The change from royal robes to suits of mourning; from festive halls, and the shouts of the people, to the now deserted apartments of her son, or her own sombre, though stately chambers, would have grated upon a more sensitive disposition than that which Anne possessed. Perhaps the coronation of her father, when the crown tottered upon his head; perhaps the half rebuke of her sister, upon a similar occasion, occurred with bitterness to one who was now nearly the last of her family, with the exception of her maternal uncle, and of her attainted nephew. At the coronation of Mary, Anne, observing the Queen to be heated with the weight of the royal robes, and tired with the solemnity, said to her in a low voice, “Madam, I pity your fatigue.” “A crown, sister,” returned Mary, quickly, “is not so heavy as it seems to be, or as you think it;” the words being eagerly caught by the curious attendants around.[369] Whilst the public were amused with the pageantry of this imposing ceremony, busy cabals occupied the private hours of the Queen, and within her palace, a contemporary writer has not hesitated to affirm, there was a very busy market of all the offices of government. “For,” says Cunningham, “the Queen’s own relations being kept at a distance, all things were managed by the sole authority of one woman, to whom there was no access but by the golden road; and it was to no purpose for the Earl of Rochester to set forth his own duty, affection, and the rights of consanguinity.”[370] This “woman,” it needs scarcely to be stated, was the Countess of Marlborough, whose frank avowal of her exertions to form the Queen’s household, at this period, in her Conduct, was not necessary to establish that which all the world knew. With respect to the grave charge preferred against her by Mr. Cunningham, the consideration of her imputed corruption must be hereafter discussed. The elevation of her royal mistress to the throne brought the Countess, as she observes, “into a new scene of life, and into a sort of consideration with all those whose attention, either from curiosity or ambition, was turned to politics and the court.”[371] Hitherto, whilst her personal influence over the Princess had furnished many a topic for the gossip of the day, it had produced no apparent effect upon the affairs of the nation, the Princess herself never having been allowed any means of interference in politics, or power in public appointments. But now the Countess began to be regarded as one who possessed a great extent of patronage,—that curse and temptation, as it often proves; in short, as one, “without whose approbation neither places, pensions, nor honours were conferred by the crown.”[372] The intimate friendship with which she was honoured by the Queen favoured this supposition.