‘The great Sarah’ was, in fact, never happy unless she had some quarrel on hand. She was offended by her granddaughter, Lady Anne Egerton’s conduct in arranging a marriage between her brother and a daughter of Lord Trevor. This alliance certainly could not fail to be galling to the widowed Duchess, who, now that her husband was dead, idolised his memory and pursued with an unquenchable hatred all those who had opposed him in former years. For Lord Trevor had been one of the great Duke’s bitterest enemies; and now for a grandson of Marlborough to marry a daughter of one who had reviled him and had sat in the seat of the scorner! It was too much. She had a portrait of her granddaughter brought her, and, to show her hatred, painted the face black and wrote an inscription for it, ‘She is much blacker within.’ Her temper had grown more furious with her advancing years, soured as she had been by the ultimate revolt of Anne against her imperious and insulting behaviour toward her Majesty in public. She had given the Queen her gloves and fan to hold during State ceremonies, and affected not to hear when spoken to. Certainly no royal favourite had ever before held power by the uncompromising frankness with which the Duchess of Marlborough treated the Queen; and whatever else may be laid to her charge, neither flattery nor a cringing attitude, fulsome adulation nor obsequious humility, can be attributed to her. All those qualities of the sycophant are to be found in the character of Abigail Hill, the poor relation for whom the Duchess had found a small position in the royal nursery, and who managed by these meannesses to alienate the affections of the weak and sullen Queen. Courts were different then, and politics entered largely even into the doings and attention of the royal domestics. Abigail Hill, who had been engaged as a rocker of royal or princely cradles, exercised her influence, tutored as it was by Mr. Secretary Harley, upon the Queen, who dismissed the Duchess of Marlborough from her office as Mistress of the Robes, and with the dismissal of the Duchess fell the Ministry of Marlborough and Godolphin. Marlborough, who was as able a diplomat as he was a soldier, who knew the secrets of every European Court, was unconscious of the plottings and backstairs influences which were undermining his own power. The Duchess, too, knew nothing until their political ruin was accomplished, and then all was in vain. Although the conqueror of so many hard-fought fields and the crafty overreacher of astute statesmen might plead for the reinstatement of his wife with all his eloquence, and even go on his knees to implore the Queen’s favour, the steadfast obstinacy of a stupid woman oppressed for years, and too weak for revolt until now, was proof against all the matchless services and traditions of the man; and the position which the great Sarah’s arrogance and folly had lost them the Marlboroughs never regained.