The proffered bounty was, with a feeling of honour, lofty and praiseworthy, declined. So disinterested a refusal might be considered as setting aside the charge of covetousness against Marlborough, and the imputed, grasping conduct of his wife. But, unhappily for those who would wish to exalt human nature, years afterwards, when the Duchess was out of favour, she had the meanness, by her own acknowledgment, to claim the two thousand pounds a year thus offered, and thus, at the same time, refused; and to press her claim by sending the Queen one of her own letters, in which she enforced the Duchess’s acceptance of the grant; and to demand that her Majesty should allow her to charge the sum, with arrears, from the time of the offer, in the privy purse accounts. The Queen, though alienated from her favourite, was generous enough to agree to her proposal—the Duchess mean enough to receive the money.[449] The original refusal, therefore, we cannot but suppose, proceeded from the just, though not liberal Marlborough, who disdained to accept, from the Queen’s private bounty, a grant which the assembly of the nation had refused. Thus was the affair settled; but Marlborough never forgave the Tories their opposition to his claims. In offering to the Parliament his hearty thanks for their approbation of his services, he made this speech:—“He was overjoyed,” he said, “that the House thought he had done service to the public; but that he would hereafter endeavour, as it had always been his wish, that he might be more indebted to his country, than his country to him.”[450] The subsequent rupture between Marlborough and the Tories originated on this occasion. The Duke was indignant, it is said, at being placed merely on a footing with Sir George Rooke, and the Duke of Ormond, who received the thanks of the Houses at the same time with his grace. He was also wounded, and not without reason, at the apparent disposition to undervalue his services which his friends manifested. These sentiments were shared, to their fullest extent, and exasperated with every womanly invective, by her who had continually regretted the early partiality of the Duke to a party whom she abhorred. But it was not long before, in the course of events, the Duchess perceived that her direst foes were not those who openly and vehemently opposed her ambitious views. Amid the clamours of Whigs and Tories, and during the storm of their hostilities, a middle or moderate party gradually and silently arose, and, fostered by circumstances, attained a powerful ascendency. These “trimmers,” as they were contemptuously called, gained accession to their numbers, amongst those who, like the Duke of Marlborough, beheld with regret the extravagances into which both factions were betrayed, in their avidity for preferment.