Although reported to have been “more ambitious of gain than of power,” the Earl and Countess must have experienced considerable disappointment when the formation of the new cabinet was completed. Lord Somers, who at this time was a deferential votary of the powerful Countess, and Lord Halifax, who came into public life under Lord Godolphin’s auspices, were both dismissed the council. In order to comprehend the state of parties, and to understand in which direction the weight of talent and influence was likely to preponderate in those unsettled times, some reference must here be made to the preceding reign; and a short account of the principal actors in the scenes of those factious days may not prove uninteresting. Lord Somers, whom Horace Walpole describes as “one of those divine men, who, like a chapel in a palace, remain unprofaned, whilst all the rest is tyranny, corruption, and folly,” had possessed more influence in the councils of William than any other minister. He was, therefore, on the accession of Anne, one of the most conspicuous marks for the violence of faction. Agreeably to custom, those who could discover little to blame in the elevation of this distinguished statesman, deprecated his origin. The race from which he rose to a pre-eminent sphere, have been described “as the dregs of the people.”[378] To his honour, and not to his shame, might the fact redound, supposing the statement to be true; but, unhappily for those who exulted in such a source of humiliation, and attributed the modest demeanour of the Lord High Chancellor to a consciousness of this humble origin, Somers sprang from a family both ancient and respectable. His ancestors, though not distinguished by the honours of rank, were neither “hewers of wood nor drawers of water.”[379] From the time of the Tudors, one branch of the Somers family had owned and inhabited an ancient house in the northern suburbs of the city of Worcester, which edifice, hallowed by the appellation of the “White Ladies,” from its site, that of an ancient monastery, had been spared by foes, and honoured by friends, during all the convulsions of the civil wars. In “Somers’s House,” as the respected tenement was called, Queen Elizabeth had been received, and entertained in her progress through the county. The extensive and richly cultured gardens of the old conventual residence had furnished the famous pears which that Queen, in the fulness of her approbation, had added to the city arms, as a testimony both of her satisfaction in eating the fruit, and of her admiration at the good order by which a tree, laden with it, and transplanted from the garden of the “White Ladies” into the market-place, could be preserved from injury.