The vigour and clearness of intellect which had ever distinguished the Duchess, were spared to her until the last. Even in her letters to Mr. Scrope, written mostly in 1743, there is an exactness, distinctness, and force not often to be met with in female correspondence at an earlier age. Her letters on business, and she seems to have passed her days in writing them, are peculiarly clever; sufficiently explicit, but without a word too much. Throughout the Duchess’s letters there is, notwithstanding the asperity of her general remarks, no appearance of discourtesy. In her correspondence with Mr. Scrope, she begins as if addressing a stranger, but, on perceiving that he to whom she wrote entered kindly into her concerns, she becomes gracious, then friendly, and, lastly, even confidential. To her other concerns was added the charge of Windsor Park, and all the affairs contingent on that office, which the Duchess rendered, when she had nothing else to employ her, a source of irritation, and of occupation. Queen Caroline, as we have seen, upon the refusal of the Duchess to sell some part of her property at Wimbledon to her Majesty, threatened to take away the annuity of six hundred pounds a year, coupled with the office of Ranger. The threat, to the disgrace of that eulogised Princess, was put into execution; and during Mr. Pelham’s administration, and very shortly before her death, the Duchess applied, through Mr. Scrope, for the restitution of her salary. “Though,” she says, “I have a right to the allowance, I have no remedy, since the crown will pay, or not pay, as they please.” Her arguments for her claims are written with admirable clearness, but couched in terms of earnestness at which one cannot but smile, when we reflect that the writer, now upwards of eighty, who displayed such solicitude for the restitution of the sum of six hundred pounds yearly, not to talk of arrears, which she seems to think were hopeless, was in the receipt of an annual income of at least forty thousand pounds. But it was her right; and the pleasure, perhaps, of triumphing over the injustice of Queen Caroline, then in her grave, moved her to exertion on this subject. “I have a right,” says this pattern of exactness, “by my grant, to five hundred pounds a year for making hay, (in Windsor Park,) buying it when the year is bad, paying all tradesmen’s bills, keeping horses to carry the hay about to several lodges, and paying five keepers’ wages at fifteen pounds a year each, and some gate-keepers, mole-catchers, and other expenses that I cannot think of. But as kings’ parks are not to be kept as low as private people’s, because they call themselves kings’ servants, I really believe that I am out of pocket upon this account, besides the disadvantage of paying ready money every year for what is done, and have only long arrears to solicit for it.”[408]