Abigail Hill--a name rendered famous from the momentous changes which succeeded its introduction to the political world--was the appropriate designation of the lowly, supple, and artful being on whose secret offices Harley relied for the accomplishment of his plans. Mistress Hill at this time held the post of dresser and chamber-woman to her Majesty. The world assigned certain causes for the pains which the proud favourite (the Duchess) had manifested to place her cousin in a post where she might have easy access to the Queen's ear, and obtain her confidence. The Duchess, it was said, was weary of her arduous attendance upon a mistress whom she secretly despised. She had become too proud to perform the subordinate duties of her office, and proposed to relieve herself of some of them, by placing one on whom she could entirely depend, as an occasional substitute in the performance of those duties which even habit had not taught her to endure with patience. Since after the elevation of the Duke, in consequence of the battle of Blenheim, she had become a princess of the empire,[44] she was supposed to consider herself too elevated to continue those services to which she had been enured, first in the court of the amiable Anne Hyde, then in that of the unhappy Mary of Modena, and since, near her too gracious sovereign, the meek, but dissembling Anne. [44] Lediard, vol. ii., p. 2. The ungrateful kinswoman had been early acquainted with adversity, which was the remote cause of her ultimate greatness. "Mrs. Masham," the Duchess tells us, in her succinct narrative, "was the daughter of one Hill, a merchant in the city, by a sister of my father. Our grandfather, Sir John Jenyns, had two-and-twenty children, by which means the estate of the family, which was reputed to be about four thousand pounds a year, came to be divided into small parcels. Mrs. Hill had only L500 to her fortune. Her husband lived very well for many years, as I have been told, until turning projector, he brought ruin on himself and family. But as this was long before I was born, I never knew there were such people in the world till after the Princess Anne was married, and when she lived at the Cockpit; at which time an acquaintance of mine came to me and said, _she believed I did not know that I had relations who were in want_, and she gave me an account of them. When she had finished her story, I answered, _that indeed I had never heard before of any such relations_, and immediately gave her out of my purse ten guineas for their present relief, saying I would do what I could for them."