With respect to the mayor’s omission of the wonted respect of going to church with her, Anne thought it was a thing to be laughed at; nor was she probably disturbed in her general placidity by “another foolish thing,” as the Duchess calls it, a trifling, but characteristic proof of Mary’s unsisterly vengeance. When the Princess resided at Berkeley-House, it was her habit to attend St. James’s church; and the preacher, in compliance with custom, ordered a copy of his text to be laid upon her cushion. But Mary, carrying her resentments into that sacred edifice without whose porch worldly passions should be left, ordered that this observance also should be abandoned: the minister, however, refusing to comply, unless an order were given in writing, which the Queen and her advisers “did not care to do,” “that noble design,” as the Duchess terms the Queen’s prohibition, “was dropt.”[279] Berkeley-house, to which the Princess about this time removed, was the scene of all those cabals, those fears and resentments, those heart-burnings and bickerings, by which a minor court, in open hostility with the more powerful, but less popular head of the family, is tolerably sure to be infested. Berkeley-house, standing on the site of Devonshire-house, and giving the name to Berkeley-square, was at this time the last house in Piccadilly, a distinction which Devonshire-house also possessed until long after the year 1700.[280] The Princess lived here with her favourite and other friends in a very quiet manner, never seeing the Queen, who still, through Lady Fitzharding and other mediators, insisted upon the dismissal of Lady Marlborough as the condition of reconciliation between herself and Anne; whilst Anne, with her native obstinacy, adhered to her friend in preference to her kindred.