“I ought,” wrote her Majesty, “to say a great deal to both of you in return, but neither words nor actions can ever express the true sense Mr. Morley and I have of your sincere kindness on this, and on all other occasions; and therefore I will not say any more on this subject, but that, to the last moment, your dear, unfortunate, faithful Morley will be most passionately and tenderly yours.”[455] The Queen, who was devotedly attached to her husband, notwithstanding the disparity of their age, and other circumstances, never forgave those who opposed this measure. It was true that there was little apparent probability of the Prince’s living so long as to feel the loss of station and decline of influence which the Queen’s death would entail upon his Royal Highness. He had for years been afflicted with an asthma, which during the winter (1702) endangered his life. Yet Anne evinced, on the subject of a provision for her consort, a zeal which she had never yet shown on any other subject.[456] The great world, whilst it admired her domestic qualities, had not given her credit for the strong conjugal affection which marked and elevated both her own private conduct, and which had adorned the character of the late Queen. The courts of the Stuarts had not been accustomed to qualities so respectable and so amiable. Hence, when even the sedate and virtuous Anne promoted John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, and afterwards Marquis of Normanby and Duke of Buckinghamshire, to be a privy councillor, her preference to that brave and accomplished nobleman was attributed to an early prepossession; Lord Mulgrave having paid his addresses to her before she was contracted to Prince George.[457] Queen Anne resembled, it may be presumed, most other women, who rarely cease to regard with complacency the man who has once displayed towards them affection or admiration, even when those feelings have not been reciprocal. If, by a stretch of imagination, anything like romance can be attached to the recollection of this amiable Princess, the early addresses of the young nobleman,—addresses which were prohibited as soon as discovered,[458] though proffered at a time when there was little probability of Anne’s becoming Queen of England,—may be deemed romantic. “Anne,” says the arch-satirist of her day, “had undoubtedly no turn for gallantry, yet so far resembled her predecessor, Queen Elizabeth, as not to dislike a little homage to her person. The Duke,” he adds, “was immediately rewarded, on her accession, for having made love to her before her marriage.”[459] Lord Mulgrave, whom the Queen was thought for such reasons to promote, had been a warm adherent to her father, even whilst he manfully reprobated and ridiculed that monarch’s religious faith.[460] Like Rochester, he influenced the Queen’s mind,—it may without scandal be presumed, in some measure through her affections,—to the Tory party. In conformity with the fashion of the day, he affected literature.