“... Sorry people have taken such pains to give so ill a character of Lady Churchill.... I believe there is nobody in the world has better notions of religion than she has. It is true, she is not so strict as some are, nor does not keep such a bustle with religion; which I confess I think is never the worse; for one sees so many saints mere devils, that if one be a good Christian, the less show one makes, it is the better, in my opinion. Then, as for moral principles, it is impossible to have better; and, without that, all the lifting up of hands and eyes, and going often to church, will prove but a very lame devotion. One thing more I must say for her, which is, that she has a true sense of the doctrine of our church, and abhors all the principles of the church of Rome; so that, as to this particular, I assure you she will never change. The same thing I will venture, now I am on this subject, to say for her lord; for though he is a very faithful servant to the King, and that King is very kind to him, and I believe he will always obey the King in all things that are consistent with religion; yet, rather than change that, I dare say he will lose all his places, and all that he has.”[156] This prepossession against the Countess of Marlborough may have originated only in her known and determined spirit; but it was doubtless aggravated by the relationship and correspondence of the Countess with her sister, now Lady Tyrconnel, the warm and busy partisan of the exiled monarch, of whom her husband, Lord Tyrconnel, was an active and influential adherent. The Queen seems to have adroitly thrown her objections to Lady Marlborough into the form of scruples concerning her religious opinions, hoping that Anne’s strict notions upon those points might be offended by her favourite’s carelessness upon matters of form, then of absolute importance in the tottering state of our national church, and at all times aids and props to devotional exercises, of the greatest assistance to habitual piety. But the insinuations of Mary, in whatever terms they may have been couched, only served to strengthen friendship which a species of adversity still rendered essential to the Princess Anne. The Countess, however, was retained in her post about the Princess, “a situation seemingly of little consequence,” observes Dalrymple, “but which, for that very reason, her pride and spirit of intrigue determined her to convert into a great one.”[157]