The transient reconciliation which thus took place between the Queen and the Duchess was not of long duration. Mrs. Masham, indeed, retired that same evening from the supper-room, where the Duchess appeared to attend upon her Majesty; and Anne cautiously forbore to mention “poor Masham’s” hateful name. But when in private, Anne was almost continually attended by the insidious Abigail, and the Duchess rarely entered the royal presence without finding her rival there, or, what was worse, retiring furtively at her approach; and she soon ascertained that the very closet where she had knelt in sorrow and compassion before her sovereign—where she had striven to act the part of consolation—was the scene of Mrs. Masham’s influence. It seemed, indeed, strange that Anne should select for her daily sitting-room the closet which her deceased consort had used as his place of retirement and prayer, and the prying Duchess soon penetrated behind the screen of widowed proprieties. She has laid bare the occupations of the royal mourner, whilst closeted for many hours of the day in Prince George’s apartments. The Duchess, indeed, suspected that some peculiar motive could alone induce Anne to disregard the mournful associations with that retreat; and resolving to ascertain the cause, she had the mortification to discover the true reason of Anne’s choice: this was, that the “back-stairs belonging to it came from Mrs. Masham’s lodgings, who, by that means, could bring to her whom she pleased.”[149] CHAPTER VIII. Trial of Dr. Sacheverell—His solemn protestation of innocence—Scene behind the curtain where the Queen sat—Fresh offence given by the Duchess to Anne.—1709–1710. The year 1709, which witnessed the almost final alienation of the Queen from her early favourite, was disgraced by the strange spectacle of Dr. Henry Sacheverell’s trial, his punishment, and triumph. A celebrated female historian has well observed, that it is difficult to say “which is most worthy of ridicule,—the ministry, in arming all the powers of government in their attack upon an obscure individual, or the public, in supporting a culprit whose doctrine was more odious than his insolence, and his principles yet more contemptible than his parts.”[150] This “trumpeter of sedition,” as Cunningham calls him, or, according to the ladies and other zealous partisans of his day, this persecuted saint, was a preacher of little merit, but of great pretensions; who, in a discourse delivered on the fifth of November, 1709, at St. Paul’s cathedral, attacked Queen Elizabeth, decried the authors of the Revolution, abused the ministers of the reigning sovereign, and upheld the doctrines of divine right, in one “incoherent jumble,” at once passionate, ill constructed, and, one would have supposed, innocuous.