Once when this Mrs. Danvers, one of the bed-chamber {459}women, was so ill that she believed herself to be dying, she sent for the Duchess of Marlborough, and implored her to transfer her position with the queen to her daughter, who would be entirely unprotected after her death. The duchess declared her inability to do so, because of her being on bad terms with her majesty. Finding that to be the case, the sick woman told a long story about Abigail Hill's wickedness and general bad behavior, and wound up her narrative by informing her visitor that said Abigail had long been her secret enemy. Queen Anne may have been desirous of dispensing charities, but the Duchess of Marlborough held the purse-strings so tightly that she was unable to do so. When she demanded a small sum of money, that tyrant would frequently tell her that "it was not fit to squander away money while so heavy a war lasted," though at that very time vast sums of the public funds were annually supplied for the building of the duke's house at Woodstock. A touching case of distress came under her majesty's notice in the sad fate of Sir Andrew Foster, a gentleman who had spent most of his life in the service of James II., and who had been ruined by his adherence to that sovereign. He died of starvation, in a miserable hut just outside of London, and Queen Anne was so shocked when she heard it that she determined, as it was too late to relieve the unfortunate Jacobite, he should at least be decently buried. For this object she was forced to borrow twenty guineas of Lady Fretchville, for she could not command so large a sum herself; and yet the Marlboroughs were then drawing sixty-four thousand pounds per annum from the public purse. Later the sum reached ninety-four thousand pounds. [[A.D. 1707.]] The queen carried one extremely important point in violent opposition to the powerful duchess, and that was the union between Scotland and England. {460}This measure was passed in both countries, signed and ratified in great state in the presence of the Scottish commissioners, the English ministers, and both houses of parliament. When Queen Anne signed this important ratification she said, "The union with Scotland is the happiness of my reign." On the same day, April 24, her majesty dissolved the English house of commons, and summoned the first united parliament of Great Britain to meet the following October. The signing of the union was then celebrated by a grand national festival, and a few days later her majesty went in solemn procession to St. Paul's Cathedral to return thanks for the successful completion of this matter.