Cambridge and the Princess Mary Queen Victoria and Albert would also visit a few days later. Joseph Ellis died in 1858, and the hotel passed to one of his sons, George, who ran the hotel until 1864.