The Tories were next destined to cross the sorely-troubled king by the resistance which they offered to him on a delicate question connected with the provision for his sister-in-law. On the vote of the Civil List, and the question arising under it as to the establishment of the Princess Anne, it had been originally proposed by William that he himself should undertake this charge out of his own revenues; but through the instrumentality of the Churchills a strong party was formed among the Tories to insist upon Anne having a settlement independent of the Crown. Seventy thousand a year was the (for those days) extravagant sum which they demanded, and which proved too much even for an indulgent House of Commons to grant. The vote was reduced to £50,000, and though William's dislike to the idea of a parliamentary settlement upon his sister-in-law induced him to raise his own original offer of £30,000 to £50,000 Anne still held out, and a yearly income of the amount last mentioned was accordingly secured to her for life by Act of Parliament. In none of the parts played by the various actors in this little political drama (the sequel to which was the permanent estrangement of the Queen and King from the Princess) is it easy to discern the promptings of any public principle, or indeed of any decorously avowable motive whatever. The Tories would seem to have been wholly swayed either by party and ecclesiastical prepossessions, or by personal interests of a lower kind--either by sentimental sympathy with a High Churchwoman, or by a practical eye to the Marlborough gold. As to William it was eminently natural that he should wish to retain at least _one_ string of this puppet of the Churchills in his own hands; as natural as that the Churchills themselves should wish to deprive him of it, and that the puppet herself should respond to the vigorous pulling of the strings which they already held. Neither of the two latter parties would probably have cared to allege any public motive for their behaviour in the transaction. It is to be presumed, however, that William would have done so if he could; and it is at least noteworthy that the only objection which he seems to have taken to Anne's parliamentary settlement affords no logical support to his own alternative proposal. That Anne should have her income settled on her for life, while his was only voted to him annually, was doubtless a just ground of complaint; but the proper redress of the anomaly would have been to subject his sister-in-law's income like his own to the annual revision of the House of Commons. The fact that the King was dependent upon Parliament could be no reason for making the Princess dependent not upon Parliament, but upon the King.