It was at this time that Mr. Masham was made a peer, because her majesty was urged to it by some of her ministers, but she said that she had never any intention of making Abigail a great lady, and feared that by so doing she had lost a useful servant. But Lady Masham promised to continue in the office of dresser to her majesty even though she was a peeress. [[A.D. 1712.]] Nothing had given the queen so much trouble since the death of the prince-consort as that of her beautiful sister, the Princess Louisa, which occurred suddenly at St. Germain. An account of this sad event is given in the story of Mary Beatrice of Modena. Anne was ill herself in the autumn from intermittent fever, from which she never entirely recovered. Dean Swift was anxious to become a bishop at this period, and applied for the see of Hereford, which Queen Anne was disposed to grant, because she had never heard of him as anything but a partisan of the church. But he and Lady Masham had been friends for a long time, and she had frequently warned him to destroy the witty, satirical, offensive articles he had shown her about her majesty, the Duchess of Somerset, and others. The queen knew nothing about these writings, but the Duchess of Somerset did, so she secured the aid of Dr. Sharpe, Arch- {491}bishop of York, to prevent the appointment. When her majesty consulted the archbishop on the subject, he startled her with this question: "Ought not your sacred majesty to be first certain whether Dr. Swift is a Christian before he becomes a bishop?" The queen asked him what he could possibly mean, whereupon, having armed himself with "The Tale of a Tub," and other works of Swift, he handed them to her. She was amazed at what she read, and ashamed of the slanderous puns addressed to herself, for she had not suspected their existence. It is needless to add that Swift was not raised to the bishopric of England, but the following year he was appointed Dean of St. Patrick's in Ireland. [[A.D. 1713.]] The treaty of peace that Queen Anne had so long and so earnestly desired was at last signed at Utrecht, and the French ambassador, Duc d'Aumont, soon after arrived in London to confer with her majesty on this subject. He addressed the most flattering speeches to her, and presented her with the nine beautiful gray Flemish horses with which he had made his public entrance into the metropolis. Parliament met soon after; and the queen's speech, announcing peace, after eleven years of warfare, was anxiously awaited. But she was too ill with gout, which had affected different parts of her body, to be able to appear in the house of lords until the ninth of April, and then her voice was painfully weak from her long suffering. Her majesty offered Louis IV. the Order of the Garter in honor of the signing of the peace; but the most interesting event to us of the present day connected with it is that the great composer, Handel, wrote his magnificent Jubilate to celebrate it.