The following passage is curious, as showing the accurate and close manner in which the Duchess dealt, and the strict manner in which she insisted upon all points of expense being referred to herself.[184] It was the custom, according to her account, for the tradesmen who were employed by the royal family, to pay immense sums to the masters of the robes for that privilege, and to reimburse themselves by putting extravagant prices upon their goods. This dishonest practice, disgraceful to the royal household, was first broken through by the Duchess, who exacted no such perquisites from the tradesmen; neither would she suffer them to charge exorbitantly, as had been their custom. In discharging their accounts she was equally exact. Every bill was paid when the goods were delivered. A certain Mrs. Thomas, a confidential agent of the Duchess, was the person to whom the office of payment was given; and she was remunerated “by old clothes and other little advantages,” to the amount of between two and three hundred a year; but never allowed to take money from tradespeople. The Duchess next expatiates upon her management of the privy purse, the yearly allowance for which was twenty thousand pounds,[185] “not,” as she declares, “half the sum allowed in King William’s time, and indeed very little, considering how great a charge there was fixed upon it by custom—the Queen’s bounties, play money, healing money,[186] besides the many pensions paid out of it. The allowance was augmented to twenty-six thousand pounds before I left the office. But in those two years Mrs. Masham was become the great dispenser of the Queen’s money, I only bringing to her Majesty the sums that were called for.” But the responsibility of these places, which was so ungraciously requited by the public, was soon finally closed. On the return of the Duke of Marlborough from the Hague, in December, he perceived that all confidence in the Whig ministry was at an end: the Queen herself telling him that he was not, as usual, to receive the thanks of the two Houses of Parliament, but that she expected he would live well with her ministers. At first the Duke, still anxious to carry on the war, resolved to be patient, and to retain his command; but finding that the Duchess had again, by express command of the Queen, been forbidden to come to court, he resolved, perhaps too late for his own dignity and that of his wife, to carry to her Majesty the surrender of all her employments. It was readily accepted. The Duchess of Somerset was made groom of the stole, and had charge of the robes; and Mrs. Masham was appointed keeper of the privy purse. The Duchess may now be considered to have retired for a season wholly from political life; and, indeed, the bright but harassing course which she had passed was never resumed.