of the exchequer. Mrs Clayton soon obtained the
confidence of that most impracticable of all personages, Sarah, Duchess
of Marlborough.

On the death of Queen Anne, the duke and duchess had returned to
England, but, repulsed shortly after by the ungracious manner of the
ungrateful George I., they soon abandoned public life. Still it was
difficult for so stirring a personage as the duchess altogether to
abandon court intrigue, and probably for the purpose of obtaining some
shadow of that influence which she might afterwards turn into substance,
she contrived to obtain for her correspondent and dependant, Mrs
Clayton, the place of bedchamber-woman to Caroline, wife of the
heir-apparent.

It is obvious that such a position might give all the advantages of the
most confidential intercourse, to a clever woman, who had her own game
to play. The Princess herself was in a position which required great
dexterity. She was the wife of a brutish personage whom it was
impossible to respect, and yet with whom it was hazardous to quarrel.
She was the daughter-in-law of a Prince utterly incapable of popularity,
yet singularly jealous of power. She was surrounded by a court, half
Jacobite, and wholly unprincipled; and exposed to the constant
observation of a people still dubious of the German title to the throne,
contemptuous by nature of all foreign alliances, disgusted with the
manners of the court, and still disturbed by the struggles of the fallen
dynasty.

It was obviously of high importance to such a personage, to have in her
employ so clear-headed, and at the same time so stirring an agent as Mrs
Clayton. There seems even to have been a strong similitude in their
characters--both keen, both intelligent, both fond of power, and both
exhibiting no delicacy whatever with regard to the means for its
possession. Mrs Clayton never shrank from intercourse with those
profligate persons who then abounded at court, when she had a point to
carry; and Caroline, as Queen, endured for thirty years the notorious
irregularities of her lord and master, without a remonstrance. She even
went farther. She pretended, in the midst of those gross offences, to be
even tenderly attached to him, talked of "not valuing her children as a
grain of sand in comparison with him," and not merely acquiesced in
conduct which must have galled every feeling of virtue in a pure heart,
but involved herself in the natural suspicion of playing a part for the
sake of