Proposals of marriage from the Earl of Huntingdon, son of Lord Cromarty, were also made to Lady Mary, but in vain;[7] the character of his father, Lord Cromarty, who was, according to Cunningham, “long looked upon as a state mountebank,” probably operating against the young man’s addresses; for the Duchess sought to extend and strengthen her connexions, and not to endanger the stability of her fortune by an alliance with the weak or the disreputable. Political reasons, it has been said by historians, decided the destiny of the fair victim, than whom “there was not in England,” says Cunningham, “a more acceptable sacrifice to be offered up for appeasing the rage of parties,” and caused her finally to become the wife of Lord Monthermer, eldest son of the Earl of Montague. Marlborough, as Cunningham relates, before setting out on his latest campaign, “fearing lest Whigs and Tories should combine together to ruin him, recommended to his wife to propose a marriage of one of his daughters to the Earl of Montague’s son, as a means of their reconciliation, and the establishment of his own power.”[8] The projected alliance, in most important respects, appeared to be highly advantageous. The House of Montague, anciently Montacute, was already connected with some of the wealthiest and most powerful among the nobility. Resembling, in one respect, the Churchill family, the progenitors of the young man on whom Lady Mary’s hand was ultimately bestowed, had been devoted to the service of the Stuarts. There is a tradition that one of the race, Edward Montague, who held the office of Master of the Horse to Queen Katharine, wife of Charles the Second, was removed from his post, for venturing to press the hand of his royal mistress,—an offence not likely to be of frequent occurrence, if historians have not done great injustice to the amiable but ungainly Katharine of Braganza.