One of these questions, and by no means the least important, would doubtless have arisen upon a mode of defence alleged by the Earl of Oxford in the house, when the articles of impeachment were brought up. "My lords," he said, "if ministers of state, acting by the immediate commands of their sovereign, are afterwards to be made accountable for their proceedings, it may, one day or other, be the case of all the members of this august assembly."[340] It was indeed undeniable that the queen had been very desirous of peace, and a party, as it were, to all the counsels that tended to it. Though it was made a charge against the impeached lords, that the instructions to sign the secret preliminaries of 1711 with M. Mesnager, on the part of France, were not under the great seal, nor countersigned by any minister, they were certainly under the queen's signet, and had all the authority of her personal command. This must have brought on the yet unsettled and very delicate question of ministerial responsibility in matters where the sovereign has interposed his own command; a question better reserved, it might then appear, for the loose generalities of debate than to be determined with the precision of criminal law. Each party, in fact, had in its turn made use of the queen's personal authority as a shield; the whigs availed themselves of it to parry the attack made on their ministry, after its fall, for an alleged mismanagement of the war in Spain before the battle of Almanza;[341] and the modern constitutional theory was by no means so established in public opinion as to bear the rude brunt of a legal argument. Anne herself, like all her predecessors, kept in her own hands the reins of power; jealous, as such feeble characters usually are, of those in whom she was forced to confide (especially after the ungrateful return of the Duchess of Marlborough for the most affectionate condescension), and obstinate in her judgment, from the very consciousness of its weakness, she took a share in all business, frequently presided in meetings of the cabinet, and sometimes gave directions without their advice.[342] The defence set up by Lord Oxford would undoubtedly not be tolerated at present, if alleged in direct terms, by either house of parliament; however it may sometimes be deemed a sufficient apology for a minister, by those whose bias is towards a compliance with power, to insinuate that he must either obey against his conscience, or resign against his will.