Between the Duchess of Tyrconnel and her sister Lady Marlborough, there never subsisted any very cordial intercourse,[217] nor was the connexion likely to prove anything but a source of suspicion towards the Earl and Countess. The Duchess of Tyrconnel, on the part of William, exercising the ingenuity with which nature had endowed her, in tormenting those admirers who were too importunate, or, when she ceased to attract those who were too cold, turned her lively talents to political intrigue, in which she played a deep game: but her cabals were often detrimental to the cause which she espoused, and terminated finally in her becoming one of those needy Jacobites about the court of St. Germains, whom the beset and unfortunate exiled monarch—as unfortunate in his friends as in his enemies—was obliged to satisfy with some portion of his own pension.[218] The Duke of Tyrconnel, united as he was to this busy spirit, had qualities which would have adorned a better cause than that for which, with zeal and address, he long combated in the sister country. “He was,” says Clarendon, “a very handsome man, wore good clothes, and was, without doubt, of a clear, ready courage, which was virtue enough to recommend a man to the Duke’s good opinion; which, with more expedition than could be expected, he got, to that degree, that he was made of his bedchamber.” To this qualified praise must be added the undoubted stigma attached to the conduct of Tyrconnel, having in his youth been one of those “men of honour,” so termed by Grammont, who acted as counsel to James the Second, when Duke of York, in order to facilitate his nullifying the marriage contract between his Highness and Miss Hyde. If such were the arts by which he recommended himself to James, and obtained, added to various other means, a fortune, as we are told, of forty thousand a year, they are not much to his credit. The first object of Tyrconnel’s admiration was Miss Hamilton, to whom he offered his hand and fortune; and further proffered as many sacrifices as she could desire of the letters, hair, and pictures of a former flame, the Countess of Shrewsbury; and although these articles had no intrinsic value, they testify strongly—such, at least, is the opinion of that competent judge, Count Grammont, of a lover’s “sincerity and merit.”