I must own to you that I never cared to mention anything on this subject to you because I knew you would not be of my mind, but since you have given me the occasion, I can’t forbear saying that I see nothing like persecution in the bill. You may think it is a notion Lord Nottingham has just put into my head, but upon my word it is my own thought. I promise my dear Mrs. Freeman faithfully I will read the book she sent me, and beg she will never let differences of opinion hinder us from living together as we used to do. Nothing shall ever alter your poor unfortunate faithful Morley, who will live and die with all truth and tenderness yours. As the differences go on increasing, however, Queen Anne gradually changes her ground. At first she “hopes her not agreeing with anything you say will not be imputed to want of value, esteem, or tender kindness, for my dear, dear Mrs. Freeman”; but at last, as the argument goes on, plucks up a spirit and finds courage enough to declare roundly that whenever public affairs are in the hands of the Whigs, “I shall think the Church beginning to be in danger.” Thus the political situation became more and more difficult, and gradually embittered even the personal relations between the friends, and the duchess had not even the support of her husband in her political preferences. He had himself belonged to the moderate Tory party, and, even though they thwarted and discouraged him, showed no desire to throw himself into the arms of the Whigs, whither his wife would so fain have led him. He was almost as little encouraging to her in this point as the queen was. “I know,” he says, “they would be as unreasonable as the others in their expectations if I should seek their friendship,--for all parties are alike.” It was thus a hard part she had to play between the queen’s determination that the Whigs were the enemies of the church, and her husband’s conviction that all parties were alike. He, perhaps, was the more hard to manage of the two. He voted for the occasional conformity bill, against which she was so hot, and trusted in Harley, who indeed owed his first beginning to Marlborough’s favor, but whom the duchess saw through. In young St. John, too, the great general had perfect faith; “I am very confident he will never deceive you,” he wrote to Godolphin. Thus the husband warmed in his bosom the vipers that were to sting him and bring a hasty end to his career. He, too, remained obstinately indifferent, while she stormed and entreated and wrote a hundred letters and used every art both of war and peace in vain. It is easy to see how this perpetual letter-writing, her determination to prove that her correspondent was in error and she right, and her continual reiteration of the same charges and reproaches, must have exasperated the queen and troubled Marlborough, in the midst of the practical difficulties of his career. But yet there are many