Of this scion of the notable family to whom he belonged, the Duchess has given an account in her Vindication. Jack Hill, as she calls him, was a younger brother of Mrs. Masham, and, like the rest of the family, was provided for by the Duchess. The occupations which these dependent relations held were suitable to their lowly conditions, and, as the Duchess seemed to think, to the inferiority of their condition to her own. It has been already specified how she had provided for them. The younger sister had, as we have seen, been appointed by the Duke of Marlborough laundress to the Duke of Gloucester, and, when that prince died, had received a pension of two hundred a year out of the privy purse, coming directly from the Duchess’s hands. The elder brother obtained, through the Duke’s interest, a place in the Custom-house; and upon security being required, previously to his being promoted to a more responsible situation, the Duchess persuaded a relation of the Duke’s to be guarantee for that sum. Thus had she laboured successfully to provide for these indigent relations, who afterwards proved briers in her path of life. Mrs. Masham, the elder sister, whom she had treated as her sister, and to whom she had given an asylum in her house, availed herself of opportunities to supplant her. It was the fortune of “honest Jack Hill,” as his boon companions called him, to bring a second humiliation upon the Duke his patron. Years had passed away since these favours had been shown to Mr. Hill, and he was now a partisan of those who were foes to his benefactors, having long since forgotten by whose means he was raised from abject poverty to respectability. It was concerning the promotion of Mr. Hill to the command of a regiment, vacant by the death of the Earl of Essex, that the first open rupture between the Queen and the Duke of Marlborough occurred. The plot which Harley and the Masham party had woven, appeared now, according to the opinions of the Duchess, in undisguised colours. Already had they induced the Queen to prefer bishops who were not acceptable to the ministry; and it was now their successful aim to lead her Majesty into another snare. They therefore persuaded her to make military appointments without the consent of her general; and the choice of Mr. Hill for the purpose of mortifying the Duke was, it must be allowed, eminently successful, if they wished to lower the authority of that great commander. A double design was thus intended. If the Duke permitted his relative’s promotion, the whole army would feel the injustice done to their profession; if he resisted it, it would lend new force to the arguments by which the weak and credulous mind of Anne was perpetually assailed, namely, that she was but a cipher in the hands of the Marlborough family; and thus, the Duke and his wife were by the same dexterous arrangement equally injured, or at any rate insulted.