“My Lady Fitzharding, who was more than anybody in the Queen’s favour, and for whom it was well known I had a singular affection, was the person chiefly employed in this undertaking. Sometimes she attacked me on the side of my own interest, telling me, ‘that if I would not put an end to measures so disagreeable to the King and Queen, it would certainly be the ruin of my lord, and consequently of all our family.’ When she found that this had no effect, she endeavoured to alarm my fears for the Princess by saying, ‘that those measures would in all probability ruin her; for nobody, but such as flattered me, believed the Princess would carry her point, and in case she did not, the King would not think himself obliged to do anything for her. That it was perfect madness in me to persist, and I had better ten thousand times to let the thing fall, and to make all easy to the King and Queen.’” Little could Lady Fitzharding understand the character of her gifted friend, when she attempted to dissuade her from any undertaking in which she had resolutely engaged. On the contrary, the Duchess, persisting the more strenuously in her determination the more it was opposed, with a true feminine spirit writes: “All this, and a great deal more that was said, was so far from inclining me to do what was desired of me, that it only made me more anxious about the success of the Princess’s affair, and more earnest, if possible, in the prosecuting of it.” For, as she further declares, she would rather have died than have sacrificed the interests of the Princess, or have had it thought that she had herself been bribed or intimidated into compliance with the wishes of the court. Lady Marlborough, therefore, employed all the powers which she possessed, to forward the settlement. She justly reflected, as the Princess’s friend, that anything was better than dependence upon William’s generosity, of which she had no opinion. For Lord Godolphin told her that the King, speaking of the civil list, “wondered very much how the Princess could spend thirty thousand pounds a year, although it was less,” adds the shrewd Duchess, “than some of his majesty’s favourites had.”[167] Meantime King William and his Queen were perfectly aware, as it appears, with whom the resistance to their plans originated, and they took measures, accordingly, to appease and to satisfy her who already held “that good sort of woman,”[168] their royal sister, in a kind of subjection to her will and opinion. Accordingly, a few days before the question was put to the vote, a message was despatched to Lady Marlborough, offering, on the part of the King, to give the Princess fifty thousand pounds a year, if she would not appeal to parliament.