The Duke of Marlborough was present at several of the debates which related to this singular business. He voted with the minority who were opposed to Harley. The Duchess was reported, also, to have been “distracted with disappointment,” when the proceedings against Harley were quashed by some secret influence. Yet, notwithstanding her well-known hostility to Harley, and her equally well-known adherence to Whig principles, there have been distinct statements of her having intrigued with the Jacobite party, at that time justly formidable to the King of England. Before the acquittal of Lord Oxford took place, report at that time, and tradition has since, alleged, that Mr. Auditor Harley, the unfortunate statesman’s brother, waited privately on the Duchess of Marlborough, and showed her a letter which had been written formerly from the Duke to the Pretender. Mr. Harley, after reading this letter, declared to the Duchess that it should be produced at Lord Oxford’s trial, if that proceeding were not instantly abandoned. The Duchess, it is stated, seized the letter, committed it to the fire, and defied her foe. Mr. Harley then thus addressed her:—“I knew your grace too well to trust you; the letter you have destroyed is only a copy; the original is safe in my possession.”[262] This is one anecdote, unsupported by any authority, implicating the Duchess in the charge of a treasonable correspondence. It may be remarked, that the previous vacillating and crooked course which Marlborough had pursued with respect to the exiled family, in the time of William the Third, may have given rise to this imputation. Another statement, bearing an aspect of greater probability, was communicated by Mr. Serjeant Comyns, afterwards Chief Baron of the Exchequer, to the late respected and gifted Benjamin West, Esq., President of the Royal Academy. Mr. West transmitted the circumstance to Mr. Gregg, a barrister, from whose handwriting the anecdote was noted down in the Biographia Britannica.