and if I should give him my whole estate he would throw it away as he has done his grandfather’s, and he would come at last to the Treasury for a pension for his vote. But I believe you have seen, as well as I, that pensions and promises at court are not ready money.” The Duke died in 1758, having, according to Horace Walpole, greatly impoverished his estate; so that his death, before his son came of age, was considered to be an advantage to the property, since the young man might have been induced to join his father in the last mournful resource, according to the same writer, “to sell and pay.”[346] On the honourable John Spencer, commonly called by the writers of those days Jack Spencer, the affections of the Duchess were, after the death of his eldest brother, chiefly centered. Not all his extravagance, nor the low-lived pranks in which he figured; not even the prospect of seeing him squander away every shilling which he possessed, could alienate from him this fantastic and unjust partiality on the part of his grandmother. He died, after a profligate and disgraceful career, at the age of six or seven and thirty, “merely,” says Horace Walpole, “because he would not be abridged of those invaluable blessings of a British subject, namely, brandy, small-beer, and tobacco.”[347] Notwithstanding these propensities, the Duchess left him in her will a clear income of thirty thousand a year, to the enjoyment of which was annexed a condition, characteristic enough, that he should not accept any place or pension from any government whatsoever. Whilst she thus enriched her unworthy grandson, she disinherited Charles Duke of Marlborough of all the property which was vested in herself to bequeath. Lady Diana Spencer, the youngest of the Sunderland family, was also a favourite of her grandmother. She appears to have been an object of solicitude to the Duchess, who, it may be remembered, expressed much satisfaction when the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, called “her Dy” back to bid her hold her head up, which, added the Duchess, “was what I was always telling her.” She also quoted “her Dy,” with much satisfaction, in her letter to Dr. Hare, when she extenuated her behaviour to Sir Robert Walpole.