At length Queen Mary became the mother of a living son, and in the disputes to which the birth of the Prince of Wales gave rise, we find Lady Churchill’s name mentioned in some correspondence relative to that affair. Party differences ran high upon this subject, and Lord Chesterfield is of opinion that the shameful fable of the Prince’s supposititious birth effected more to secure the Protestant succession than any other event whatsoever. The concurring testimony of successive writers has now assigned to the unfortunate Pretender the legitimacy which, by the singular and audacious attempts of a faction, and the fabrication of a servant, was disputed. Happy would it have been for that individual if the calumnies of his enemies had had foundation, and the secure contentment of a private station had been his lot! Lady Churchill appears, from some expressions of the Princess Anne, to have been a witness of the singular intrigues which, in behalf of Anne’s interests, as well as to further those of the Protestant cause, were carried on, to throw discredit on the birth of the Prince. Various were the accounts of the part taken by Anne on this occasion. It is said, that upon some quarrel on the subject between her Highness and the Queen, touching the approaching confinement of the latter, her Majesty, sitting at her toilet, threw her glove at the face of the Princess; upon which Anne, indignant, withdrew from court; and upon the pretext of her health, or perhaps in consequence of the command of the King, she repaired to Bath, in order to drink the waters at that fashionable place of resort.[97] From this circumstance, the Princess was absent at the time of the birth of the infant Prince; but her letters upon the subject, and the inferences which she draws from details gathered from hearsay, afford a curious specimen of the coarseness of court gossip, and the peculiar vulgarity and common-place character of Anne’s mind.[98] It is a proof of the consistent firmness of Lord Churchill in adhering to the mode of faith which he venerated, that no employment, nor any distinction but a colonelcy of a troop of horse-guards upon the quelling of Monmouth’s insurrection, was assigned to him during the short reign of James, for he was not of that material which James wanted to turn to active purposes. Whilst the King’s designs were not developed, and the liberties of his country were not openly threatened, Lord Churchill remained inactive, if not neutral: but, after the declaration of Indulgences in 1686, he was roused into exertion by apprehensions from past events, perfectly justifiable. That he had also private intelligence of James’s endeavours to gain the Princess over to his religious persuasion, appears from the statement given by the Duchess, in her concise account of affairs at this period.