Lady Diana evidently soon dried her tears, and apparently took the matter as lightly as the Prince did, for very shortly after she became the Duchess of Bedford, viz., on October 12th, 1731, but, unfortunately, died young (on the 27th of September, 1735). But the great Duchess Sarah was not of the nature to forget Sir Robert Walpole’s part in this affair, and it is interesting to read her opinion of him written to Lord Stair in her old age; this opinion was written by the Duchess avowedly for the use of future historians. “In another book,” she writes, “are a great many particulars which the historian may like to look into; but I have omitted these to relate something of Sir Robert Walpole, which shows that he betrayed the Duke of Marlborough, even at a time when he made the greatest professions to him. “The Duke of Marlborough was made so uneasy at the end of the Queen’s reign, by turning men of service out of the Army to put in Mr. Hill and Mr. Masham over the heads of people improperly, that Mr. Walpole was employed to show the Queen how detrimental to her service such steps must be. He had many opportunities of doing it. The Duke of Marlborough having obtained of the Queen that Cardonnel should be Secretary of War as a reward for his services, when the war was ended, which he hoped would be soon, and the Queen having allowed Mr. Cardonnel to kiss her hand upon that promise, but to let him go over with the Duke of Marlborough, that campaign or another, if the war happened to be not concluded. Mr. Walpole was so low then that he executed this place for Mr. Cardonnel, and attended the Duke of Marlborough when he was in England with a bag of writings like Mr. Cardonnel. He managed it so that to make the Duke of Marlborough believe that he had done all he could with the Queen, and at the same time gained all the points Mrs. Masham had desired for her husband and brother; and I had incontestable proofs afterwards that Mr. Walpole had acted this double part to oblige Mrs. Masham, and the Duke of Marlborough at that time had no reason to believe he could be so false. “Sir Robert also had a great obligation to me; for by my interest wholly he was made Treasurer of the Navy when Sir T. Lyttleton died, though there were solicitations from many people for that employment, whom they thought it of more consequence to oblige. But I prevailed, and he had then only a small estate, and that much encumbered. And I have letters of acknowledgment to me, in which he says ‘he is very sensible that he was entirely obliged to me for it.’ “Notwithstanding which at the commencement of his great power with the present family, he used me with all the folly and insolence upon every occasion, as he has treated several since he has acted as if he were King, which would be too tedious to relate.