The victory at Blenheim, which exercised the pens of Mr. Addison and Mr. John Philips, whose poems on that occasion divided the admiration of the public, tempted Mrs. Trotter to write a copy of verses to the duke of Marlborough, upon his return from his glorious campaign in Germany, December, 1704.  But being doubtful with respect to the publication of them, she sent them in manuscript to his grace; and received for answer, that the duke and duchess, and the lord treasurer Godolphin, with several others to whom they were shewn, were greatly pleased with them; and that good judges of poetry had declared, that there were some lines in them superior to any that had been written on the subject.  Upon this encouragement she sent the poem to the press.

The high degree of favour with which she was honoured by these illustrious persons, gave her, about this time, hopes of some establishment of her fortune, which had hitherto been extremely narrow and precarious.  But though she failed of such an establishment, she succeeded in 1705, in another point, which was a temporary relief to her.  This particular appears from one of her letters printed in the second volume; but of what nature or amount this relief was, we do not find.

Her enquiries into the nature of true religion were attended with their natural and usual effects, in opening and enlarging her notions beyond the contracted pale of her own church.  For in her letter of the 7th of July 1705, to Mr. Burnet, she says, ’I am zealous to have you agree with me in this one article, that all good christians are of the same religion; a sentiment which I sincerely confess, how little soever it is countenanced by the church of Rome.’  And in the latter end of the following year, or the beginning of 1707, her doubts about the Romish religion, which she had so many years professed, having led her to a thorough examination of the grounds of it, by consulting the best books on both sides of the question, and advising with men of the best judgment, the result was a conviction of the falseness of the pretensions of that church, and a return to that of England, to which she adhered during the rest of her life.  In the course of this enquiry, the great and leading question concerning A Guide in Controversy, was particularly discussed by her; and the two letters which she wrote upon it, the first to Mr. Bennet, a Romish priest, and the second to Mr. H——­, who had procured an answer to that letter from a stranger, Mr. Beimel’s indisposition preventing him from returning one, were thought so valuable on account of the strength and perspicuity of reasoning, as well as their conciseness, that she consented to the importunity of her friends, for their publication in June 1707, under the following title, A Discourse concerning a Guide in Controversies; in two Letters:  Written to one of the Church Church of Rome, by a Person lately converted from that Communion; a later edition of them being since printed at Edinburgh in 1728 in 8vo.