_An Account of what the Grant of Marlborough-House has cost the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough._[509] Paid to Sir Richard Beeling, upon a pretended debt of Queen Dowager’s, two thousand pounds. Building the house, and making the garden, very near fifty thousand pounds. That article seems almost incredible, but it is not really so extravagant as it appears, because it is the strongest and best house that ever was built; and if it were worth the trouble to look into old accounts when they signify nothing, I could prove what I have said by the payments out of the accounts. As to what has been paid for two grants in Queen Anne’s time, there being a mistake in one of them which occasioned another, and the renewal in King George the First’s time; likewise the fine and payments upon account of the four little houses to make the way, must have cost a good deal. But it is not worth the trouble of summing up the particulars. The yearly rents I pay to the crown are five shillings; and thirteen pounds fifteen shillings for Marlborough-house; and thirteen pounds fifteen shillings for the four little houses. The land-tax for Marlborough-house is sixty pounds a year; for the four little houses I don’t know what it is. The Examiner magnified the vast profit I had by this grant from the crown, which it never cost one shilling. Likewise a great value was set upon the advantage of the lodges in Windsor Park. None of the expense of building either was done by the crown; and it cost the Duchess of Marlborough a great sum of money to make those two lodges what they are, who lost an arrear due from King George the First, the allowance for keeping the Park. After that, his present Majesty, by letters patent under the privy seal, bearing date the twenty-ninth day of June, in the second year of his reign, was pleased to grant to the ranger of the Great Park at Windsor an allowance of five hundred pounds a year in consideration of the charge of supplying hay for feed of the deer, and paying under-keepers, and gate-keepers, and other subordinate officers doing duty or service there, their wages; and to authorise and direct the payment of the said fee, salary, or allowance, at the receipt of the Exchequer, quarterly, out of his treasure applicable to the uses of his civil government. This salary was stopt by another order at Christmas, 1736, since which time the Duchess of Marlborough has been at the whole charge of all the payments in his Majesty’s Park; notwithstanding that by her grant she has as strong a right to it as anybody can have from the crown. And though Queen Anne gave her this grant, at King George’s coming to the crown she paid the usual fees as if it had been given her then, and which ’tis plain, by what has passed since, could not be taken from her. But she did not think it worth making a dispute about that. There is likewise in the order to recal the payment, from the crown, that Mr.