“Nevertheless,” she says, “I was so fearful lest the Princess should suffer for want of good advice, that after I had heard of the Commons voting 50,000_l._ a year, I sent to speak with my Lord Rochester, and asked his opinion whether the Princess ought to be satisfied, or whether it was reasonable she should try to get more. (I did not then know how much his heart was bent on making his court to the Queen.) His answer to me was, that he thought not only that the Princess ought to be satisfied with 50,000_l._, but that she ought to have taken it in any way the King pleased; which made me reflect that he would not have liked that advice in the case of his own 4000_l._ a year from the Post-Office, settled on him and his son.[172] But I was not,” she adds, “so uncivil as to speak my thought, nor so foolish as to struggle any longer. For most of those who had been prevailed with to promote the settlement were Tories, among whom my Lord Rochester was a very great man. Their zeal on the present occasion was doubtless to thwart King William, for I never observed that on any other they discovered much regard for the Princess of Denmark.”[173] The success of the affair was justly attributable, as she affirms, not to any faction making the passive Princess the plea for a vexatious opposition to the court, but, as she forcibly expresses it, “to the steadiness and diligence of my Lord Marlborough and me; and to this it was imputed, both by those to whom the result was so exceedingly disagreeable, and by her to whose happiness it was then so necessary.”[174] Anne was at this time deeply sensible of all that she owed to the firmness and zeal of these devoted servants. “She expressed her gratitude in a manner generous to a very high degree;” and from this time, until many years afterwards, the interests and the happiness of the Churchill family were the objects of her solicitude, and of a munificence certainly conferred with delicacy, and often rejected on their part with a spirit of independence and disinterestedness. CHAPTER VI. Character of Godolphin—His advice respecting the pension to the Duchess of Marlborough—Feuds of Mary and Anne—Deficiency of respect towards Prince George—Attachment of Marlborough to his wife—Her residence at Holywell House—Birth of her children—Cloud lowering over the fortunes of Lord Marlborough.—1789. Whilst encountering many enemies, both male and female, whose hostility the Countess of Marlborough might set down to the score of envy, she possessed one friend who, through life, influenced all her actions, and who has been supposed to have gained her affections.