Lady Mary was anxious that nothing she did should reflect upon her daughter or in any way affect Lord Bute.  “I am afraid you may think some imprudent behaviour of mine has occasioned all this ridiculous persecution [by the Resident]” she wrote to them in May, 1758.  “I can assure you I have always treated him and his family with the utmost civility, and am now retired to Padua, to avoid the comments that will certainly be made on his extraordinary conduct towards me.  I only desire privacy and quiet, and am very well contented to be without visits, which oftener disturb than amuse me.  My single concern is the design he has formed of securing (as he calls it) my effects immediately on my decease; if they ever fall into his hands, I am persuaded they will never arrive entire into yours, which is a very uneasy thought to me.”

Although not primarily interested in politics, Lady Mary had met so many politicians that she was naturally eager to hear what was going on, and the fact that her son-in-law, Lord Bute, was active in that department of life made her follow ministerial events in England so closely as possible.  “I stay here, though I am on many accounts better pleased with Padua,” she wrote to her daughter from Venice, January 20, 1758.  “Our great minister, the Resident, treats me as one of the Opposition.  I am inclined to laugh rather than be displeased at his political airs; yet, as I am among strangers they are disagreeable; and, could I have foreseen them, would have settled in some other part of the world:  but I have taken leases of my houses, been at much pains and expense in furnishing them, and am no longer of an age to make long journeys.”

Pitt’s Coalition Ministry, formed in June, 1757, in which Pitt and Lord Holdernesse were Secretaries of State, the Duke of Newcastle First Lord of the Treasury, Legge Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Lord Granville, Lord Temple, Sir Robert Henley, the Duke of Devonshire, the Duke of Bedford, and Henry Fox held office, moved Lady Mary to merriment.

“Your account of the changes in ministerial affairs do not surprise me; but nothing could be more astonishing than their all coming together” (she wrote to Lady Bute).  “It puts me in mind of a friend of mine who had a large family of favourite animals; and not knowing how to convey them to his country-house in separate equipages, he ordered a Dutch mastiff, a cat and her kittens, a monkey, and a parrot, all to be packed up together in one large hamper, and sent by a waggon.  One may easily guess how this set of company made their journey; and I have never been able to think of the present compound ministry without the idea of barking, scratching, and screaming.  ’Tis too ridiculous a one, I own, for the gravity of their characters, and still more for the situation the kingdom is in; for as much as one may encourage the love of laughter, ’tis impossible to be indifferent to the welfare of one’s native country.”