During the first six or eight years of the reign of William and Mary, Lord Portland, however, enjoyed all that favour and those distinctions which his prudence, and the courage which he had displayed both in military and civil affairs, so well justified. The avowed favourite of the King, and deriving considerable grants from the crown, he spent the sums for which he was indebted to the Treasury and to British lands, in promoting the welfare of the English peasantry. Besides daily extensive charity among his poor neighbours, Lord Portland built and endowed a charity school on his estate in Buckinghamshire; and passed his days in the domestic, and dignified, and useful retirement of an English nobleman of the old school; visiting Holland every summer, but living mostly in England. It was before going as ambassador to negociate the peace of Ryswick, that he endeared himself to the English nation by being actively instrumental in saving the noble edifice of Whitehall, in which a fire had broken out, which was chiefly checked by the zeal and liberal aid of this noble foreigner graft upon our English nobility.[207] The Earl of Portland became eventually one of the richest subjects in England. But, as there is a dark spot on all human brightness, he rendered himself unpopular to many, notwithstanding his extensive charities—notwithstanding his profusion “in gardening, birds, and household furniture,”—qualities truly English,—by a frugality which, in the continental nations, is carefully instilled into youth by education and practice, but which is uncongenial to the habits of the English nation. The resentment of Queen Anne and of the Duchess of Marlborough was shown in a manner not displeasing to the public, when, on her accession, the Queen deprived Portland of “the post of Keeper of Windsor Great Park.”[208] Whilst we accord to Bentinck every merit due to one so estimable, it must be allowed that his relationship to the Villiers family contributed greatly to the support of that rank which he held in the King’s esteem, whilst it was at the same time the cause of the hostilities afterwards declared between his lordship and the vehement lady whom he had the fortune mortally to offend. By his first marriage with Mrs. Villiers, fourth sister of the Earl of Jersey, Lord Portland strengthened his interests doubly. Lady Jersey was the confidante of Mary; Lord Jersey was in high favour with William; whilst Elizabeth Villiers, afterwards Lady Orkney, was the mistress of the gloomy and grave, but, as it seems, not altogether faithful husband of the subservient and devoted Mary Stuart.