Lord Sunderland, at this time on terms of confidence with his mother-in-law, the Duchess of Marlborough, was one of the most active agents of the Whig party, in making overtures to Marlborough and Godolphin. Of powerful talents, although taunted by Swift with the imputation “of knowing a book better by the back than by the face,”[25] and of multiplying them on his book-shelves without caring to read them, Sunderland, or his politics, were never wholly acceptable to Marlborough. Yet the Earl, though a violent party politician, knew how, in circumstances sufficiently trying, to prove his sincerity, and evince a real elevation of mind, by refusing from the Queen, upon his office of secretary being taken from him, a pension by way of compensation. His celebrated answer, “that if he could not have the honour to serve his country, he would not plunder it,”[26] must have startled less scrupulous politicians; and, possibly, it might even sound strangely in our own days of boasted disinterestedness and enlightenment. The Duke of Marlborough, in reply to advances made in behalf of the Whig party by Lord Sunderland, made this memorable answer: “that he hoped always to continue in the humour that he was then in, that is, to be governed by neither party, but to do what he should think best for England, by which he should disoblige both parties.”[27] Thus ended, for the present, the negociation on the part of the Whigs. The cabinet, therefore, continued to be composed of mixed ingredients. The Duke persevered steadily in that course which he deemed necessary, as far as foreign policy was concerned, to crush the reviving influence of the Pretender, whose subsequent attempts to recover the throne of his ancestors he plainly foresaw. From this conviction, he regarded a continued good understanding with the Dutch to be of paramount importance.[28] “May God,” he says, writing to the Duchess, “preserve me and my dearest love from seeing this come to pass;” alluding to a reconciliation with the French, and consequently with the Pretender and his family, through the medium of that nation; “but if we quarrel with the Dutch,” he adds, “I fear it may happen.”[29]