villa to Richmond facilitated their intercourse, though his religion forbade his entertaining views beyond those of serving his friends.  Lord Bathurst, another of that connexion, and Lord Chesterfield, too early for his interest, founded their hopes on Mrs. Howard’s influence; but astonished and disappointed at finding Walpole not shaken from his seat, they determined on an experiment that should be the touchstone of Mrs. Howard’s credit.  They persuaded her to demand of the new King an Earl’s coronet for Lord Bathurst.  She did-the Queen put in her veto, and Swift, in despair, returned to Ireland, to lament Queen Anne, and curse Queen Caroline, under the mask of patriotism, in a country he abhorred and despised.(101)

To Mrs. Howard, Swift’s ingratitude was base.  She, indubitably, had not only exerted all her interest to second his and his faction’s interests, but loved Queen Caroline and the minister as little as they did; yet, when Swift died, he left behind him a Character of Mrs. Howard by no means flattering, which was published in his posthumous works.

On its appearance, Mrs. Howard (become Lady Suffolk) said to me, in her calm, dispassionate manner, “All I can say is, that it is very different from one that he drew of me, and sent to me, many years ago, and which I have, written by his own hand."(102

Lord Chesterfield, rather more ingenuous-as his character of her, but under a feigned name, was printed in his life, though in a paper of which he was not known to be the author-was not more consistent.  Eudosia, described in the weekly journal called Common Sense, for September 10, 1737, was meant for Lady Suffolk:  yet was it no fault of hers that he was proscribed at court; nor did she perhaps ever know, as he never did till the year before his death, when I acquainted him with it by his friend Sir John Irwin, why he had been put into the Queen’s Index expurgatorius.(102) The queen had an obscure window at St. James’s that looked into a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at night, which looked upon Mrs. Howard’s apartment.  Lord Chesterfield, one Twelfth-night at court, had won so large a sum of money, that he thought it imprudent to carry it home in the dark, and deposited it with the mistress.  Thence the queen inferred great intimacy, and thenceforwards Lord Chesterfield could obtain no favour from court- and finding himself desperate, went into opposition.  My father himself long afterwards told me the story, and had become the principal object of the peer’s satiric wit, though he had not been the mover of his disgrace.  The weight of that anger fell more disgracefully on the king, as I shall mention in the next chapter.

I will here interrupt the detail of what I have heard of the commencement of that reign, and farther anecdotes of the queen and the mistress, till I have related the second very memorable transaction of that era; and which would come in awkwardly, if postponed till I have despatched many subsequent particulars.