The Countess of Suffolk (the servant of Caroline and the mistress of Caroline’s husband) was among the few persons whom the eloquence and fervour of Whitfield failed to touch. When this latter was chaplain to Lady Huntingdon, and in the habit of preaching in the drawing-room of that excellent and exemplary woman, there was an eager desire to be among the privileged to be admitted to hear him. This privilege was solicited of Lady Huntingdon by Lady Rockingham, for the King’s ex-favourite, Lady Suffolk. The patroness of Whitfield thought of Magdalen repentant, and expressed her readiness to welcome her, an additional sheep to an increasing flock. The beauty came, and Whitfield preached neither more nor less earnestly, unconscious of her presence. So searching, however, was his sermon, and so readily could the enraged fair one apply its terrible truths to herself, that it was only with difficulty she could sit it out with apparent calm. Inwardly, she felt that she had been the especial object at which her assailant had flung his sharpest arrows. Accordingly, when Whitfield had retired, the exquisite fury, chafed but not repentant, turned upon the meditative Lady Huntingdon, and well nigh annihilated her with the torrent and power of her invective. Her sister-in-law, Lady Betty Germain, implored her to be silent; but only the more unreservedly did she empty the vials of her wrath upon the saintly lady of the house, who was lost in astonishment, anger, and confusion. Old Lady Bertie and the Dowager Duchess of Ancaster rose to her rescue; and, by right of their relationship with the lady whom the King delighted to honour, required her to be silent or civil. It was all in vain: the irritated fair one maintained that she had been brought there to be pilloried by the preacher; and she finally swept out of the room, leaving behind her an assembly in various attitudes of wonder and alarm; some fairly deafened by the thundering echoes of her expressed wrath, others at a loss to decide whether Lady Huntingdon had or had not directed the arrows of the preacher, and all most charmingly unconscious that, be that as it might, the lady was only smarting because she had rubbed against a sermon bristling with the most stinging truths. Whitfield made note of those of the royal household who repaired to the services over which he presided in Lady Huntingdon’s house. In 1752, when he saw regularly attending among his congregation one of Queen Caroline’s ex-ladies, Mrs. Grinfield, he writes thereupon: ‘One of Cæsar’s household hath been lately awakened by her ladyship’s instrumentality, and I hope others will meet with the like blessing.’