Whilst the fervour of politics was at its height, the Queen was advised by her physicians to go to Bath. It was singular that Lord Wharton and Lord Somers were at the same time ordered to go to that fashionable resort for the recovery of their health. Lord Wharton, exhausted by his parliamentary exertions, and Lord Somers, frequently an invalid, were probably not unwilling to avail themselves of this opportunity of combining business with pleasure. The public, indeed, regarded the whole as a scheme among the physicians, and considered the Queen’s illness as only a pretext for meeting these two great Whig partisans on the neutral ground which a place like Bath affords. Many of the Tories who were in that city, insulted the Whigs in public meetings and assemblies. The Whigs returned the insult, nor did the Queen wholly escape some annoyances, when it was understood that she was willing to see Lord Somers. But the placid Anne looked on these demonstrations of party spirit with a smiling countenance, and “hoped to extinguish all their party flames in the waters of the Bath.” Those praises of her frugality, her constancy, her “English heart,”[23] which she had been in the habit of hearing from her subjects, were now no longer expressed; and the Queen returned to London from Bath, in all the miseries of unpopularity. Lord Wharton, the veteran promoter of Whig principles, and father of the eccentric and infamous Duke of Wharton, had no sooner reached Bath than he was challenged, upon the pretence of affront, by a Mr. Dashwood, a hot young Tory, who was desirous of stepping forward to signalise himself in behalf of his party. Lord Wharton in vain offered the young man such satisfaction as a man of honour might give, without fighting; but neither his age nor his infirmities appeased the ardour of Dashwood, who insisted on a duel. The parties met, fought, as was the custom, with swords, and Dashwood was disarmed by the old lord, who, in consideration of the youth and zeal of his opponent, spared his life, and even gave him the honour of his acquaintance. But Mr. Dashwood, unable to sustain the reproaches of the world for his cowardice and rude fury in challenging so old a man, died soon afterwards, it is said, through shame and vexation.[24] Such were some of the effects of that political rancour for which this free country has been, and probably ever will be, remarkable. The ladies of the time, it appears, were as zealous in those days as they often prove in this more enlightened age. CHAPTER II. Conduct of Lord Sunderland—Influence of the Duchess understood at foreign courts—Anecdote of Charles the Third of Spain.—1703–4.