“The life of this peer,” says Horace Walpole, with his usual pointed and well-bred ill-nature, “takes up fourteen pages and a half in folio in the General Dictionary, where it has little pretensions to occupy a couple. The author of the Dictionary,” he adds, “calls the Duke one of the most beautiful prose writers and greatest poets of this age; which is also,” he says, “proved by the finest writers, his cotemporaries; certificates that have little weight, where the merit is not proved by the author’s own works.” “It is said,” adds the malicious Walpole, “that the Duke wrote in hopes of being confounded with his predecessors in the title; but he would have been more easily confounded with the other Buckingham, if he had never written at all.”[461] Notwithstanding the Queen’s earnestness on the subject of a provision for the Prince her husband, a protest was signed against that clause which enabled him to keep his employments in the next reign, thus making him an exception to all other foreigners similarly situated. It bore the names of seven peers, whilst those of twenty-eight were affixed to a still stronger protest, objecting to the whole bill. Amongst the noble names which thus appeared, that of Lord Sunderland, who had lately succeeded that celebrated statesman his father, gave the greatest offence to Anne, and distress to the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. Lord Sunderland had aggravated his offence by speaking against the grant. His father-in-law was grieved, and surprised at the part which his son-in-law took; but the Duchess was incensed by what she considered as a mark of disrespect, and an act of defiance to her will, by one usually flattering and subservient to his stately mother-in-law.[462] Her daughter, Lady Sunderland, with difficulty effected a reconciliation; for the principles of the Whigs were forgotten in the service of Majesty. This perplexing and irritating conduct on the part of Lord Sunderland was one of a series of political vexations, which Marlborough and his Duchess experienced at the hands of that able, but violent nobleman. The Duchess of Marlborough had now wholly embarked on that voyage of politics which ended only with her long and weary life. A taste for the excitement for cabal, like a passion for gaming, grows with indulgence; it is rarely wholly relinquished, but fastens itself upon the character, until every faculty is absorbed in what is popularly termed a spirit of party. The Duchess, whatever were her private motives, had, it must be allowed, extended and sound views upon such subjects as engaged the powers of her energetic mind. Doubtless the society of the able men whose intimacy she had secured, contributed to enlarge those opinions, which could scarcely have been formed in the courts of Charles the Second and his brother, or improved into principles in the contracted court or common-place society of the virtuous, but prejudiced Anne.