According to her account Colonel Wardle was simply a tool in the hands of the Duke of Kent; his allies were Major Dodd and Mr. Glennie, the former being the Duke of Kent's secretary--who engaged himself without scruple to forward the projects of his employer. According to all accounts Colonel Wardle had bribed the assistance of an ambitious woman who fancied herself aggrieved, and who was, above all, amenable to sordid incentives: the Duke had left her in debt, had broken his word in more than one instance, and had used threats of the pillory and the Bastille in reply to her applications; she was tired of living in obscure retirement, and was irritated by the menaces of creditors, whose demands she had no means of satisfying. The chief temptation held out to her was, however, a promise that she should once more enjoy that command of ease, and power of shining in the world of fashion, which had been Mrs. Clarke's weakness through life. The arrears she claimed were to be made up, her debts were to be paid, the allowance she sought from the Duke of York (400_l_. per annum), was to be doubled by his brother; she was to have a carriage and four, with a residence and state in proportion; and she was to exercise her own taste in furnishing a house with the elegance and splendour which had marked her late establishment at Gloucester Place. To do the lady justice, she hesitated before inflicting the grave injuries which must attend the public exposure of her whilom benefactor, although she was by no means habitually given to sentimentality. She wrote to the Commander-in-Chief, asked for the allowance which, as she avowed, she had done nothing to forfeit, and at the same time mentioned the overtures which two factions were making her: one party for political purposes--the Radical Reformers to wit, headed by Sir Francis Burdett (who she declared had proposed to treat for the papers and letters in her possession, some sixty of which, as she informed the Duke, were in his own handwriting); the other influence brought to bear on her was of a more subtle and covert description, and she went so far as to indicate the disastrous consequences to himself which would inevitably follow if she lent herself to the schemes of his personal antagonists.